We use the term amaze in all its forms promiscuously these days. Your social media feed today likely will have at least one or two posters talking about being amazed that their friends somehow came through for them, although if you’re amazed your friends’ll help you in your hour of need you really had little faith in them in the first place.
So, what kind of friend are you?
Anyway, I’m generally loath to use the term for that reason but I will now. I’m amazed.
Amazed that 24 years ago, the whole world rallied around this holy land. 9/11, al Qaeda, 3000 dead, horror, shock, innocent victims. In my recollection, just about every country reached out to help. Even Cuba, for chrissakes.
Hell, a bunch of Maasai villagers from east central Africa got together and did what they could. For us. For you and me. People they’d never met or knew anything about. Just that we’d been harmed and they wanted to help.
That, I’m sure you’ll agree, is truly amazing.
Now, barely a quarter century later, we’ve pissed all that goodwill away. We’ve fought, or participated, financially and materially, in at least four major wars since then. We’ve flipped the bird to the rest of the world’s nations that’d signed the Paris Climate Agreement. We’re in the process of chipping away at the ability of other countries to abide by the Montreal Protocol. We’ve swung toward a trade protectionism that has driven much of the rest of the world into the arms of China and Russia. We’re rounding up undocumented immigrants and shipping them off into hellish foreign prison camps. We’re turning our backs on NATO just as Vladimir Putin is salivating over eastern Europe. We’ve cut off much foreign aid. We’re even stifling the Voice of America.
Who would want to ship 14 cows to us to help us weather any future catastrophe?
Much of the world loved us once. They don’t anymore.
Amazing.