A call for sanity and an end to the savagery

By Breda Nathan

Oh the guilt… It’s so difficult to even try to explain it.

Looking at the news reports coming all day from Gaza and the children lying on the ground starving is impossible.

You turn over to the sporting channels to get away from it, but the visions are still there.

The football and rugby is escapism and helps for a while.

Then the guilty feelings ruin your concentration and you are back checking your phone notifications and the match is spoiled.

As someone who followed news and politics every day, it’s hard.

You are still thinking of the outrageous world leaders who are holding meetings and attending dinners in fancy places.

Giving speeches with smirking self righteous complaints about absolute rubbish.

You know they are enjoying this power, making these outrageous decisions and causing more havoc.

The meetings are not held in trenches or underground flooded areas, oh no, only the best for themselves. I heard one journalist saying after a meeting:

“One of them should be in jail and the other in a mental asylum.”

So true. Still nothing is being done.

You feel you have to do something and go to UNICEF to donate as much as you can and feel relief for an hour.

Then almost immediately you hear reports that the food trucks are blocked and the food is rotting or bombed.

In Ukraine the people are being bombarded and hungry too. What is wrong with these so called leaders.

Surely there are people on the ground in these troubled places, speaking out, walking in the streets or trying to bring sanity to the savage treatment of their neighbours and friends.

As someone who loved and lived world politics and travel when I was young, things are so different now. I switch off the news again and turn to sports channels. Rugby, soccer, golf anything to take those awful pictures away.

Then I feel neglectful and know it is selfish. On the verge of brainstorm I try making dinner, but it’s hard to enjoy your food after a look at the newspaper pictures and read about another nighttime attack on ordinary housing, hospitals, schools and shops.

There is enough natural disasters in the world, like earthquakes, monsoons and tsunamis, to keep us busy and where we can step in and help in some ways.

There is also plenty of room for all of us. Plenty of food to feed us where we could live comfortably and peacefully.

Why are these lunatic people allowed the power to cause these outrageous crimes against humanity.

No food in the shops now, no schools for the children. Young people being called up to join the troubles, even if they don’t want to. Being threatened if they refuse.

America too is gone for those of us who thought a trip to New York was sheer joy in the old days, we would not put a foot in it now.

All our young people who have lost interest in the J1s and few if any are excited by thought of USA trips.

While our own country suffered famine and fear at times in the old days, something we all learned about either from our parents or school history, and indeed there are still small groups of trouble makers, thankfully outnumbered by the good hard workers.

Thankfully too, the people we elected even if we moan and complain about them sometimes, are sane and sensible.

Long may they continue to respect each other and those they represent.