Blog entries should, I suppose, have a beginning, middle and end.  A topic, a theme, a story to tell, at least.   Despite the afterglow of just having been snowed in for two blissful weeks with my new wife, complete with yule logs in the fireplace and not a single cross word between us, and a New Year's celebration full of hope, I find myself becoming depressed.  

I blame myself.  I blame my unreasonable expectation that by the year 2009, mankind might have evolved to the extent that greed, corruption, and war might become extinct despite all the evidence that greed, corruption and war will cause mankind to become extinct instead.  I admit it.  I am selfishly disappointed that the rest of the world is refusing to share in my happiness, my desire for goodwill toward men.

News footage of tanks, unmanned drones dropping 2000 pound bombs, graphic photos of helpless toddlers, faces scarred beyond recognition, being cradled by weeping mothers.  Really, it's almost too much for even hope to bear.  Will mankind ever give up sibling rivalry, groups trying to prove that God loves them best and wants them to have the biggest piece of the pie by virtue of granting them access to the deadliest weapons, the biggest appetites?  The belief that one group is superior to another by virtue of its ability to enslave another group, morally justified merely by the absence of divine intervention?  

"Dad, he's hitting me! "

No response.

"See?  Dad thinks you deserve it".  

Maybe Dad is the one to blame, and we need to recognize abuse and neglect when we see it, grow up and leave home, get some therapy and take responsibility for ourselves.  Learn to define and execute fairness and justice for ourselves.  

Instead, billions of investor's dollars are being stolen--and the perpetrator's (Madoff) punishment?  Being confined to his penthouse and forced to purchase extra security to prevent being assassinated.  

"Dad, he stole my allowance.  Now I can't buy what I was saving for".

No response

"See?  Dad doesn't care about you?  I can do whatever I want to you."

Happy New Year. Same as the old year.  

A friend of mine is excited to have the opportunity to attend President Obama's inauguration.  I'm hoping that she'll soak up some hope while she's there, and come back and infuse me with some of it.  Evolution is such a slow process.  Sure, it's progress that we finally have a mixed-race president in a formerly openly racist country, trying to justify its past history of slavery. That's something worth celebrating.  We just have so much further to go.  I wonder if we'll have the opportunity to evolve further before the sibling rivals with the nuclear weapons blow all of us up with them in the process of trying to prove their prophecies right to justify their theft and murder and inability to learn to share.  

I weep for us, that's all.