Last night, I found myself singing the Beatles' line: "Nothing to get up about — Strawberry fields forever."  It came to mind as I contemplated our stressed world — too many intrigues of consequence whirling.  Their centripetal force wants to distance me from them and their dreaded particulars.  I am reminded of the character Pangloss, talking to an old man sitting under a tree in Voltaire's satirical novel Candide.  Pangloss inquires of the old man his thoughts on the recent stabbings of two viziers and the strangling of a mufti in the Ottoman courts.  The old man responds:

I have never known the name of any Mufti, nor of any Vizier.  I have no idea what you're talking about; my general view is that people who meddle with politics usually meet a miserable end, and indeed they deserve to.

Note that Pangloss asked the question to elicit the man's "particular" opinion on some newsworthy assassinations.  What Pangloss got instead was the old man's "general" disdain for mischievous politicians who, in his view, usually come to a bad end.  (Voltaire hadn't met the Clintons.)

I cannot completely detach myself as does the old man.  I cannot merely tend my own garden and have strawberry fields forever.  I cannot also claim there is nothing to get up about.  Sadly, the dreaded particulars of the Ukrainian situation are too many not to mention the web of intricate vexations issuing forth from Biden and the progressives.  While I am justly worried, I also find it exhausting to follow the political intricacies both at home and abroad.

It's more than a full-time job trying to be Pangloss and the old man simultaneously.  If you're like me, you wonder — is that the Progressives' strategy?  And what then is the ratio of the purposeful to the incompetent?  Biden may be a desiccated sock puppet, but how are pump prices, inflation, and the Putin problem ameliorated by that being the case?  Whatever the case, the problems remain.

The choice to be Pangloss or the old man is a luxury dilemma for me.  Imagine how exhausting it is for Ukrainians fighting an urban war against Putin.  That is how they are tending their garden.  Also, they can't afford our luxury of having opinions.  Their hope is in their scrappy fighting spirit, their rifles, and improvised weaponry.

In a Fox News interview, Medal of Honor recipient and retired Navy SEAL Staff Sgt. David Bellavia said that "[t]he amount of Ukrainians fighting for the love of their country should 'scare the hell out of Putin.'"

Bellavia elaborated:

Home-field advantage is going to go to the defender. As this war goes on, you put a machine gun behind the door, I don't care if you are SEAL Team 6 or Marvel 'Avengers,' you are going to get shot. To me, it makes no sense from a tactical level why Putin would want to attempt this.

I hope this is true.  To help me gauge my daily position on the Pangloss/old man continuum, on my phone, I have two categories of go-to apps: my preferred news sites and my God and prayer apps.  

Spruce Fontaine cohosts Time to Burn, livestreamed every other Thursday @ 9:00 PM on Shing.Tv and replayed on Spreaker.

Image via Pixnio.