Lughnasa\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Honey Extraction Moon<\/p>\n
“This has been a devastating year,” National Weather Service director Jack Hayes said. “Natural disasters are on the rise in the United States,” he noted, including records for heat, tornadoes, floods and fires, and with the bulk of hurricane season still remaining.<\/p>\n
So.\u00a0 The economy has tanked.\u00a0 The climate has raised hell, at least that’s one explanation that the right wing might find congenial.\u00a0 Much warmer in that theological realm.\u00a0 And, it might well have come up first through Texas and Oklahoma, seems possible to me.<\/p>\n
Then.\u00a0 Our political parties stumble over themselves in making ridiculous policy, then bending the knee to the most extreme right wing and\u00a0 apologizing for not having made worse policy.<\/p>\n
If these are the end times, it will be because the Great Spirit got so distracted from laughing at our self-defeating ways that She forgot to run the universe.<\/p>\n
Consider that the natural disasters Jack Hayes refers to are probably caused or at least dramatically reinforced by human action.\u00a0 Then, consider the all to0 human disasters in Washington, Rome and Athens.<\/p>\n
If shooting ourselves in our collective feet were an Olympic sport, we’d all be medal winners and hearing our national anthems over and over again.<\/p>\n
It is also human that our Asian brothers and sisters, especially the Chinese, see all this as evidence of the inevitability of their rise.\u00a0 Well.\u00a0 Probably not.\u00a0 World history shows the rise and fall of great powers to be a rule, played out over and over again on continent after continent in era after era.\u00a0 The Qin Dynasty.\u00a0 Rome.\u00a0 The Khmer.\u00a0 The Mughals.\u00a0 The Macedonians.\u00a0 The Persians.\u00a0 The Greeks.\u00a0 The Maya.\u00a0 The Aztecs.\u00a0 At some point in world history others will add, the United States of America, Europe and, yes, even China and Japan and India.<\/p>\n
We need to step back, take a look from the long view.\u00a0 These are neither the worst of times, look at the fate of Carthage, for example, nor are these the best of times, see the Song Dynasty or the Classical Mayan period or Persian culture.<\/p>\n
Yes, I find the politics of our time, of this millennium, disheartening in their mean-spiritedness, their lack of charity and compassion, their polarization, but, as Cicero said, “No reign lasts forever.”\u00a0 It could be that our knuckle-headed policy directions will put paid to the human race, it’s possible, for sure, but history tells me that we’ll muddle through somehow, in spite of ourselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lughnasa\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Honey Extraction Moon “This has been a devastating year,” National Weather Service director Jack Hayes said. “Natural disasters are on the rise in the United States,” he noted, including records for heat, tornadoes, floods and fires, and with the bulk of hurricane season still remaining. So.\u00a0 The economy has tanked.\u00a0 The climate has … Continue reading Natural Disasters on the rise in the United States<\/span>