I’m sitting on the back porch of my cabin in the woods listening to a symphony of crickets and cicadas. I have a little friend. It’s a toad that is no more than two and half inches long from front to back. By this time next year he’ll be the size of a softball.
There is nothing insane about my surroundings. Since I was a boy, I’ve spent considerable time in the country, or backpacking in the wilderness. My only connection with the insanity going on in this country is through my internet connection. Without access to the Internet, I would have no reason to believe there was anything fundamentally out of whack with my country or the world.
But I do have Internet access, and what I’m learning makes little sense. Even though I know I am living in one of the most advanced civilizations in the history of man, I am reading about a level of stupidity in my fellow citizens that simply defies imagination.
Nothing in the rhythm of the cricket and cicada chants would have tipped me off to this state of affairs. My little toad is behaving exactly as I would expect a little toad to behave. Everything appears normal. But there is nothing normal about the state of our national discourse.
If there were a real Utopia, my peace of mind would not be disturbed by any idiot wind. I’m not disturbing anyone, and our government is in the hand of competent officials. Things should resolve themselves in a satisfactory manner.
And, yet, all I see and read is confounding. My country is still in the grasp of fools.
I wish this were a mere haiku.
