It's not really a laughing matter

The performance of the #fakepresident today in front of the United Nations raises so many thoughts and reactions. Here are a couple:

 Could anybody ever imagine a U.S. president claiming to have accomplished more than any president in history? Is it any wonder the audience laughed at him? And think of the embarrassment of our own president being laughed at by world leaders and, sadly, deservedly so. Unfortunately for those of us living in this country it is no laughing matter as the #crookinchief and his minions continue to dismantle the republic.

Less noticed and less mentioned was his call for a worldwide movement toward almost isolationist nationalism, each country for itself without regard for the whole. His base probably cheered, my own father would have, at that thought. Like it or not we are also citizens of the world and solutions to many problems will come only with worldwide cooperation. Climate change is a huge example.

The issue reminds me of a poem my friend Patricia Monaghan wrote almost 30 years ago. Living in Chicago at the time she wrote about the Exxon Valdez oil spill as someone who has experienced Prince William Sound but even in her current residence realized the spill affected her along with accepting her own and everyone else's responsibility for it. She ended the poem with the line that went something like “you are nowhere where you are not part of the world.” And that was the line that came to mind today at the thought of a president calling for isolationist nationalism shortly after being laughed at by world leaders in the audience.

It will take years to recover from the damage and it is going to take a cosmic realization that we are all part of the world and like it or not we cannot isolate ourselves from the rest of it.

Find Patricia Monaghan's full poem at the end of this post