a prelude for september

And so August draws to a close. It was a strange one, as weather goes: the endless sun and heat that is typical of a Seattle August was, with few exceptions, nowhere to be seen; instead we got the cool clouds that feel more like June, or even May. As I write this it hasn't even breached 70 yet today; it's cold enough in the house that I'm wearing hoodies and blankets, which is usually reserved for spring and fall.

I . . . so usually this is the part where I say that nothing remarkable has happened, but then I think about it and, no, it's just become normal. The antivaxxers have started chugging ivermectin horse dewormer because some snake oil salesmen have told them it will help with coronavirus; ivermectin poisoning has spiked dramatically, especially in antivax strongholds like Texas. A judge in Ohio ordered a doctor to provide it to a COVID patient after the hospital rightly refused. This, to me, is more emblematic of how broken our society is than pretty much any other example I can think of. It seems like something that should be the part of a fringe, but it's alarmingly common, and there's nothing to be done about it.

And then there's America's withdrawal from the disastrous war in Afghanistan, which has led to chaos and death as the Taliban rushed in to fill the power vacuum left behind. This was always going to be the outcome, of course: American intervention invariably leads to disaster. Warhawks, of course, always say that it wouldn't lead to disaster if we'd simply "stay the course" or commit to winning or whatever, but it's always telling that they're more concerned with adding a win to the collection than in making the world a better place for anyone besides themselves. Perhaps there is a world where America actually left Afghanistan stable and peaceful, rather than simply occupying it forever or withdrawing and leaving chaos in its wake; but given how every other instance of American intervention has only destabilized, it's hard to imagine that being the case. And strategic questions aside, there is always the moral question: does a dying superpower have the right to impose its version of peace and stability on the rest of the world? If it has the right, does it have the obligation?

There is so much that is broken about this world. This, I think, is why lately I've been drawn to studying history, and the history of ideas: the hope that somewhere in there is the key to understand the nightmare we find ourselves in.

But September is here. It's a month I've always associated with hope and new beginnings--if it is summer's last hurrah, it's often a pleasant one, where the heat of the day is tempered by the nights as they slowly get longer. Yet it's also the end of fire season, when the winds of fall can stir up fires and create more destruction. That this September won't even be a reprieve from the summer certainly does feel odd. It's probably as unreasonable as my old dislike of Augusts was, but simply seeing the calendar change to September is still comforting in its own way. So here's hoping that the winds of fall bring some much-needed change.