…and the compassion vacuum.
The current rotten crop of world movers and shakers show
that they fall not just short of the task in hand but short of basic humanity.
We’d be better off if we were elephants…
If you haven’t heard of them, The 3 Million is a group
trying to ensure that EU citizens, settled in the UK prior to the madness of
Brexit, are treated as – well – human beings. Is that too much to ask? In the
present environment, it seems so.
From those who were abused after the referendum result in
June (and I was one caught up in the post-referendum xenophobic shit despite
being born in the UK) to EU citizens with British children whose status is
uncertain, there is deep unease. Stress and unnecessary worry is being caused
by the ongoing nonsense of the vacuous position Brexit means Brexit (see blog. 207).
Theresa May has been scurrying round to pet
companies assuring them they will get everything post-Brexit that they got
before June 23rd. The Prime minister ought, by now, to have given
similar reassurance to UK based European citizens.
The current expensive supreme court appeal by the government is a side show. The whinging of a Labour Party that did so
little to make the case for EU membership prior to June, is irrelevant. Nothing
more than pathetic babbling; posturing about the paint work and when the wreck
will be towed away, after a nasty car crash.
I was wondering why videos on you tube of, for example, a
mother elephant spending 11 hours rescuing a baby elephant or a whole herd
risking their safety to pull a calf out of a bog, get so many views. Then I
realised. It is a craving for what we thought of as humanity. It’s got to the point where we look to the animal kingdom
for evidence of compassionate behaviour (see blog. 209 - Put the Monkeys in Charge).
Have we forgotten what happens when compassion dies and
fear-fuelled bigotry becomes a driving force? Elephants supposedly never forget
but it seems humans do.
At the extreme end of the compassion wasteland is Aleppo.
It is not the only humanitarian disaster right now but it is certainly
contending for 2016 title of Hell on Earth.
While I am not equating the slaughter in Aleppo with the
way Britain has sunk into the stinking quagmire of spite, bigotry and short-sightedness (which signals the end of a positive status in the world) I state
without hesitation that one is the thin end of the same wedge.
SO – yes – when we humans, desperate to find some good on
the planet surf you tube – we end up watching wild animals.
We glance at Aleppo side on. We cannot look at it directly,
it is too grim. To see human beings behaving like this in the 21st
century fries the minds of decent people. But the way EU citizens, resident in
Britain, are being left in limbo is just a lesser level of lack of compassion.
It smacks of an us-and-them world none of us should be proud of.
But, I suppose, while humans are demeaning and slaughtering
each other they’ve done a pretty good job of wiping out elephants too.
*
Residents of Syria's Aleppo are at risk of
extermination and the clock is ticking on the besieged city as winter sets in, a top
UN envoy told the Security Council last week.
Aleppo
What shall we have for tea
While another child
Is blown apart
In Aleppo
What shall we watch on TV
Baking
Gardening
Celebrity freak shows
While homes are pulverised
Mothers clutch children who hold
Their breath
Western clocks tick slowly
Alleviate boredom
With online gambling
Parade of women
In ‘fantasy lingerie’
Would you like
A three-million-dollar bra?
In Aleppo a deafening clock ticks
fast
And sometimes
Suddenly
Stops
*
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