The January 6th hearing is on TV. Probably baseball playoff games will be on, later. Pro basketball is about to begin, and there’s hockey. And cyclonic weather could be bearing down on the East Coast.
It’s all so much!
And through all the tumult, something a former Marine reconnaissance soldier said, in a New York Times story, keeps sticking in my mind. He’s been helping folks in Ukraine, because, as he explained in the story, he does not like oppression.
Spot on! And oorah! The Marine nailed it!
‘Oppression’ may be in the eye of beholders, choosing to interpret the word as they may choose to do.
But when you see people buried in the rubble of their homes or apartments, when artillery shells or rockets exploded late at night, when many folks were asleep, and you see craters where shells and rockets from Russia have hit, just a few feet from teeter totters and swing sets in a public park, that gets you thinking about what’s bugging the former Marine.
All because someone in power decides to wage war.
There are always autocrats. Think Hitler, to name one of several I recall hearing about, from the time I was a kid.
Someone’s always out to wreck things for others… to wreck cities, villages, nations and civilizations. Instead of simply minding their own beeswax, as we used to say, when I was growing up, in the Midwest.
Autocrats tend to creep in and creep up.
So, with all these things going on, swirling all around… with such tumult, I keep thinking autocrats must have the lousiest image, of all. But, for some reason, they seem to be sailing along.
They try a few tricks, sometimes, like when Russia’s President Putin, was showing up at Olympic Games, and he was playing around at hockey, trying to show he could be a regular guy, even though he wasn’t chugging a brewski.
Can you picture that? Putin flicking the tab off a beer can? And then crushing the can, like he seems to relish crushing other things?
‘What a guy!’ He’d like folks to be thinking. Just like some of our own folks, around here, around us, right here in America?
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.