First Days of May and Selecting Bush Twice

The first days of May here in Dayton, Ohio, have been ineffably beautiful: new leaves and buds and blossoms, fresh and light green leaves, perfectly clear skies way beyond anything I could express, more so than ever. I really should be out in this priceless sunshine right now, just looking at the flowers and grasses and trees and skies.

I find it all quite shocking, so much so that I wonder why it is that, now, at this point in my life, it is all so surpassingly and excruciatingly beautiful. 

I suspect that the “excruciating” word holds the key. It is, unfortunately or fortunately, only possible to appreciate something by contrast, by knowing the opposite perspective, the opposing reality.

Appreciating, perceiving, these astonishing, priceless, perfect May days is probably due in my own particular case to my experience one year ago this month of coming close to death because of a bicycle accident, from which I have still not recovered. But there was also “The List” I was composing a few nights ago. I made a list of some of some of the almost-incredible horrors which I doubt that I shall ever fully fathom:

• The USA selected George W. Bush as their President – twice.
  
  
• The Viet-Nam war, and following it by the Iraq war, and the Afghanistan war.
  
  
• Pat Buchanan on TV recently, smiling and gloating over the fact that the USA voted in every state except Massachusetts for Richard Nixon, a known criminal who was unconscionably pardoned, over George McGovern, a known decent man who said that the Senate walls reeked with blood.
  
  
• Recently reading “The Good Soldier Švejk” and “All Is Quiet on the Western Front,” particularly the bit about the widespread joy when that war broke out.
  
  
• The Milgram and Zimbardo experiments.
  
  
• Fox News, Limbaugh, Malkin, Savage, Falwell, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Scalia, Alito, Thomas, Bremer, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, et al.
  
  
• Bill Clinton and Joe Lieberman.
  
  
• The Christianists and the Jihadists.
  
  
• The oil and coal industries, and the bankers, and the medical industries.
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• The “You-can't-ask-me-to-stick-my-neck-out” Academy and the Media.

Please add a contribution of your own to my list.