I cringe every time I hear a politician, usually a Democrat (in the USA) or Leftist, began a sentence “We need to have a conversation…”.

It’s like someone wanting “dialogue “ with their spouse, after they’ve hired an attorney and filed papers for divorce. They’re serious about only one track for the dialogue to run on.

But you knew that.

A lovely day, indeed. The sun is warm. The breeze is gentle, persistent, pleasant. I just watched a press briefing from a high level White House official promoting NATO membership for Sweden and Finland, as if surrounding Russia with NATO allies, will decrease, rather than increase, the likelihood of a war with Russia.

Nobody in Washington perceived Russia as a threat when the Obama Administration authorised the sale of our uranium stockpile to Rosatom, the Russian energy company owned by the Russian government. What happened?

Meanwhile, I watched an interesting video on YouTube about a Hindu temple renowned for its erotic relief sculptures. The video put the sculptures into a necessary context for us Westerners who have a very adolescent understanding of the erotic and human sexuality. Our values stand in contrast to the early Jesuits’ attitude to understand different cultures before they evangelised. Still a good idea.

In 1914 a terrorist act plunged the entire globe into a war, the likes of which the world had never seen before. Diplomacy failed and treaty obligations set two chain reactions in motion that could not or would not be stopped.

Nicholas Alexandrovich Romanov was Czar of the Russian Empire. His military was beset with massive corruption in the supply services and incompetence in the field command, with the significant exception of Marshall Brusilov. Rather than shift blame, Czar Nicholas eventually took direct command of the military. The losses forced his abdication. He ultimately paid with his life and the lives of his family members.

Imagine paying for the failures of government with one’s life. It is extreme, to be sure. Today the Czar would probably get a book deal, a spot on a talk show, and invitations to all the right parties.

I’m not expecting any American politician from President on down to take responsibility for the spectacular failures we have endured in the past seventeen months. But avoiding even the mention of failure does nothing to mitigate the magnitude of our losses.

It is easier to fire a football coach than it is to sack an incompetent President. Oh well.

I feel old whenever I walk, or sit, or lie down for too long.

I feel old whenever my wife shows no interest in sex.

Sometimes I just feel old.

So I have to force myself to do youthful things, like engage with the culture.

Nothing criminal. I watch The Five on Fox News Channel. I watch the show to check out Judge Jeanine Pirro’s shoes. Love, love, love her shoes!

I feel free, now that I have unburdened myself.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Progress. A little over a century ago, the Progressive movement advocated sterilising the “feeble-minded”, against their consent. The forced sterilisation concept started not in a totalitarian dictatorship but in states of the United States, in the exercise of popular, “democratic “ will. The goal was Progress. Weimar Germany, and its Nazi successor regime got the ideas of eugenics from us.

Today we consider eugenics barbaric, unless parents choose to abort a foetus determined to have a genetic condition like Down Syndrome. Then that bit of barbarism is understandable and excusable. Still the utopian/dystopian vision of a managed future continues to compel and repel us.We may change the goals, e.g. controlling the population of poor people that filled the dreams of Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes in the 1920’s to Al Gore’s vision of controlling carbon emissions in the 2020’s.

Paul Ehrlich wrote an influential book around 1970, The Population Bomb, warning of the dangers of human overpopulation. His answer was Zero Population Growth. Family size should be limited to two children, replacing the parents who begat them. Government policy or economic pressures would further compel families to have only one child, in China, for example. Now, demographers warn of demographic (population) collapse, in Japan, Italy, France, and, ironically, China herself. So much for the Population Bomb.

We love to think we are steering the ship of human destiny. The Soviet Russian Communists were eager to control the population and “liberate” women. So they legalised abortion, even inventing the vacuum aspirator, used in the surgical abortion procedure. When Communism collapsed, the succeeding Russian Federation changed the abortion laws to make abortion illegal after the fourteenth week of pregnancy.

Progress, choice, material prosperity and comfort motivate us today. Or so we are told to want material goods, to become wealthier in order to be happy. Of course, the end of human activity postulated as the acquisition of goods is a goal in direct contrast to Judaeo- Christian principles. “Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind and strength. And love thy neighbour as thyself.” My paraphrase of the shema from Deuteronomy and repeated by Our Lord in St Matthew still remain the guiding principles of millions today.

The manufacturers of stuff, huge corporations that they are, have an upper hand in the quest for our hearts and dollars. And we must always remember that we humans aspire for both the material and the spiritual simultaneously. It takes money to build beautiful things, whether a cathedral, mosque or temple on the one hand or a bridge or a skyscraper on the other. Because that desire for transcendent values like love, truth and beauty always persists.

Last night, earlier this morning really, I attempted to fall asleep. The pain in my back raged and a cold pack soothed me. I slept for awhile, awoke, made coffee, then considered the collection of unfinished books gathered about my chair.

Stalingrad was the winner. I restarted it, as much to refresh my memory of what I had read so far of Vasily Grossman’s work. This is the epic novel of the epic battle that determined the outcome of that cluster of simultaneous wars that we call World War Two. Just as we cannot escape Sarajevo twenty eight years previous to this calamity, we live with this catastrophe even today.

Stalingrad, the battle, was fought by hundreds of thousands of ordinary people. Invading Germans, their Ukrainian Hiwis, ( Hilfswilliger), volunteer support troops, faced Russians and other ethnicities of the Soviet domain.

I think of Stalingrad today, nearly eighty years later, as Russians and Ukrainians face off , yet again. Not that far West, past the Don, are these eternal killing fields, where the Slavic world bleeds herself out.

Pick a side. Either one will do. Cheer on this ghoulish festival. Get bored eventually. Then go back to the NBA playoffs, or the NHL playoffs. Perhaps cricket in India is more to your liking. The deaths will continue, even after you’re bored.