Another Day in 2018

I am one of those people who reads the printed version of the New York Times each and every morning. It’s becoming harder and harder to do so these days, so dreary is much of the news. But, today was especially depressing.

Above the fold, we were reminded of the endless and tragic wildfires in California, the new and serious friction between Washington and Ankara, the ever darker life of Roger J. Stone, and the stupid and harmful reversal by the Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, of essential safeguards for innocent students preyed upon by the for-profit higher education sector.

Below the fold, still on the first page of the first section, we were treated to a gruesome picture of dozens of graves being dug for the many children killed in Yemen by a Saudi-led coalition force and learned about the alarming increase in the number of local hospitals in the US now run by the Catholic Health Association and that are refusing to perform common procedures they feel conflict with their religious beliefs.

The pages that followed were no less depressing. We learned that the murder rate in Brazil is at a new all-time high, that the Talliban continues to kill large numbers of civilians in Afghanistan, that deadly airstrikes by Americans created still more conflict with Afghan allies, that North Korea continues to place new demands before even making gestures toward “denuclearization,” and that new quakes in Indonesia are causing tourist to flee.

Page after page, nothing but more of the same: Trump cripples Turkey by doubling metal tariffs, China silences its people duped by crooked schemes and cracks down on an ethnic minority leader for speaking about her people, devastation and depression for those affected by the California wildfires, more sleeze by Paul Manafort, etc.

Still in the first section, we learned of the son of a police chief charged with attacking a 70+ year old Sikh man, about the sleezy and stupid memoir just published by Omarosa, about containers of donated food left rotting in Puerto Rico, and about the Chesapeake choked with Trash coming from the north.

Enough! There’s lots more, even in the first section. My point, simply, is that it hard to stay positive today in a world that seems increasingly unmoored.