Jeremiad

Jer•e•mi•ad [jer-uh-mahy-uhd, -ad] noun: a prolonged lamentation or mournful complaint (Dictionary.com).

Storms and tornadoes raged across the American Midwest and South this spring, devastating several towns, taking hundreds of lives and causing billions of dollars worth of damage. Much of the northern Midwest experienced record flooding, while the lower Midwest and Southwest parts of the country are now in the midst of a drought and heat wave that is breaking all standing records. An earthquake and tsunami in Japan took thousands of lives and sparked one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. A drought in Kenya and Somalia may take thousands of lives in those two countries. In the US, three teenage siblings were arrested in Colorado today after having robbed a bank in Florida, fired at police officers and led authorities on an interstate manhunt. Meanwhile, a teenager in South Carolina was sentenced to six years in prison for planning a Columbine-style attack on his high school. I've lost track of the number of spree killings we've had this year, but they seem to come about once a week now. There was another one over the weekend in Ohio. Seven people shot dead. The streets of London, and several other British cities, saw unprecedented rioting over the last five nights that has resulted in millions of pounds worth of damage. Wars and revolutions are currently raging all across Africa and the Middle East, costing tens of thousands of lives every year, and North Korea is rattling its tin sabre once again. Mexico is embroiled in a bloody drug war fueled largely by money and guns smuggled in from the United States. Both the US and Europe are in the depths of a prolonged economic crisis, with unemployment high and stock markets tumbling, and none of the governments on either side of the ocean seems to have a clue as to how to fix the problem. And the people who were responsible for the 2008 housing collapse and recession walked away from the problem with their pockets full of cash. Government corruption and abuse seem to have become the rule rather than the exception. People don't even flinch when it comes to light anymore. My mom used to say that the world was going to hell in a hand basket. Looks like she was right.

In "The Second Coming," the poet William Butler Yeats wrote:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

What better description is there of the world today? The world seems to be descending into anarchy. The US is currently involved in at least three foreign wars that I know of, with no sure end in sight for any of them. In the London riots, people were described as running wild, as out of control, as animals. In areas of Africa, militias rampage through villages, raping women with impunity, stealing food and valuables, kidnapping children to use as soldiers. In many parts of the world, human trafficking is rampant, with children being kidnapped and sold in to prostitution. The United Nations declared that Sudan was guilty of genocide, when mercenaries of the Islamic majority slaughtered whole villages of the non-Islamic minority, but the developed world did nothing to help. People of good conscience - people who could find solutions to the problems that face us today - sit back wringing their hands, while fanatics take over governments either through demagoguery or by force. Stephen Vincent Benét once wrote:

We thought we were done with these things but we were wrong.
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
We thought the long train would run to the end of Time.
We thought the light would increase.
Now the long train stands derailed and the bandits loot it.
Now the boar and the asp have power in our time.
Now the night rolls back on the West and the night is solid.
Our fathers and ourselves sowed dragon’s teeth.
Our children know and suffer the armed men.

People say to me, "But what can you do? We live in a different world today. This is just the way things are now." But I say no to that rationalization. This is not just the way the world is. This is just the way we have made the world. We - all of us - made the wars, made the poverty, made the famines, made the economic collapse. We made it all. And what has been made can be unmade. Or remade on new lines. Or simply made anew. "But that will take too long and cost too much," I'm told. Yes, it will, but what was torn down over decades cannot be rebuilt in days. Of course, it would take political willpower - the ability to press for the common good without regard to the next election cycle or special interest groups. And that ain't likely to happen. No one in politics today has the cajones to fight for something like that, not even the much ballyhooed Tea Party.

So the world slides toward economic collapse and political and social anarchy. I know, you're thinking I'm just another of those gloom and doom prophets. But open your eyes. Look around yourself. Follow the news, not just the headlines but the stories behind the stories, and you'll see it. Don't have time for that you say? I say you don't have time not to. Forewarned is forearmed, after all.