The first signs appeared a couple of weeks ago.

I have this dear friend of some 35 years’ standing for whom I write a satirical birthday poem each year. We’re both political animals, so the theme usually centers around world events of the previous year, focused mainly on the inane and ridiculous.

Since I began trying to conjure up this year’s masterwork, I have gone through an entire notebook of lined paper (sometimes I still prefer to write the old-fashioned way), dried out two ballpoint pens, and had to empty my shredder when it began spitting little bits of paper back at me.

At first I thought it was writer’s block. But no . . . I was still cranking out my daily blog posts without any obvious problem. And then it hit me: it’s those daily dispatches themselves that are driving me around the bend.

Or rather, it’s the news articles on which they’re based.

I’ve lived a long, long time. I’ve seen and survived wars, pandemics, recessions, acts of terrorism, urban riots, natural disasters, the Kardashians, and colossal failures like the Edsel and New Coke. I made it through the Cold War, McCarthyism, the hippie era, the British invasion of the Beatles and the Stones, both Bush administrations, and Reaganomics.

Hell, I even survived living in Moscow — the one in Russia, not Idaho — at the height of the so-called “Great Mafia Wars” of 1993.

And through all of that, and more, I always felt that life was a grand adventure, filled with endless possibilities, and that any problems could eventually be solved . . . because I was an American. I was one of the lucky ones for whom all doors were open because I lived in the greatest, most prosperous, most respected country in the world: the land where the great experiment known as Democracy had taken hold.

We Americans are not perfect. One of our worst faults, as it turns out, is our tendency to become complacent — even arrogant — about our privileged lives. We have been so accustomed to having so much, that we never saw the avalanche coming.

It hit with its full force on January 20, 2025: Inauguration Day. It had been building since the previous November’s election, and suddenly we found ourselves being buried in executive orders and news reports of attacks on the very principles on which our government has rested for nearly 250 years. And those attacks were not coming from our traditional adversaries, but from within. From the White House itself.

For eight months, it has gotten steadily worse, until it seems the world can’t bear much more. There is hardly a country anywhere that isn’t at loggerheads with some other country. The threat of nuclear war hangs over us like the Sword of Damocles. The natural environment is on the precipice of unimaginable disaster because of our decades of neglect and denial. Soviet-style autocracy is creeping back in nations that only 30 years ago fought so bravely to escape its shackles.

And the one country that has been relied upon to lead the way to peace, freedom and sanity — the United States of America — is itself giving in to the most dangerous, sociopathic autocrat of them all.

Is it any wonder, then, that I have found it impossible to make my usual jokes about . . . well, about anything, really?

I can’t not read the news; I can’t not know what’s going on in the world I inhabit. But — unlike those wonderful late-night comedians who themselves are under fire for exercising their constitutional right to free speech — I find myself unable to make light of it. I’m worn out.

So, there will be no birthday poem for my friend this year . . . just a prosaic, though heartfelt, “Happy Birthday” greeting. And, since his day also happens to coincide with the Jewish New Year, I will offer my fervent wishes for a better year to come.

As my beloved Ukrainian grandmother used to say, and as I have quoted and paraphrased many times before . . .

“From [my] mouth to God’s ears.”

And now I will call it a night, and perhaps dream of a better world.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
9/26/25