My Head Is Exploding

 My head is exploding from trying to understand all that is really going on in our country and in the world today.

I keep trying, but it’s hard to deal with all the waves of hatred and selfishness and glowing optimism and self-assurance that keep crashing together in....oh, say Saudi Arabia or Israel or some ISIS leader’s conference in a cave in Afghanistan or in our own country.

The big problem is how many people don’t see  - pardon the image, but it works in several ways - the elephant in the room. It’s the one big contradiction that our body politic seems to be ignoring.

What? That makes no sense, you might be saying. I would be saying pretty much the same thing. “What do you mean?”

So, I will give myself a few examples. Then you can see why my head is exploding.

Let’s look at Britain, where a majority of the voters thought it would be a good idea to pull out of the European Union, talking about how unfair their businesses were being treated and how illegal subsidies in France and Germany and Spain were hurting their own workers.

Pulling out would be easy, some leaders said. Then we can re-negotiate our own terms. What could go wrong?

Or was that Donald Trump talking about pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. Or Scotland and Wales talking about declaring their independence from Great Britain. What could go wrong, the Brexit backers said. What they all said. My head hurts.

Then our president promised - at a little talk in Davos - that we would never again let terrorists have a safe haven in Afghanistan. Let’s see what that means. 

I think it means that the longest war in our nation’s history (we have had troops there since 2001, when our goal was to dismantle al-Qaeda) will just go on and on. Unless, hey, they could just build a great, beautiful wall all around the country to keep out the terrorists. And deport the home-grown terrorists.  And cut off the money that those terrorists are getting from some people in countries that are our allies like Saudi Arabia. (remember where most of the 9-11 terrorists came from?) My head is exploding.

Or, we could look at the very valuable and still-growing Me Too movement in our country, calling out men who have behaved very badly and deserve to be jailed for life like Larry Nassar, a former doctor for the US  women’s gymnastic team, who was just sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison for molesting seven girls and women.  More than 150 women charged him with molesting them over the years, and all 125 who reported his crimes to the Michigan State Police were allowed to make court statements before his sentencing. He ultimately pled guilty to seven counts of criminal assault, three involving girls under 13 and three more who were13 to 15 years old.

Well, good news. The chief executive of the US Olympics Committee has just announced an  independent investigation to find out how that abuse could have gone on so long - to find out “who knew what and when” when it came to Nassar, who is now safely in jail for the rest of his life. Now he didn’t say who would be doing the investigation or how long it would take, or whether it might be expanded to look into other abuses of our young Olympic athletes. But, he assured us, the results will be made public. My head is exploding.

And while we’re on the Me Too subject, I am having some trouble with a women who attacks a man because he was not able to understand her non-verbal signals, or who takes joy in driving Al Franken out of the Senate because of some piggy things he did in 2006, but sees no reason to keep up an attack on our President for all the piggy things he did and still does.

See why my head is exploding yet?

Well, I have a clue to what’s going on inside my troubled head, and in our troubled world. But, it is a dark and ominous clue. Kinda goes with my old saying  “being smart doesn’t make  you happy.”

I think “the other” is getting closer.

What? 

Well, while we often feel concern and sympathy for disasters far away, we often turn a blind eye to it after a few days. We are finding it harder and harder to care what happens to other people, and we are viewing more victims as “the other.”

Storms and earthquakes outside our country can be written out of our memory as soon as the cellphone videos stop being shown on television. Heck, we have shootings in our nation every day, and we don’t even collect data on gun violence - Congress made it illegal. And, we forget them quickly because they are in other states. We already have had 11 mass shootings in the US this year. Remember where?

Now we do pay attention to natural disasters that impact on thousands of our own citizens, or at least we did it until one hit Puerto Rico. After six months, half the island still doesn’t have electric power. Remember?

Well, that started a slippery slope. We can ignore the problems of forest fires in California and their mudslide aftermath - someday Congress will pass a bill to pay for disaster repair work - but then we remember there is still flood damage to repair in Louisiana and Texas.

Well, the next step on that slope was to ignore the economic impact of tax reform - specifically the impact of not making state and local taxes deductible - on those blue states on the east and west coasts. Heck, if they want to waste money on things we don’t need like bridges or mass transit, then let them pay for it.

Guess where the next national disaster will hit. I’m already starting to forget it, because it wasn’t in my state or my town or on my block, and it hasn’t even happened yet.

Maybe your head should be exploding, too.