The State of the World

…or at least the distorted view from the USA.

Africa is still the dark continent, i.e., very little light is shed on what is happening there. We hear about wars and massacres and that mining for electric car minerals is brutal, but nobody seems to really care. Everybody wants a 300+ mile range for their EV.

We don’t really hear much about anything south of the equator. Brazil got rid of Bolsonaro, but how are all the other countries doing? Only immigrants from those nations care since many still have families there.

But there is endless rage about all the people who come North to the USA, fleeing violence fueled by USA’s appetite for addictive drugs.

USA is a battleground. It’s a shooting civil war, with extremists killing innocent civilians. I hope we don’t elect a madman for president a second time. But even if we avoid that, the minority who has shoved their heads up their asses to avoid hearing or seeing anything related to slavery, poverty, mass incarceration, or any of the other country’s many sins still wields a disproportionate amount of power. This group wants to erase all civil rights and revert to the TV version of the 1950’s.

Ukraine is a battleground. Russia is controlled by a madman, throwing prisoners unprepared into the meat grinder. No matter how many weapons NATO provides, there are only so many Ukrainians.

Palestine is a battleground. Israel is controlled by madmen. Hamas is composed of madmen. Far too many innocent civilians have died on both sides. We can only hope the scale does not explode to include the entire Middle East.

India is turning into a violent, authoritarian, Hindu fundamentalist nation and is erasing women’s rights.

China is an authoritarian nation with its own separate internet and the power to control it. The power even extends to Chinese living in other countries.

Myanmar is consumed by a civil war.

Armenia and Azerbaijan are fighting over territory. Schools in the USA aren’t even allowed to teach about the Armenian genocide because that would annoy Turkey.

And the planet is basically screwed because there seems to be no hope of curtailing global CO2 emissions rapidly enough to avoid severe global climate change. Glaciers are already melting at an alarming rate.