Me and Kati (3)

Well, Kati, I told you not to walk on the fresh paint, I even yelled and waved my arms like a crazy man. As usual you paid no attention. Now there are little brown paw prints in places where there are not supposed to be any little brown paw prints. Why can’t President Obama be more like you and just ignore the neocons and hawks urging him to attack Syria? Maybe he will but I think it’s doubtful. Just think of it Kati, we’re probably going to bomb somewhere in Syria, kill a bunch of innocent people, including children, in order to prevent President Assad from killing innocent people. See, Kati, that’s the way humans think (or refuse to think, as the case may be). I know, you’re not interested as you have your own innocent victims in mind. I am not blaming you for the two dead bats on the porch, one of the “boys” must have done it.  You would have almost certainly brought them inside. At least you kill from instinct, a far cry from the absolutely murderous behavior of we creatures who are supposed to know better but just go on killing each other year after year, sometimes for no other reason that to “save face.” Nothing can be gained by bombing Syria, nothing at all.

Our hypocrisy and deceit are so blatant I sometimes wonder why lightning bolts from the Great Mystery don’t just strike us all dead and leave the rest of the animal kingdom in peace. Assad knows we furnished chemical weapons to Iraq and stood by while they used them on the Iranians. And he also knows you, Obama, said previously it was time for him to go. Now, however, if we attack, it is supposedly not for the purpose of removing him. Obviously I don’t know President Assad, but I bet he is not at all stupid.

And Kati, first of all we don’t really know if Assad actually used the chemicals, in spite of our insistence he “must have,” and in spite of our attempts to go ahead with an attack even before we know the facts. At least Obama is smart enough to not get sucked into another Iraq misadventure (utter disaster, that is). We have people in positions of power who seem to constantly lust after blood and insist on going to war immediately no matter what the facts may be (McCain and Graham come easily to mind). “Shoot first and ask questions later,” a philosophy we seem to have inherited from the days of the “wild west,” when “the good guys with guns” always won out over “the bad guys with guns.” There’s nothing like idiocy when it comes to foreign policy, as well as the NRA.  

And so, Kati, that is why I have turned off the news. Everyone is waiting breathlessly for the attack on Syria that is maybe, possibly, sooner or later, certainly, perhaps, perhaps not, inevitably but maybe not, going to happen. Far be it for the media to actually wait for something to happen when they can waste hours in sheer speculation, while enlarging their platform and time for advertising. There’s real money in balderdash.

I have my martini. You, Kati, are sound asleep on my lap, innocent of any wrongdoing. We are listening to the peaceful and soothing sounds of Slack Key guitar, pretending we are elsewhere, a respite from difficult times in an increasingly unpleasant world. I love you Kati, and I have no problem forgiving you for everything you do, after all, you’re “just a cat” and you do what cats do. Why is it not the same for humans? After 80 plus years of experiencing and watching human behavior, most of my adult years actually studying that very subject, observing the unending violence, the wars, the killing, the abuses, the humiliations, tortures, rapes, thefts, hypocrisy, hates and prejudices, lies and distortions, and the same behaviors over and over again, I absolutely cannot bring myself to say simply, “that’s what humans do.”  Yes, there are rare moments of altruism, humanitarianism, kindness, and good will, but they certainly do not define human history, or even the contemporary scene. Not a single Republican attended the 50^th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s marvelous, monumental, and influential speech, Black President be damned.   

“Huamani’s skepticism was substantial. He knew that men are a joke of the gods, sent to mortify the animals.”

Abel Posse, in The Dogs of Paradise