Sunrise With Schubert: February 17, 2018

There was a song back when my generation was peaking that began, “Something’s happing here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” It set the tone for an entire period of our country’s history, for better or for worse. One can choose for herself or himself.

I don’t know what song might fit our country right now. I don’t keep up with popular music anymore. Asked to write one, I might start out with, “I ain’t your parents’ president, so never mind that sulfur scent.”

Okay, I jest. I can’t get over, though, what I learned yesterday. It seems that it has finally happened. After my country put 58,318 names on a lonely granite wall in Washington, bombed sleeping families in Baghdad, and set us on the path of a never-to-end war in Afghanistan, always assuring us that it was to prevent foreign enemies from invading our country, it finally happened.

Our country was invaded, that is. What’s worse, a huge number of us don’t seem to care. It got them what they wanted. What if our beloved America, safe for these so many years, was breached in the process? We needed what we got.

Or, maybe we deserved what we got. Decide for yourself.

It wasn’t a new enemy that invaded us. It was one of the oldest in the modern age. It is the same enemy that forced our country to teach my generation to seek safety in a nuclear attack by ducking under a school desk and covering our faces.

It is the same enemy that duped us into the war that put those names on the aforementioned wall.

It is the enemy that murdered, by some estimates, 25 Million of its own people under the leadership of a man who talked tough, took care of things his way, and didn’t care what others thought.

It is the same enemy that provided us the very definition of “evil” for so many years.

Yes, yesterday we learned for certain that Russia invaded us. There should be no surprise here.

Of course, we have to redefine the word “invasion,” as we have had to redefined evil. For years, experts told us that invasion required ground troops entering another country. No more. Now we can do it with air strikes. Soon we’ll only use drones and robots. In the interim, we’ll use the internet, specifically what we call “social-media.” After all, that is the sole source of news for so many of us, especially those who are too busy even to be misinformed by malicious cable channels posing as news sources and quite willing to spread gossip and innuendo.

As for me, I should have expected it. After all, Arkansans sat and watched a decent, capable, socially conscious, and dedicated woman besmirched and defiled day after day and we did nothing. Oh, I asked many friends to be specific about what lies she told, who she had murdered, and the source of news about her child-pornography dens in the basement of pizza shops.

They couldn’t cite specifics. Everyone “just knew,” they said. She was just “crooked,” and they all knew it.

Now we know how they knew.