There appears to be many things that are wrong on our planet. The internet of course brings us what we want to see; joyous images from around the world. Blue seas, skies and palm trees. But they all pale into darkness when we shine a light on the reality. The fires, diseases, street violence and multiple wars. As a British ex pat now in the USA I scan the British papers to keep up to date with current affairs; the trouble being I do not recognize the country that I lived in for over forty years. It has been fundamentally changed by immigration policies that the British public did not really want. Maybe a racist comment but an indisputable fact.
London of old is gone. The culture smothered by bad politics and terrible decisions. It certainly is not the same London I knew in the eighties and nineties. It could also be applied to many large cities in Britain where the similar transformations have taken place. In some cases the changes are so severe that local politics have morphed into a religious debate and it looks like Sharia law now usurps any competition and that is a direct result of poor immigration policies.
Across the channel, the French are fighting their own government with severe violent acts taking place almost on a daily basis. It is a particularly odd situation watching firemen battle their own Gendarmerie. Turkey, Greece and Germany, Norway, Sweden and Italy are fighting for survival. If the people don’t fight back, the countries will be fundamentally altered and their culture will be but a distant memory. The citizens are not happy because they feel helpless in the face of adversity without the help of their own governments.
The planet needed to settle down and breathe. Stop. Just to get some normality back into our daily lives. And suddenly out of nowhere the world slowed down and stopped as an invisible enemy fought against the people of the world.
A virus. Born in China, breeding like wildfire and the citizens of our planet were taken aback as they were not prepared for this grim reaper straddling the earth. We watched on TV in disbelief people collapsing and dying in the streets. There was supposition that this could become a global epidemic and indeed it did. Movement on the planet was curtailed as the death rate spiraled out of control and we could no longer hide behind hope as a way of fighting the virus.
Hospitals quickly filled with people who one minute were healthy and the next lying at death’s door. All forms of transport were halted and planes, trains and ships were empty. All insidious transporters of the invisible poison. And it spread to every country in the world. Thousands sick and thousands dead. More contagious than the flu it looked almost impossible to halt. So desperate measures were taken. Isolation. Quarantine. Keeping a safe distance. Sanitizer, washing hands. And still it marched on taking no prisoners. Even now, into April, we can’t tell what the future will bring. But it certainly does not look good, no matter how many ventilators, masks and other protective equipment are produced and distributed day after day after day.
It still seems odd to me that this came when we were living in a spiritual vacuum. An I, me, mine society where materialism was the new higher power. Now we can see that material objects and vacations and mind altering substances are useless when death is knocking at the door of you and your loved ones. Self preservation becomes central to our lives and we have to say goodbye to the way of life we once knew because life as we knew it will never be the same again.
So was there intent behind the release of this virus. Or just a spontaneous happening. Was it God, or was it dog, or bat, delicacies alien to us who live in the Western world. An act of war? In days to come people will have their own thoughts about this thing. we now have a planet at peace and have time in our enforced isolation to think deeply about the meaning of our lives. As humans we will be radically changed when this is over. Maybe that was the idea all along.
Categories: Blog, Creative writing, Current affairs, News, politics
A Different Country 
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