Wandering Elder

It seems strange to me which issues take off and which do not.  Take, for example, the accusations against Harvey Weinstein.  Not that they aren't deserving of being addressed - they absolutely are.  So were those against Bill Cosby.  But why is it that this time the accusations stuck  and the nation seemed to take full notice of this behavior? Yet we didn't follow through with the allegations against the President for misconduct and a variety of other allegations? Or why is it that the Weinstein issue took forefront and the issue of gun control has virtually disappeared?  Or the issue of disaster relief?  Or the fact that social injustice - most notably put to the foreground by the kneeling during the National Anthem - has somehow faded until the next shooting.  Why is it that Weinstein has become the cause célèbre?   I don't know.  I'm not saying anything in defense of Weinstein's alleged behavior.  It sounds reprehensible  to be sure.  But why did that  i

Some years ago, I wanted there to be a big shakeup in the political landscape.  I was young, I had only a nascent interest of politics, but I wasn't satisfied with what I was hearing or seeing.  It seemed that things were becoming polarized and that parties weren't doing much more than being obstructionists to the agenda (real or perceived) of the opposing party. Then that became the status quo, with the thing Republicans were for was to be against the Democrats and the thing that the Democrats were for was to be against the Republicans.  And the people who were sending these persons to steer the future of the country mattered less and less. And then we got into wars that haven't ended - that have run the entire lifetime of some high school kids.  Wars that were falsely presented and that have no end in sight.  War became our job as a country, with education being relegated to the back-burner and money seeming to become the only issue of national interest that either pa

We have become wearied with the tragedies.  We are exhausted by the mental and emotional toll that we are paying with each storm, with each gunshot.  We have to face the fact that as a species, humanity has not learned to prepare for the worst - we believe we have conquered the earth.  Yet the earth keeps reminding us that it can shake us off at any point.  We have yet to face the fact of the symbiotic relationship of humanity to the earth and if we don't take care of our planet, it will likely take care of us. Of course, for some, taking care of the earth is un-biblical.  There is the line of thinking that says that we can trash this planet, because as Revelation indicates, there will be a new  heaven and a new  earth.  That seems to somehow justify fracking, strip-mines, and why disasters like the Deepwater Horizon spill of 2010 are really not worth the fuss that some would make of spilling oil into the oceans. I do not share that view, I should say.  I think we need to care