I don’t know about you but I think I have had enough of 2016, thank you very much.
Every morning, I wake up to a string of notifications from my NYT app, informing me that sometime in the night, something nasty has happened somewhere in the world. I wake up to an axe-wielding man running amok in a train in Germany. I wake up to a revellers in a gay nightclub getting gunned down by a closet gay man in Orlando. I wake up to shootings here, there and everywhere in the States. I wake up to a toddler being dragged off by a gator. I wake up to a gorilla being shot to death because a child went into its enclosure and suddenly everybody is a parenting/wildlife expert. I wake up to China threatening everyone from the Hague to the Philippines. I wake up to the deaths of Prince/Muhammad Ali/Harper Lee/David Bowie/Alan Rickman/Glenn Frey/Anton Yelchin/you name it, we’ve got it. (Death by one’s own car in one’s own driveway? SERIOUSLY?) I wake up to an attempted coup in Turkey.
I also wake up to the sacking of some random dude who was mouthing off against Singapore for not having Pokemon Go. Are you fucking kidding me? I mean, I get that he is a dumbass but THAT INTERNET MOB THO.
Then there’s Brexit, the appointment of some blonde buffoon to the post of Foreign Minister in the UK and the bizarre meteoric rise of a similar ginger buffoon in the US WHO COULD POSSIBLY BE THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE USA.
I am sorry but what the hell is going on?
To say that I am gobsmacked is an understatement. And as a mother, as an educator, I worry and fear. That our children are too insulated and protected from the hard truths. That we are setting them up for failure in life eventually because of the choices that we are making today. That the world we are handing to them is a crazy, cruel, strange one.
The world has indeed gone mad.
Yannisms 