I haven’t slept. Neither you perhaps. Our danger feels palpable. Words are my only weapon. They gush like blood. I impose on your patience, I apologize. But each, in a crisis, must do as they must.

1.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published“O, it is excellentTo have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannousTo use it like a giant.” – Shakespeare

The stupidity, avidity, duplicity, brutality, recklessness and irresponsibility of the Maduro kidnapping echo and rankle around the globe. One might argue, since this move increases the likelihood of the Nameless One’s erasure, we should be glad: the worse it gets the better it gets, if one’s ambition is regime change. But o, my heart is sick, that America could act so, that I could be so tainted by my nation.

History will disclose the catastrophic consequences of this “capture” soon enough. Except for a few plutocrats’ who benefit from oil money it will not work out for America or the world. Now there is no world order or even hope of one. Now every nation has the right to eat its neighbor, if it has the stomach. Russia can gobble Ukraine and China Taiwan, yum. No nation or citizen is safe from a tyrant whose policy is petulance. Peacemakers are contemptible and warriors heroes in this maniac’s puerile fantasy. We’ll have a better, safer world, obviously, when we’re all armed to the teeth.

More grievous to me than the results of this recklessness is its immorality. Is this who we are? Is this why we’re here on earth, so the strong can oppress and dog eat dog? Aren’t amity and community the only conscionable goals of mankind? Whatever happened to truth, justice, kindness, the Sermon on the Mount and the Golden Rule?

Listening to the Nameless One and his slavering minions gloat about our superior power gave me hives. Of course we’re stronger, better armed than Venezuela: we’re ten times their size and incalculably richer. (Average GDP for an American: $85,000; for a Venezuelan, $5,000.) You bet we can beat them up, show them who’s who, force them to lick our sneakers. But isn’t the purpose of being to graduate from such impulses? Isn’t the tenet of any faith that we should tend the less fortunate and protect the weak? Do we not live to improve the lives of all?

What’s the use of winning if you end up loveless and alone? Have you ever seen a person more friendless than the Nameless One? Flattered by all is he loved by any? And now he’s shaping our nation in his image. Do we have any allies anymore? We’ve insulted and humiliated all freedom-loving states and the totalitarians eagerly await our demise. America’s as loved by the world as the Nameless One by his wife.

I am an idealist. I believe that Love is the only good reason for being: love of spouse, kin, neighbors, fellow creatures, God. Love is hard, its choices often complex. But we must always strive in Love’s direction. Truth, kindness, grace, mercy, humility, community, compassion are among Love’s essential ingredients. No one can be wholly good but we can all be better. Our best is never good enough.

This is too obvious to repeat. But our world is veering from those values. Many of us don’t even want to be good. The Nameless One and his goons mock those who do. I gawk, incredulous. Maybe I’m the fool!

Love is my ideal: it’s also the best idea. The more we love, the gladder we are to live, the likelier to exert ourselves for the common good. Better together! My insistence on love is tiresome, I admit, but if we don’t know this and act on it, what do we know?

2.

This crisis is upon us. We knew it would come and here it is. We couldn’t predict its spark but we knew this day must come. For this crisis isn’t about Venezuela or ICE or betraying Ukraine or illegal tariffs or sex trafficking or bullying our allies while playing footsie with our foes or lying or grabbing pussies or bulldozing the White House or defacing public monuments or plutocrat cronyism or theft of the public treasury or any of the ceaseless assaults on our dignity, security, history and common sense we’ve had to endure during five years of this rapacious regime. It’s about all of these things. For these are all symptoms of our monstrous mistake. “Elect a clown,” one reader wrote, “and expect a circus.” Precisely. Only this clown holds the power to destroy not just those he dislikes, not just America, but the great globe itself.

One of you blames Congress for this crisis; another the Supreme Court; another Biden; another dark money and plutocratic interference; another toxic media; another the stupidity, cupidity and laziness of voters. All are right and all wrong, for, as with the blind men feeling for the elephant, these all arise the same disease. Our subcutaneous sickness is moral rot – ours, we the people – and to rescue our state we must repair our souls.

What is this sickness that has corroded our ideals and curdled the American heart?

That’s a discussion which can never end for, as with the Roman empire, countless mingled mistakes, accidents, and inadvertencies led to the barbarians’ assault. We can, however, agree on the result: we have lost our way. This is not the America we were taught or that our Founders had in mind. This is an ugly brutal destructive ogre bestriding earth and endangering all.

America began with a big idea. We would govern ourselves for the benefit of all, not of one. No king, the people would rule. This was love writ large – belief in and encouragement of mankind not just one anointed head. Over the centuries we enlarged the definition of mankind to include most. Few onlookers predicted our success. We did plenty wrong but no nation in history in such a short span has done so much right.

So much right, we took our success for granted. We got lazy, selfish, captious, stupid. More and more the powerful colluded to confuse with untruths. Gradually, inexorably, our goals slid from love to greed, suppression, dominance, revenge. “Are YOU better off?” became our toxic focus, when the question should have been, “Are WE better off?”

Can we recover our ideals, refix our star in the sky, mend our broken heart? None can predict. But we must try. For the alternative’s intolerable.

And however desperate, we must not despair, for despair paralyzes like a viper’s sting. If nothing can be done, why bother trying? Only “to hell with it” means to hell with us all and neither you nor I will accept deportation to hell without a fight.

What must we do? Everything we can. We must yammer, march, unite, threaten, punish, donate, terrify our adversaries (who are not difficult to identify). Since my bullets are paper, I must keep pinging them, sorry. We must wage this war as if our lives depended on it – because they do. Now is our time. Better together!