Not to live in the US does not mean one does not feel the pain. There is a new barbarism afoot which, like a disease, has been invading the body politic. It's a barbarism based on control, on restricting the right of women to control their bodies, on restricting what teachers can say in the classroom, on restricting those who condemn the gun culture because they want to live without being shot or having their children shot with weapons of war. Belief in this new barbarism requires passionate acceptance of the lies and rhetoric of smooth talking newscasters who have no interest in the truth and lie because it makes money. Integrity has become an unfashionable word, an almost contemptible one, implying weakness. History must be rewritten so that those who inhabit America and live on its wealth, never doubt their moral rectitude and financial power or their right to seize whatever is of value. Sacred places can be ripped up for profit. Precious water resources, which belong to all, can be sold for the immediate profit of the few. Calls for caring about the future, compassion, tolerance and listening to others are voices of the minority.

Blind to the environmental terrorism of big business, the new barbarians live out their lives in denial of the consequences of the irreversible damage being done to the planet. Fires and floods lap at the the forests and against the shores. Hurricanes get fiercer, summers hotter and the glaciers and ice caps are melting. The earth's fridge door is open. Science? Science to the barbarians is for eggheads, intellectuals and socialists in universities. Barbarians know what is what. Or think they do. The majority haven't read a book in many, many years. Plagues may spread over the land but do their worst damage among the poor and sick The very poor are wretched and walk the streets because their poverty is needed to mirror the prosperity of others. They die lonesome deaths and are buried in unmarked graves by those serving time in prison. America incarcerates more people that any other nation on earth and rather than be ashamed, is secretly proud of it. Another situation to make a profit from. Why not?

Foreigners, blacks, the poor, the sick, both physically and mentally, are the refugees of the great American dream and in the eyes of the new barbarians they are contemptible. The barbarians remind themselves they are deeply religious, that their God is on their side. They can quote scripture ad nauseam and justify their neat little homes and neat little lives in neat little estates with their two car garages. They complain about the price of gas but don't know what carbon dioxide is or does. Some join sects that abuse women and children as they wait for rapture and if something goes wrong, they believe it is someone else's fault. The few journalists who are left, stand on the sidelines cheering everyone on and glad to have a job and those who dare to tell unpopular truths either moderate their copy or are just not published. Idealism has been overtaken by materialism and the superficial. Like the debris left in Congress after Jan 6th, the truth is carefully cleaned away and the psychological damage done to the nation swept under the carpet. But it's still there, waiting to be rediscovered as the voices of justice and reason grow fainter. The gyre turns. Things fall apart. The center cannot hold.