Broad-framing our "world on fire" wars (here, Russia-v-Ukraine)

If I had a hammer, I'd swing it all over this world!

Jim Nuttle illustration from “America’s New Map”

WAPO is going all-in on “chaos”: College protests. A Trump trial. Raging wars. Is everything ‘on fire’?:

From coast to coast, Americans have been thrust under a cloud of chaos that seems to thicken with every breaking-news alert. And in an already contentious and consequential election year, there is seemingly no relief ahead.

“Everything is on fire,” said Preeti Kulkarni, a freshman at George Washington University, whose campus in the nation’s capital has been riven by clashes over Israel’s war in Gaza.

Well, if a college freshman said it, then it must be true.

A “cloud of chaos” in which Congress spends weeks debating an aid package to Ukraine and Israel, and yet …

In one national survey of young people — conducted before the latest round of uprisings — the Israel-Gaza war rated near the bottom of issues that respondents said were most important to them overall.

The same article notes that 80% of Americans think their own lives are doing fine but likewise think America is headed in the wrong direction.

That’s a profound disconnect, yes?

I get it.

Environmentally, I get it — climate change coming on like a runaway train.

Politically, I get it — the last, agonizingly brain-dead days of disastrous Boomer rule (unfortunately, with equally brain-dead Gen X politicians ready in the wings).

Demographically , I get it — historically rapid racial makeover amidst a disorienting demographic transition to a much older society

Economically, I get it — another grotesquely unequal Gilded Age pissing off the masses.

But citing Ukraine and Gaza as deep proof of a world on fire?

Pass.

Today, I opine on Russia, tomorrow I tackle Israel.