Mowing the Lawn in a Time of Crisis

I mowed the lawn today, because it has been rainy and (occasionally) warm and the grass has grown long enough that if I didn’t it would be a jungle by the time I got to it and I don’t think my thirty-year-old lawnmower could handle that, plus the dandelions are out of control and sometimes you have to show them who is boss, and it’s going to rain – again – tonight.

In Washington DC the lawyers for a former president of the United States actually stood up in front of the Supreme Court and seriously argued that presidents should be allowed to assassinate their political rivals and rather than having those lawyers disbarred, flogged, and then exiled to a country where that sort of thing actually happens the right-wing majority took them seriously and may well decide that the era of presidents is over and the era of kings has begun, though people who want to be kings should be careful what they wish for because presidents get impeached but kings get beheaded.

And National Public Radio now has a daily podcast that does nothing but give updates on the spiraling criminal and civil procedures now in progress against that same former president – 91 criminal indictments in four different jurisdictions so far – and this has somehow become normalized even though the Founding Fathers would have had this resolved by sundown on January 7 and it is interesting how much times have changed since then.

Meanwhile the sovereign nation of Israel having long since exceeded any rational self-defense and plunged headfirst into war crimes and ever more disturbing echoes of the whole reason why Israel was set up in the first place is escalating on that path despite every nation on earth including their staunchest allies telling them that this is at best counterproductive and at worst actively evil and university students across the United States are staging mass protests and as historian I know that mass student protests have almost always been proven right in the long run so perhaps we should cut to the chase and not wait for the long run this time.

And after actively subverting the will of the American people (and much of their own party) for six solid months the Russian Wing of the GOP finally got overwhelmed and the US will actually be pursuing its own national self-interest and the interest of its European allies by continuing to arm and support Ukraine against Russian aggression, though perhaps not in time and if not then we are in for a very long and very ugly period in human history that could have been prevented if enough leaders had shown enough spine six months ago.

All this while we set yet another record for global temperatures last month and the ocean is warm enough now that the Gulf Stream may actually grind to a halt but there are too many people who think in terms of third quarter profits to allow us to do much about it.

But the lawn needed to be mowed and it was going to rain – again – tonight, and sometimes you just have to focus on the things you can do here and now.