Tuesday morning, President #47 threatened to wipe out “a whole civilization.” You read that right—he said he was going to genocide the country of Iran if it didn’t open up the Strait of Hormuz. After his post on Truth Social, the whole world seemed to be holding its breath, not sure if the orange lunatic was going to actually start World War III.
If you’ve ever lived through the threat of some kind of apocalyptic weather/environmental event—hurricane, blizzard, tsunami, volcanic eruption—that’s what it felt like. The planet was teetering on the brink of something cataclysmic, and only one person could prevent it. And that one person was/is a mentally unstable Putin wannabe.
Don’t worry. This post isn’t going to be a political rant. Y’all know I stand on the side of compassion, kindness, empathy, and freedom. You know, all that shit you heard in church last Easter Sunday. No, I won’t go all Sam Kinison on you (The man’s a fuckin’ baby with nuclear codes!!!! Ahhhh, ahhhhhh, ahhhhhhhh!!!!!). I’m more interested in that collective held breath—everyone waiting to see what was going to happen. Like Christmas morning, except Santa Claus has missiles packed in his sleigh.
Marie Howe writes about just-before moments . . .
Part of Eve’s Discussion
by: Marie Howe
It was like the moment when a bird decides not to eat from your hand,
and flies, just before it flies, the moment when rivers seem to still
and stop because a storm is coming, but there is no storm, as when
a hundred starlings lift and bank together before they wheel and drop,
very much like the moment, driving on bad ice, when it occurs to you
your car could spin, just before it slowly begins to spin, like
the moment just before you forgot what it was you were about to say,
it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only
all the time.
Howe is talking about an anticipated experience that never materializes—a bird right before eating from your palm, a river right before a squall, a car right before it starts spinning on lake ice. If you’re anything like me, you’ve already imagined the experience in your mind. The bird has already gorged itself on the seed. The storm has already whipped the river into froth. The car has already spun and spun and spun like an amusement park ride.
I think the world has become so focused on speed. We want the fastest cell phones. Fastest cars. Fastest WiFi connections. Call it the Era of Instant Gratification. Anticipation is practically non-existent. Movies don’t even stay in theaters all that long anymore. They’re released, and, four weeks later, they’re streaming on Netflix or HBO Max. You don’t have to wait six months or a year for the DVD or Blu-ray.
President #47 did NOT go through with his threat. Supposedly, there’s a two-week moratorium on bombing between Iran, Israel, and the United States. (Somebody needs to let Netanyahu know about this ceasefire, by the way.) The bird flew off without eating the seed. The storm blew itself out like a birthday candle. And the car’s tires found traction. For two weeks. Then, all bets are off.
As Howe says at the end of her poem, “. . . it was still like that, only / all the time.” It’s exhausting living in a state of constant anticipation. Even if Tuesday’s threat has been postponed, it’s still present. And the people of the United States have been living on this edge like this for close to ten years now. Almost an entire generation of young people only remember #47 and Joe Biden as Presidents of the United States. (You can argue with me if you want, but at least President Biden never brought us to the brink of armageddon, and he isn’t a convicted felon.)
We are a divided country. That’s a fact. Also a fact: the inmates are in charge of the asylum right now. When my kids and grandkids read this post dozens of years from now, I want them to know I stood on the side of love and kindness during this held-breath moment. And I will continue to do so.
I have friends who are incredibly pessimistic about the future. That’s not me. I believe that democracy is still alive in the United States. The fact that Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán lost the election in his country by a landslide today gives me hope. In the end, good people win, and despots end up on the trash heap. We will recover from the past ten years of MAGA-induced insanity, but it will take a while. No instant gratification available. Sorry millennials.
In the meantime, we gather, protest, speak up, speak out, listen to and recite poetry at readings (like I did today), and sing songs.
Here’s a poem Saint Marty wrote last Tuesday . . .
A Whole Civilization
by: Martin Achatz
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
--- Donald Trump
We sit on this side of the world,
complain about egg prices, milk
prices, pill prices. We pump gas
into our SUVs, complain about that, too.
We have to get to Florida for our spring breaks.
Because we’re civilized.
They sit on the other side of the world,
wait for the whistle of missiles,
watch skies on fire, and dig
their daughters’ bodies from school
rubble. They weep, wail, tear their clothes,
wonder how frightened their children
were when heaven collapsed on top of them.
Because they’re civilized.
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