Confessions of a disillusioned commentator

The pundit in me wants to say wise and insightful things about our war-warped political landscape, explaining the situation, advocating for what's true and good, and assuring you everything's going to be OK, however frightening the future looks from here.

But I'm as bewildered as anyone else by what's happening out there, by massacres everywhere staggering in their barbarism, by the increasing weirdness of weather, by migration as the human condition, by politicians who think they're performing in some kind of sick reality show yet don't grasp the moral sickness or the historical reality of what they're doing.

That's why another part of me wants only to write about what I love and to take a break from our nauseating news cycles and indulge in culture and praise the timeless arts and celebrate the pleasures of ordinary experience.

But a dark voice — is that you, Mom? — whispers in my conscience that that would be irresponsible.

To bow to beauty would be to abandon my bully pulpit and to let you down, dear reader, who depend on me to illuminate things over which I have no control or comprehension, least of all the disheartening spectacle of this year's presidential election.

Even locally, I have learned, I am not an influencer of any political consequence; my causes and my candidates most often are defeated, and my analysis and arguments and observations are no match for the machinations of the political machinists who network through their clubs and commissions and organize and strategize and sit through meetings and raise tons of money from real estate developers and spend it to achieve their objectives.

I will continue to write about what interests me, like the downtown Santa Cruz mixed-abuse library, but I have no illusions that what I say will make any difference.

So whatever I might write about Biden's age and how at best it could be an asset in the experience and wisdom and political knowhow it affords; or that his opponent, who is cognitively incoherent and not above the law but beneath it in his lowlife criminal enterprises, is the far more dangerous and incompetent candidate; or that Nikki Haley is sticking around because she's ready to step up when the frontrunner is sent to the slammer or to the madhouse in a gold-plated straitjacket — whatever I might write about any of that doesn't matter.

But what does, when our collective destiny is at the mercy of random disasters and of dictators and demagogues trying to terrorize their subjects into submission and slaughtering their neighbors with bombs and missiles and laying waste homes and whole cities?

Words are a weak if necessary means of trying to maintain sanity in a world that's lost its mind. If we could only make sense of what is senseless, we might start to understand something.

Know what I mean? I didn't think so. That's why I'm puzzled when people tell me they enjoy reading this column even though they don't always agree with me.

A lot of times, like now, there's nothing to agree or disagree with because I'm just trying to alleviate my own anxiety by trying to figure out what I think about the unthinkable, as if it would do any good.

So let us consider the lilies of the field, and let us turn and live with animals, and let us behold the face of the beloved, even in memory, and let's listen to the great songs and learn to play them on our own instruments in our own ways and not just surrender our lives to algorithms.

I haven't seen many birds on my balcony lately, but the way the rainwater shimmers and ripples in the birdbath between downpours casts interesting glimmers on the walls of my office when the sun hits it from a certain angle.

The reservoirs are full, the storm-washed air smells good, the ocean is putting on a splendid show, and as long as we can savor these simple gifts we're lucky to be alive.