The Year Past, and the Year Coming.

I like to write a year end post, or a coming year post. Something to mark the passage of time, celebrate the journey. This was a year I will always find a little shameful. The world has managed to crawl back to the dark ages of nationalistic isolation and xenophobic pride in an age where the whole world is only a day away. In a time where communication is as easy as a voice activated electronic assistant, “hey, Siri, call the Kremlin.” 

We have somehow been able to peel away all the progress and find the greed, or paranoia, or prejudice that gave us such memorable moments as the Hundred Year War, the Battle of the Somme, the Third Reich, the list has no end, and the beginning is lost on an ancient scroll or bas-relief depiction of heads on a pike, or prisoners marched into slavery. We should have seen this coming.

We can’t help ourselves. We need to have an enemy, friends just aren’t enough. While we were on a brief respite from life in a state park just north of Zanesville, an episode of Star Trek, the original series aired on a local network. It struck me, all that progress, the entire world united, computers we could talk to, warp drive, and we still had to fly across the universe and find an enemy, or two. We could take ourselves down to molecular dust, beam ourselves on a wave of energy to the surface of distant planet and we couldn’t find common ground with the Klingons. Klingons are warlike, aggressive, hostile and not to be trusted. Not like us. Wait...

Look around the world today and what do you see? Hundreds of armed camps, fires burning, anger, resentment, borders, divisions. From the smallest African nation struggling under the weight of repeated coup and military rule to the capitols of the capitalist democracies. Everyone, almost everywhere is convinced everyone else is after their stuff. Or at least making a lot of noise in an effort to marshal support and disgrace opponents. How long does it take for the illusion to become the perception of reality? And from there how far do you have to travel to preemptive attack? Not far enough I am afraid.

Of course, once it starts, it doesn’t end, not until it is too late. It has always been that way. It is hard to look back and find a war, any war that was worth the money, the lives, the pain and suffering it consumed. There is no wisdom today great enough to change that thinking, there never has been. But, there is enough weaponry, enough stored destruction to make the next war the last war, the last anything. 

So, 2018 was kind of a bust. We moved backward, back toward a place we left a long time ago. A place where we had no allies, only enemies of various degree. 2018 was a year we could have lived without. 2019 is still to be decided, there is still time to turn around, make some progress. The world is too small and the risks are too great. If we don’t 2020 might not show up at all, at least not for us. I hope I am here to apologize for my error in this post next year, and I hope you are here to accept the apology.