Waxing and Waning

"Bye-Bye Miss American Pie"* was a song written and played incessantly on the radio in the early 1970's. The lyrics were so obscure that it was never clear to anyone what we were singing about. It didn't matter. Still doesn't, because the prophetic words evoked something about to be lost forever.

As the memory of a song fades, so with it goes an era. Were those better days? Well, compared with what? If we look at the Middle Ages with its Black Death and barbaric laws imposed from Church and State combined, the answer is yes. As compared with the US Civil War, when the homeland was ravaged by horrors? Again, yes. When we turn our eyes back to the 1960's, '70's, '80's, '90's it is easy for some of us to say those days were better than before, while waxing nostalgic.

Each generation,overlapping with the next, creates a narrative of our times, our lifetimes. Stories are unique, but a shared history places us in a particular time together. These are our times.

As I go about my daily life it is impossible to comprehend that while I take my seat at my writing desk, or, order my online groceries,( a habit since COVID), or, walk in the late afternoon, or play my piano, or text with my kids, or Zoom with my friends, or, rise at 3 am to see the full lunar eclipse (only chance in five years), or, sit in meditation in the evening, or, fill the car with gas, or, cook dinner, or sleep "perchance to dream", that these days are fast becoming the "good old days".

As I write, and as you read, we are on the precipice of plunging into a life and world order that shakes everything that has been the status quo for entire lifetimes.

Younger generations on the rise cannot know all that this implies. Others caught in the middle will have to scramble as the rug is pulled from under their planned trajectories. Those of us of a certain age, have the benefit and dread of hindsight. We understand our hard-won rights because we were there to fight for them. We know the truth of a segregated world because we saw school kids from one neighborhood get bussed to another. We still lament ill-fated decisions made by our government to send our able-bodied young friends to foreign countries to fight and die. We witnessed assassinations that fractured hope for freedom that some leaders dared to dream. Is this nostalgia for an America soon to be lost? Yes and no.

As compared with today, when we are living under the threat of a couple of greedy white men with tentacles reaching across borders while strangling those within our own, there is way too much normalcy in our daily living. Chicken Little is screaming his head off for us to look up to see the skywriting before it disappears.

Bye-Bye Miss American Pie . . .

"Oh, and while the king was looking down

The jester stole his thorny crown

The courtroom was adjourned

No verdict was returned . . ."

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z13vOA7s0FI

The full Blood Worm Moon is seen during a total lunar eclipse on March 14, 2025 in Merritt Island, Florida. (Image credit: Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Stop Walking on Eggshells

A friend in England posted on Quora that she had been "walking on eggshells" for a long time with her American "MAGA" friend, but "not anymore". Tip-toeing around significant issues we are facing is not a strategy. Instead, it sends a subtle short-sighted message about everything that is at stake for all of us here and "across the pond".

The following words spoken in the French Senate by Claude Malhuret are to be heeded.

President, Mr. Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers, My dear colleagues,

> Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is crumbling, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened.

>

> Washington has become the court of Nero, a fiery emperor, submissive courtiers and a ketamine-fueled jester in charge of purging the civil service.

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> This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose more customs duties on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.

>

> The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is all about. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down before Putin, but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is probably accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.

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> Never in history has a President of the United States capitulated to the enemy. Never has anyone supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could have prevented him from doing so, dismissed the military general staff in one fell swoop, weakened all checks and balances, and taken control of social media.

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> This is not an illiberal drift, it is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only one month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution.

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> I have faith in the strength of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor.

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> Eight days ago, at the very moment that Trump was rubbing Macron’s back in the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops.

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> Two days later, in the Oval Office, the military service shirker was giving war hero Zelensky lessons in morality and strategy before dismissing him like a groom, ordering him to submit or resign.

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> Tonight, he took another step into infamy by stopping the delivery of weapons that had been promised. What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it.

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> And first of all, let’s not be mistaken. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltic States, Georgia, Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is to return to Yalta, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin.

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> The countries of the South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it.

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> What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with its first principle being the prohibition of acquiring territory by force.

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> This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the attacked, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.

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> Mine is Greenland, Panama and Canada, you are Ukraine, the Baltics and Eastern Europe, he is Taiwan and the China Sea.

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> At the parties of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago, this is called “diplomatic realism.”

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> So we are alone. But the talk that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is in bad shape. In three years, the so-called second largest army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs from a country three times less populated.

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> Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, the demographic collapse show that it is on the brink of the abyss. The American helping hand to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made in a war.

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> The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.

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> Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American abandonment, so that it holds, and of course to impose its presence and that of Europe in any negotiation.

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> This will be expensive. It will be necessary to end the taboo of the use of frozen Russian assets. It will be necessary to circumvent Moscow’s accomplices within Europe itself by a coalition of only the willing countries, with of course the United Kingdom.

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> Second, demand that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children, prisoners and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know what agreements with Putin are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.

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> Finally, and this is the most urgent, because it is what will take the most time, we must build the neglected European defence, to the benefit of the American umbrella since 1945 and scuttled since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

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> It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books.

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> Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. This is to recognize that France has been right for decades in arguing for strategic autonomy.

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> It remains to be built. It will be necessary to invest massively, to strengthen the European Defence Fund outside the Maastricht debt criteria, to harmonize weapons and munitions systems, to accelerate the entry into the Union of Ukraine, which is today the leading European army, to rethink the place and conditions of nuclear deterrence based on French and British capabilities, to relaunch the anti-missile shield and satellite programs.

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> The plan announced yesterday by Ursula von der Leyen is a very good starting point. And much more will be needed.

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> Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power again. In a word, the Draghi report will have to be implemented. For good.

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> But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament.

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> We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and especially in the face of Putin’s cronies, the extreme right and the extreme left.

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> They argued again yesterday in the National Assembly, Mr Prime Minister, before you, against European unity, against European defence.

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> They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain at the beck and call of Putin.

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> Peace for the collaborators who have refused any aid to the Ukrainians for three years.

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> Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in the last few days, the public humiliation of Zelensky and all the crazy decisions taken in the last month have finally made the Americans react.

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> Polls are falling. Republican lawmakers are being greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical.

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> The Trumpists are no longer in their majesty. They control the executive, the Parliament, the Supreme Court and social networks.

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> But in American history, the freedom fighters have always prevailed. They are beginning to raise their heads.

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> The fate of Ukraine is being played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means for their common defense, and to make Europe the power that it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again.

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> Our parents defeated fascism and communism at great cost.

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> The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century.

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> Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.”

>

The eight-minute video of the speech* is the same length as the Oval Office meeting a week ago with President Zelensky.** Taken together it is easy to see where the truth lies. Truth and lies spoken from esteemed places proves how "walking on eggshells"is not the solution but rather has far-reaching consequences.

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unSSHfIs3U0

**https://youtu.be/z2s2pogllis

What can I do?

That's the question we are asking ourselves these days. Without a leader to lead, it is on us to figure out next steps. Sometimes looking back at others' stories sheds light. The Book of Esther in the Hebrew Bible rings true today although it was written in the fourth or fifth century. The somewhat Shakespearean plot goes like this:

A powerful Persian King XERXES threw a lavish party for his broligarchy. His wife VASHTI had her own gal-pals gathered in her chambers when she was summoned by her husband to perform for the men. She refused! He banished her from the Kingdom for shaming him. His bro's convinced him to write an edict to go out to all wives that henceforth they must honor their husbands. The search then begins for a new Queen. The harem is the first place to look.

A young Jewish woman lives outside the gates with her Uncle MORDECAI who knows that HADASSAH would be a great fit because of her extraordinary charm and beauty and wit, but she is Jewish and therefore not acceptable. He wants her life to be better than what he is able to provide, so he renames her ESTHER.

Esther is accepted into the harem. After countless hours pampering herself in order to be presented to the King, at long last she is summoned to meet her potential spouse. Xerxes is smitten by Esther's beauty AND her intelligence. The two have a lavish wedding while Mordecai waits outside the gates because he is not allowed to enter. Esther stays in touch with her uncle by messenger. (texting) She tells him everything that is going on inside the Kingdom. One day, he overhears two insiders plotting a coup. Mordecai sends word to Esther, who in the knick of time averts the King's murder by spilling the beans.

Meanwhile, Mordecai has a confrontation with the King's chief of staff, HAMAM, who admonishes the Jew for not bowing down to him. (Saying, "You should be more grateful", or something like that . . .). Hamam decides to convince his boss that all Jewish people should pay for such irreverance. Hence, Xerses signs AND seals with his gold initialed ring (X) a proclamation that all Jews will be murdered on the 13th of the month. No exceptions. Everyone must go.

Mortified Mordecai sends Esther an urgent message to tell the King to stop the coming genocide of HER people! Esther says she cannot go before her husband, the King, without being summoned lest she herself be murdered. As if that's not enough, she would have to tell him the truth about her Jewish identity. Uncle M advises her to suck it up. He asks her the big question: Have you considered that "You have been brought to the Kingdom for such a time as this"?

A few plot twists follow including the King discovering that his own life had been spared from an attempted coup by Mordecai. Esther decides to invite her husband to a banquet rather than wait for him to ask her. She butters up his chief of staff knowing she will have to get passed him if she is to convince her husband to rescind the proclamation which the official seal of the ring prohibits even a King from doing because it is against the law. . . and no one is above the law!

At the banquet the wine flows and Esther summons her courage to tell Xerses that she is of Jewish descent and that he has ordered all her people to be killed in a few days. The King begins to see the big picture, including that he has been duped by his boastful, arrogant chief of staff. First, he orders Hamam to be hung in the village square. Then, he sends out a new proclamation to save the Jewish people from mass murder, and instead grants permission to have their would-be murderers avenged!

Queen Esther

On the very day this happens, Esther establishes the Jewish festival known as Purim to celebrate the Jewish people's survival while Xerses elevates Modecai to chief of staff.*

Perhaps the question for each of us to consider is the one put to Esther: "How do you know that you have not been brought [here] for such a time as this"?

*https://enterthebible.org/courses/esther/lessons/summary-of-esther