Denali: a quick review

The "big scandal" last week was the renaming of an Alaskan mountain to its original name, which, the Right claimed, was an obvious overreach of presidential power and a blatant example of the tyrannical Obama administration desecrating American history!

The rest of the country yawned. Except in Alaska, where they poured another drink and said "About damned time."

The outrage pretty much played itself out almost as quickly as it began, but let's take a quick run-through of the actual facts of the situation.

On Friday, August 28, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell issued the order changing the name to Denali.

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) expressed his deep disappointment on Sunday night about the decision. Of course, since he spends every day looking for new things to complain about regarding Obama, nobody really cared.

Another Ohio congresscritter, Rob Portman, whined on Facebook that "This decision by the Administration is yet another example of the President going around Congress." Which is technically correct - it's a job that Congress didn't need to be involved in. The Secretary of the Interior was just making an administrative correction to the record, changing the mountain to the name preferred by the people of that state.

But perhaps you should hear the whole story.

See, the Athabaskan natives who inhabited the area called it Denali, which, loosely translated, meant "that big fucking hill over there." (OK, admittedly a very loose translation.) The Russians, when they owned the area from around the mid 1700s until 1867, called it Большая Гора (Bolshaya Gora) or "Big Mountain" basically the Russian translation of Denali. The Russians left, and it was Denali again (with a brief period as Densmore's Mountain in the late 1880s and early 1890s, after the first English-speaking white man to reach the base of the mountain).

In 1896, a gold prospector named named William Dickey wrote an account in the New York Sun about his travels through Alaska, and took it upon himself to name it "after William McKinley of Ohio, who had been nominated for the presidency, and that fact was the first news we received on our way out of the wonderful wilderness."

(Side note: McKinley was a strong proponent of the gold standard, so it follows that a gold miner would be a big fan.)

William McKinley was elected president the following year. The United States formally recognized the name Mount McKinley after President Wilson signed the Mount McKinley National Park Act of February 26, 1917. Which confused the Alaskans, most of whom had been calling it "Denali" all this time.

In his entire life, McKinley never visited Alaska, and in fact, he'd been dead for almost 60 years before it became a state.

In 1975, the Alaskan legislature backed a proposal to switch the name back to Denali. But when the Board on Geographic Names requested public comment on the matter, Ohio Rep. Ralph Regula, who represents the district where McKinley grew up, swiftly came to Mount McKinley’s defense. He convinced the entire Ohio congressional delegation to oppose the recommendation, and the names committee put off the matter. He also added an amendment to the 1980 legislation expanding the national park around the mountain that would rename the park “Denali,” but keep "McKinley" for the peak, in hopes that a compromise would settle the debate.

So basically, it's just Republicans and people from Ohio whining about it. Because apparently, "state's rights" doesn't mean as much in the GOP as it once did.

Bristol Palin, taking a break while waiting to whelp yet another out-of-wedlock child, weighed in to complain "By the way, no one is buying the 'Denali is what the Alaskans have called it for years' line. I’ve never called the mountain Denali... and neither does anyone I know..."

Bristol, permit me to introduce you to someone you might be interested in. Her name is Sarah.

Right about a minute and a half in, Sarah says "Denali, The Great One, soaring under the midnight sun." It's subtle. You might have missed it, particularly if you nodded off like most of us do when your mom starts talking.

Rob Portman (R-OH) took to Facebook to whine "I now urge the Administration to work with me to find alternative ways to preserve McKinley's legacy somewhere else in the national park that once bore his name."

Well, I'm sure there's an outhouse up there somewhere that could use a name plaque. Because seriously, what the hell business is it of the people of Ohio to try and interfere with a matter internal to Alaska? Send them a statue - I'm sure they'll be happy to mount it in front of the Visitor's Center. Or name something in your own godforsaken state after him.

Once again, our friends in the GOP just started whining as soon as they saw Obama's name. This one fell apart on them pretty quickly, but I'm sure they'll be on to something new soon enough.

Maybe they can complain about the color of Obama's suit again. That one was pretty funny.

Two quick points

Fear Fear Everywhere and Never a Stop to Think

Waiting my turn at the barber shop, looking at the magazines: Field and Stream, Coastal Angler and things like that. Hot Rod, American Iron: all manly things that live in barber shops.   Like half the customers, I'm wearing shorts and a fishing shirt with my boat's name on it -- Sperry Topsiders that have been around the deck a few times.  It's that sort of a town, a small town very close to rural Florida which here is more cattle than citrus -- and fish, of course, whether it's west in Lake Okeechobee, in the middle in the St. Lucie River  or East in the Atlantic and the Intra-coastal waterway -- whether it's off the many bridges or from a boat, people fish and people hunt. People gig frogs in the wetlands.  Wild hog, it's what's for dinner.

Bob's Barber Shop is festooned with Western memorabilia and some very old guns.  You don't see Bob much any more.,  Like me he's mostly retired and I don't see the signs for his homemade Venison jerky on the wall, but time seems to move slowly at Bob's and I like it that way.  It's a country for old men.

I have a wait and so I pick up a copy of American Rifleman  with it's mailing cover still on it, proclaiming the dire need for the reader to buy an NRA raffle ticket to win a variety of guns and so to "protect our freedom in Obama's last desperate years."

Obama and his "rogue agenda to destroy our unique American freedoms."  It may be evocative of old times, but it's not. Those faces, those people I used to think I got along with so well in my love of the outdoors, the land and waters, fields and streams: there's something behind the mask that feels like a door I shouldn't open. Something new in degree if not in content.  " And that Hillary!" I read in another article.  Indeed it is.

Should I be grateful to be informed of this mad desperation, this frenzied and howling  lust to "take our ammo" Hillary represents?  Strange that I never noticed it because ammo is available everywhere, including WalMart and the gun store just across the street from Bob's. Have I been kept in the dark?
"Buy all you can, bury it in the back yard -- the Obamocalypse is upon us and if it's not, there's the Hillary Horror and blood in the streets."

Everyone who reads the NRA publications: American Rifleman, American Hunter, Amrica's First Freedom, Shooting Illustrated, Shooting Sports USA, American Family Insights, Armed Citizen, Standing Guard and others knows it's a desperate struggle, a fight every day to keep the government away from our freedom and yes, freedom means guns. Yes these are Obama's last desperate days and yes that sounds rather ominous, rather threatening coming from people who are promoting imminent and necessary rebellion. There is desperation of course and it's at the NRA and they do a stupendous job of promoting that fear of losing our Freedom (guns) even when there seems to be little, if any motivation on the part of  the Executive branch.  Mass confiscation, like the Second Coming is always imminent and contributions to the NRA always necessary and it sells well to the "south will rise again" crowd and the closet anarchists and paranoids and revolutionaries.  Obama,s gonna lock you up, he's gonna take your guns just like Clinton did and ohmagawd, here comes another Clinton!

Of course it's not just Bobs or at the fish camp bar out on the lake I'm fond of.  It's not just at those parties at the Harley dealer or the biker bars.  You hear it at the Yacht Club. You hear how "Obama has been just a disaster" from people who still have those "2012, the end of an error" stickers on their Bentlys.  If I dare to break the club rules and ask why that is, the answer is always a shrug or something that isn't true.

But things are changing rather quickly today, what with changing demographics and age and the spread of civil rights,  although one side will tell you it's too much and the other denies any change but for the worse.  Maybe we're in may respects at another George Wallace turning point.  No matter how firm he acted, no matter how much rabid support, Segregation was over.  The old ways are on the defensive.

"There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’

It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls

For the times they are a-changin’"

Let's hope.

But will it be for the better?  Will we have to fight the civil war all over again?  I'm seeing Confederate flags everywhere now and people are taking idiotic pride in pretending to be rebels, renegades and sovereign citizens and their symbol is a rifle.  Nothing matters in the new Utopia  as much or more than guns, more guns, unlimited guns so we'll never have to worry about being rounded up by 'librals' and sold as slaves and the South shall rise again. So says Fox, so say the NRA.

Are the many people outside the paranoid, conspiracy theorist, anarchist, White Christian Nation circle helping it die?  Hell no, of course the anti-NRA fear-of-guns crowd doesn't help spread truth and objectivity by all the ill-informed and equally obsessive hyperbole.  Nobody seems to speak for the middle, for the people who are not afraid of Swiss Army knives and Gluten, Cell Phones and mysterious toxins and can't understand why a Montana rancher or resident of Alakanuk, Alaska needs guns.  If this is to be a turning point rather than a breaking point we're going to have to hear from and to listen to these people, normal people, rational and informed people.  They are out there aren't they?

 

Julian Bond (January 14, 1940 – August 15, 2015)

I've been a fan of Julian Bond for a great many years. I remember applauding when it was suggested at the 1968 Democratic Convention he run for President.  Neither of us was old enough.

There are and have been many practitioners of Civil Rights leadership but he was different in so many ways from the rest. I admired his unassailable dignity, his rhetorical ability and it never hurt that he could have been the twin brother of  my best friend.

I joined and started contributing to the NAACP when George W. went to war with him even though I have no African heritage other than what comes through American culture to all of us in music, art, letters and popular culture.

I will miss him and that leadership has passed to many lesser men is doubly sad.  Listening to what passes for moral direction these days: hearing that my life doesn't matter, the equal justice for all isn't the goal, that justice comes from the mob and evidence doesn't count -- that no one can be trusted as an ally, and worst of all that nothing has been accomplished and everyone is a racist at heart, I despair.

Julian Bond and I are of an age, of a generation that is passing, our advice ignored or ridiculed or even called ugly names.  I fear it's giving way to a generation of jihadists, opportunists and professional zealots and as it is with so many such, it's all about power. the dream we shared is gone.

This Is the Best News Heard Today!...

Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth

HOT DAMN!

Mr. Bluster, aka The Donald has slipped from  27% support among likely GOP primary voters in late July to 17% support at present according to the most recent Rasmussen poll of likely republican voters.

While still leading, trump's lead is being threatened by Carly Fiorina who performed well during last Thursday second tier republican debate. Her post debate appearances and comments have been viewed very positively as well and have her at  9% support tied with Governor Walker. Senator Rubio and Governor Bush are tied in second place at 10% support.

Donald Trump remains the leader in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, but his support has fallen by a third over the past week-and-a-half. Carly Fiorina is now near the front of the pack.  

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Trump with 17% support among Likely Republican Primary Voters, down from 26% in late July before the first GOP debate.  Senator Marco Rubio and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush are in second place with 10% support each, in a near tie with Fiorina and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker who both earn nine percent (9%) of the likely primary vote. 

Next with eight percent (8%) come retired neurologist Dr. Ben Carson and Senator Ted Cruz at seven percent (7%). (To see survey question wording, click here.)

 Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and the candidate generally viewed as the winner of the B-level debate last Thursday evening, has jumped eight points from one percent (1%) support in the previous survey. [Because there are 17 candidates in the Republican contest, Fox News broke them in to two groups: the top 10 pollwise who appeared in a 9 p.m. Eastern debate and the remaining seven who debated earlier that evening.]  

Rubio has doubled his level of support from five percent (5%) in late July. Carson has gained slightly. Walker has fallen back five points, while support for Bush and Cruz has held steady.  

The national telephone survey of 651 Likely Republican Primary Voters was conducted by Rasmussen Reports on August 9-10, 2015. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Fieldwork for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.  

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who ran for the GOP nomination unsuccessfully in 2012, also lost ground among likely primary voters, falling from seven percent (7%) support to three percent (3%) now.  

Interestingly, slightly more voters are now unsure about their vote. Seven percent (7%) were undecided a week-and-a-half ago. Now after the debates and the resulting news coverage, 11% feel that way.

While holding out hope the GOP returns to a reasonable level of sanity, and offers a rational alternative coming out of their convention to counter the likelihood  of an HRC candidacy in the general it is still too early to predict.

Full Rasmussen poll BELOW THE FOLD.

Thoughts On Abortion, Planned Parenthood, Harvesting of Fetal Organs, and the Political Linkage...

Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth

Why liberals make the case abortion is a healthcare issue for women is something that for many years has alluded me. While women certainly should have control over their own bodies and their reproductive capacity abortion is only a healthcare issue when a partial or full term pregnancy threatens the continued life of the mother. Therefore abortion should not be considered generally as a heath care issue. Only when the life of the women is endangered by pregnancy does it become a true healthcare issue.

Abortion up to the time of fetus viability should remain an option for all women. However, once a fetus is viable (able to survive outside the womb with life support) the same rules with respect to the right to life should apply exactly as it does to post birth humanoids. To not recognize and acknowledge that abortion is a life ending procedure is to be callous while denying reality in the same breath. There should be limitations on when abortions can be performed when the life of the women is not threatened.

Roe-v-Wade was a landmark decision that recognized a women's right to control her body and her reproductive rights; and, it was a right and justified decision. When an unwanted pregnancy happens, either because of failure of the chosen birth control method, the failure to use any birth control method, or rape, ending the pregnancy as soon as possible is both reasonable and rational.

If you're wondering why this topic was chosen for a post topic it's certainly understandable; especially as this writer is not a traveler in the liberal/progressive sphere and is, if you will, generally more conservative or traditional. With Planned Parenthood under attack by religious conservatives and many republicans, with the goal of defunding the organization, this topic just seemed a natural one at this time.

Planned Parenthood has served a useful purpose for nearly 100 years. For the federal government to consider defunding the organization and very likely ending the service and  good it has performed for almost a century is insanity at it's worst. Driven by blind religious conviction, political considerations, and the lust for power,  those advocating for defunding of Planed Parenthood because of recent concerns over harvesting fetal organs are, quite possibly using this issue to also make another run at overturning Roe-v-Wade.

Considering that human life has value (as well as rights), and, considering that a women's reproductive rights are also important, does it not make sense that intelligent and rationally thinking folks of all views on this issue set in place policy and law that best accomplishes the primary and major concerns of all parties? Those who are either unwilling of unable to compromise are the ones who have no place at the table as they are the ones with the inability to see life or considerations beyond their own narrow sphere of knowledge or understanding.

If the purpose of harvesting the organs of aborted fetuses is to further scientific medical knowledge it is, in this writers humble opinion, a good thing. If the harvested organs directly or indirectly results in saving a life, improving the quality of life, or prolonging the life of another then what may I ask is the problem? Having asked the question here then is the answer. When such harvesting of fetal organs becomes a pathway to financially enriching the lives of research scientists, medical doctors, or organizations that are funded by the publics money it is unethical and wrong.

As of yet there has been no convincing evidence to substantiate the defunding of Planed Parenthood based on the recent furor grip the right.

Via: Memeorandum

No Lion is an Island

Who knows how long the public's attention and always ephemeral anger will remain on Doctor Palmer, the bow hunter of infamy, or what will happen to him if and when he re-emerges.  The two accomplices who helped him lure the lion out of a protected park and who accepted money for a bogus "permit"  will certainly face punishment in Zimbabwe, ( not a pretty thing, I'm sure) but of course the lion cannot be replaced.  Yes, a lion might be found or born to the local population, but Lions, unlike simpler creatures like gazelles or lab rats, are socially unique, having earned their place in their complex social structure.

"The consequence of killing one male — whether legally or illegally — is that it weakens the male coalition he was part of, often a brotherhood. A larger, stronger coalition comes in and usurps them, often leading to the death of the surviving brothers. The incoming males will generally kill the cubs of the incumbents. A simple-minded approach might have thought one less lion is one less lion. The reality is that one less lion can lead to the deaths of many other lions, as well as a reshuffling of their local spatial organization and society."

Says David Macdonald, director of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford, in an interview in Nature whose team has been tracking Cecil and hundreds of other lions since 2008. No lion is an island.

Trophy hunting of Lions in Zimbabwe didn't begin nor will it end with Doctor Palmer.  Hunting of lions is legal in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa and lions are not considered endangered at this time although their numbers have declined along with that of their prey.  Yes, like all creatures great and small they are part of  an ever-changing ecosystem and Africa is steadily moving in the same direction as the rest of the world and allowing less and less room for wildlife.

Carefully avoiding any political statements, Macdonald opines that hunting of lions is sustainable if strictly regulated and actually might be the best way of attributing value to lions that could accrue to the benefit of those who live alongside them amd perhaps to promote toleration of  these creatures among the local population who see them as dangerous to life and property.  Wildlife parks bring in tourist dollars after all.

Macdonald goes so far as to suggest that the death of  this lion may have a beneficial effect if it promotes "enthusiasm for the value of nature."

"That’s the sort of enthusiasm that I hope will influence the way that policy is formulated as human enterprise strives to live alongside biodiversity. That would be a suitable memorial for the apparently illegal death of this particular, charismatic and unusually fascinating individual lion."

Unfortunately some of this "enthusiasm" results from misinformation, oversimplification and hyperbole in the sensationalist press and such enthusiasm tends to be short lived, producing less than helpful action if any at all.

The overall goal of conservation is the maintenance of sustainable populations rather than sentimental attachments to Bambi or even Cecil and that sometimes involves direct intervention.  Hunting is sometimes necessary if sometimes sad and upsetting to squeamish people like me.  Poaching is of course the enemy of regulation and population control and  it's a far, far larger problem than the occasional  rogue trying to relive the 18th century White Hunter experience can be.  It would be good if he can be made and example of, but will the public then forget while hordes of poachers continue to hunt with machine guns, flaunting a death penalty because of huge rewards for selling animal parts in Asia?

Madonald shares my hope that the current furor will bring some further attention to what's really going on; to the bigger and long term problems of conservation and to helping African nations to see the value of wildlife and its preservation despite the cost.  Much has been done with the help of wealthier European nations. Much more needs to be done.

Lions and Tigers and Elephants, oh my.

Those of us concerned about illegal poaching driving iconic animals to extinction are certainly aware of what's happening in Africa. According to a 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100,000 elephants were killed by poachers between 2010 and 2012. In 2011 one out of every 12 elephants was killed by a poacher. The future looks dim. The problem isn't a lone dentist with a single shot rifle with a.500 Nitro Express cartridge, but Africans carrying AK-47 automatic assault rifles, hired by Africans who sell ivory around the world, despite  facing a death penalty summarily enforced.  The US is the second biggest market for ivory despite some restrictive and complex laws against the ivory trade that can make it hard to sell a second hand piano.

President Obama has proposed some new, more restrictive laws restricting the sale and ownership of ivory in the US.  Can we expect more slick TV ads from shady sources telling us how terrible this is or how Obama is going to take away your soap and grandma's Steinway?  Probably, but if you're in the mood to feel protective toward these magnificent, intelligent and vanishing animals you might send a note to your duly elected representatives.  Who knows, they may be in a mood to listen.

Wimoweh (The Lion Doesn't Sleep Tonight)

Walter Palmer, a dentist from Minnesota, is now wanted in Africa for poaching. Do we have an extradition treaty with Zimbabwe? Because I'll be happy to set up a GoFundMe to ship him back there to face trial.



I don't oppose hunting. Culling the herd, eating the meat: at that point, if you also want to take a trophy? Well, it's a little creepy, but that's another part of the animal that won't go to waste, I guess.

But every time another detail come out about this story, it just gets worse and worse.

Palmer claims he was on a legal hunt, with all the proper permits. That's bullshit - pure, unadulterated bovine fecal matter. Palmer is so full of crap his eyes are brown.

At what point did anything about this hunt seem legitimate? They dragged a dead animal behind their jeep to lure an endangered animal out of the preserve. That didn't seem a little questionable to him? They let him shoot a 200 pound lion with an under-powered crossbow. When, as anybody who knew anything about hunting could have foreseen, the lion didn't immediately die, it took them almost two full days to track it down, as it slowly bled out, suffering and in pain. They tried to destroy the radio tracker around the lion's neck, but couldn't even do that right.

Nobody eats lion meat by choice. It's a predator, which means the meat is tough and stringy; it's a carnivore, which means the meat is rank. The only reason to hunt them is because you think you deserve to kill any damned animal on the planet.

Palmer isn't a hunter, he's a sadist. He's been charged for illegal hunting before, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that his basement was set up as a torture chamber for the squirrels he could trap around his home. He was probably the type of evil kid who giggled after jamming firecrackers up a cat's butt or stapling a duck's beak shut.

I've got to admit that I don't have any problem with the fact that, in the uproar, he's had to close his dental practice, and protesters are setting up a memorial to Cecil the Lion outside it. Palmer is an evil, overprivileged bastard, and he needs to learn what the inside of a Zimbabwean jail looks like.

He Who Has Seen All Things

You must know that the gods have decreed that the lot of the living is to grieve. *

"23 schoolchildren -- now that's a tragedy." She says.

Yes it is, but the question is whether it's a singular tragedy, one to be distinguished from the endless daily tragedies of the endless days since life awoke, 9 American lives in South Carolina matter. Other lives elsewhere may not as much. The loss of a million may not count as much and regardless of their ancestry if it doesn't serve a purpose to point it out.  Time on our tiny scale is measured in grief and longing and remorse and loss irrecoverable: agony beyond memory, beyond endurance.

The very presence of life that knows of death is a cruel tragedy, since not only does it all end in death and extinction and oblivion, in grief and horror and anguish and misery and pain, but all the more tragic for brevity: so short, so fleeting like the separation and annihilation of virtual particles in an empty place, so short as to rob the word fleeting of any meaning and yes, even infinity, yes, even oblivion shall die, Long gone, never was and just now - to whom does it matter?  In the end, even infinity is a point without dimension where beginning and end are the same. And we talk of tragedy, of some cosmic purpose, some cosmic good some cosmic accounting. We see meaning and there is none. We see meaning to ourselves and to what we do and think - and there is none. We see meaning to hide the truth. Do we matter, do our lives matter, do they matter to the dead and in the long run, the short run, the infinitesimal run: to the cosmic viewer, we all are.

What props, what fragments of madness do we shore against the silence and infinite meaninglessness: unimaginably endless, indescribably violent, hostile, mindlessly indifferent -- and with what false dawn to we shelter our eyes from the endless abyss, provide ourselves with meaning in the bottomless foreverness of nothing?

What transitory and fungible  gods did we imagine to say "let there be no more tragedy" when life is tragedy; by its nature tragedy, by it's limitation tragedy. Nothing is promised or given that isn't taken away along with the rememberer and the memory?  Who of all the countless generations is remembered and which of us will be remembered in a trillion, trillion years in a cold and empty universe, still expanding into itself  in its emptiness. What life is not tragedy when every tragically ineluctable finality seems like a possibility in the beginning? What will mourn or remember, what ghost, what God when all hearts are dead and forgotten. There is no "I" in the land of the dead.  Oh lost and by the wind grieved and no ghost shall return home again -- nor ever will be there a time or place to grieve.

And we talk of justice as though it meant something other than vanity and egotism.  We waste our moment being angry at what someone else thinks his moment requires -- the thousands and tens of thousands, the billions dead today and tomorrow and already forgotten or disregarded, but these 9, these 23 and all the generations long turned to dust and rubbish?  It's a tragedy we will not endure without blaming this and that and whom and we mourn and we assume significance and seek healing as we approach the teeth and maw of the blind remorseless grinder. The luckiest are those with an instant to ask "what the hell was that?" before time is done, before time has jumped to forever and the universe then as though it never were. Lucky or unlucky, blessed or wronged: what is there in the hot gas and cold stone to care or remember?

Justice! We look for it, we treasure it, we squeeze the nectar out of it in our vanity. NINE people shot dead in a Church!  And a thousand in a Mosque and a thousand in the street and a thousand blown to bits sleeping in their beds. In principio et nunc et semper et in saecula saeculorum and even that world has but a short time to live and will soon be gone forever. Can we mourn our ancestors, a million years dead?

Where was justice in our brutal history and brutal pre-history and where was there a love not lost, not eaten by death, not mourned, not debauched. Where the heart unbroken?  Where is the injustice in Ebola or the Pox or the hipster parents who won't vaccinate?  Where is the tragedy in the Diabetes, the heart disease, the cancer? Where is the outrage?  Where is the demand that something be done?  is it that we fear on command, grieve on demand, rage on request -- and then go out and make a purchase, say a prayer, slaughter a lamb?  Our birthright is death and the thief and the murderer, the conqueror and the slave, the ugly and the adorable all come to the same end.  How then do we think of justice, do we demand justice, do we define justice?  I define it as vanity.

We pretend we're above it, that our lives mean something and something more than other lives. We pretend things are different here, that "normal" is outside of  the universal suffering and death of all things living.  Our lives matter and matter more than others' and that's justice. We kill children, but kill them elsewhere where it doesn't matter and there's always a purpose that has to do with justice and freedom and all the ugly words meaning vanity.  Who will say, sitting in the ashes when we are gone "ah but they were righteous, they sought justice and closure and healing!"  "They lived in perfect safety and equality and no one of them was ever allowed to be insulted."  And even the ashes will die and the dust spread out forever in the darkness until it's gone.

______________

*The South Babylonian version of the second book of the epic Sa Nagba Imuru, "He who has seen all things,"  Commonly referred to as the Epic of Gilgamesh.