The Golden Rule
This morning a friend wished me a happy New Year and then asked a question that begs a reply: what has happened to the Golden Rule.
The answer is the price of gold has been devalued. It can now be purchased not for a promise to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but merely for a determination to do unto others whatever suits your eye.
My friend's focus was on the atrocities of October 7th and the long running ego driven absurdities of Mr. Trump and those who find his assaults on democracy and morality invigorating. Cruelty as the coin of the realm. Inhumanity as the price of doing business.
It is a world at war with our better selves. As though compassion is a weakness, concern for others a failing. In our nation, this seemed to happen little by little and then all at once. Mr. Trump giving permission for our worst instincts to see the light of day, for hatreds to flourish unencumbered, for pain and suffering to be inflicted upon others without remorse or fear of recrimination.
I have long wondered what those who can no longer bear the indignities and hardships in their own country, who uproot their family and travel hundreds or thousands of miles by foot in desperation must feel when they are received as if they were the worst of criminals as they try to enter a land hoping not for a warm embrace, but merely a place to take shelter from the storm.
Or those within our midst who are treated with disdain and disgust simply because they do not fit within the definition of acceptable by those with tunnel vision.
It is here that the freedom to hate exists untrammeled. Here, peace and human decency has little hope of survival.
And here, the Golden Rule isn't worth the paper it is printed on.