The News
I've done all I can to avoid television news since October 7th 2023. I am made breathless, disempowered and mindful, if I watch, of being helpless to effect a form of change. I see what I hear on the radio; newspapers' front pages, decorating forecourts and piled close by the flower stand in Tesco, roar and shout. Each new day's horrors jostle for the headline slot. Today, though, Israel and Palestine as much as Putin's inhumanity to those in Ukraine defer to headlines and full page coverage of the abject; that which I abhor is now found in one I'd allowed into my living room to mourn the Queen, to witness our new King sworn in. Our own BBC's ghastly fallen angel, Huw Edwards, father of five is uncovered and shamed. How must his children feel?
In other news those our new PM terms 'thugs' form pop up gangs called to rampage, set cars on fire, attack and maim police, with intent. Blindly insensitive in their vitriolic fury, disgusting me, they wear photographs on their fronts of the voiceless girls, the victims of unspeakable horror enacted on them by a 17 year old boy while they would otherwise have been dancing like Taylor Swift in Southport. Travelling from outrage to outrage, unhinged and feverish, acting out divisive ignorance, gangs' torment multiplies trauma, which is also growing virally online.
Someone tells us now that Israel has crossed a line; Lebanon's on fire. At once bereaved and injured, starving and displaced Palestinians suffer the systematic destruction of infrastructure essential to survival and meanwhile Israeli hostages taken by Hamas die; hostages who might otherwise be dancing like the children of Stockport. Neither side recognises the other's right to life as children on all sides, schooled in hatred (if not dead or hanging by a thread) grow to know which side they must believe and which they know they hate. Yet still and long since the Americans evacuated, Isis and the Taliban are at war with the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, cutting, raping, maiming and murdering; just as right now Myanmar's most uncivil civil war perpetuates attacks on schools. Worldwide, children witness their own mothers' gang rape and beheading and then they are taken and trained to kill. America's 'civilised' identify with the terrifying felon Trump, and a feint optimism drives a 'fingers crossed' investment in magical Kamala Harris' power to subvert the disaster inherent in the Republicans' likely alliance with Putin, Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping.
When people show me photographs of their brand new grand-children in brand-new baby-grows in brand-new prams, I hold my breath and wish I hadn't any of my own. What kind of life, spent living on a planet failing now as temperatures rise and every bomb spoils the sky, might the earth bequeath those left this bitter mess? Earth's only hope is love.
You’re well informed for one avoiding the news, Cherry. Hard to avoid! Agree with your conclusion.