“To those who do not know the world is on fire, I have nothing to say.” – Bertolt Brecht, playwright, anti-Nazi.

Brecht was talking about people in the late 1930s who saw the rise of Nazism, but did nothing about it. They didn’t even pretend to do anything about it.

But what would Brecht say about people today who see the rise of totalitarianism in America, who see the Middle East slipping into open warfare, who see Iran destabilizing the region when it was hardly stable to begin with, who see the Russia-Ukraine war slowly escalating – and do nothing. They don’t even pretend to do anything. They just sit idly and, in effect, sing Kumbaya.

And they sing it badly, as if they were tone-deaf. Maybe they are. They are surely deaf to the pleas for help of those who are squeezed between the jaws of rising inflation and flat earnings. They are deaf to the pleas for help of Israelis, who on Oct. 7, 2023 suffered the most killed on any day since the Holocaust. They are deaf to the warnings of those who see the First Amendment, quite predictably, following the Second into the shredder.

However, unlike Brecht, I have a lot to say to these apathetic people. But none of it is printable.