Last night’s dishes were in the sink this morning so as I cleaned them I listened to a podcast of headlines:
Ghislaine Maxwell found guilty and Prince Andrew “welcomes” the opportunity to address questions of his having raped an underage girl with Maxwell’s help.
. . . “Welcomes?” I am not convinced. Nor am I put at ease by the journalist who ends the interview with a deferential, “Thank you, your royal highness.”
Lebanon can’t figure out how to investigate the 2020 explosion in Bierut and is dying as a country.
. . . A country that cannot own up to a national failure and suffers that as a mortal blow? Sounds familiar? January 6th anyone?
A last of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy news outlets will close.
. . . In two short years, China has turned what seven and a half million people living a modern life thought of as journalism into punishable dissent. The average thirty-year-old in mainland china has never heard about the protest in Tiananmen Sq. January 6th anyone?
The popularity of avocados now causes water crises and slave labor where they are grown.
. . . Argh, I love avocadoes.
Last story: Richard Leaky died.
. . . Leaky? The paleontologist?
Yes. But I need the obituary to know any more, like how his standing up to corruption in Kenya helped curtail elelphant poaching and that his life of principle cost him his legs in a plane “accident” no less suspicious than what his highnesses “welcomes.”
naturally, I am taking all this in on devices worse for those in the supply chain that delivers them to me than are avocadoes.
So while I’d like to do something, the question is: what?
Lose my legs? When I won’t give up my guac, my phone or be bothered to send money to outfits that protect journailists?
That there is power and money behind the suffering contained in the headlines is no more news than that those behind the suffering get away with it or are totally unable to mitigate the suffering they cause or both.
Nor is it news that since we are connected to every major story in the world it is easy to feel powerless in the face of any of them, let alone in aggregate.
Yet the world needs to get its dishes done.
Thus, what should be news is how we can make it easier--part of the system--for even those of us who leave our dishes overnight to help out.
Iffy ideas on that front forthcoming tomorrow,
or some day like it.
Thanks for this one, Ted. Really looking forward to the follow up.