Toto, we have a problem (for Ungagged 13)

This is Chuck Hamilton from Chattanooga, Tennessee, in the U.S. of A., also called (by me anyway) Neverland, the land of those who never grow up.  Or at least I did until we went through the looking glass and down into the rabbit hole, to find that the narcissitic Mad Hatter and his Mad Tea Party managed to dethrone  the psychopathic Queen of Hearts who kept saying “Off with their head!” about folks ranging from Moammar Qaddafi to Julian Assange and cheated the White Rabbit out of his just due with help from the Wicked Witch of the South.  Now we learn that the Hatter will see on his first official state visit the Wicked Witch of the East, which makes sense given that they both have evil Winged Monkeys for advisors. 

Folks, we are no longer in Kansas, we are now in Wonderland.  But we’re not going to get home by clicking our heels together wearing ruby slippers and saying “there’s no place like home” three times, because the Cheshire Cat who is married to the Queen of Hearts and his friend across the pond, the Wizard of Oz, already took us too far away. 

What is the answer?  Don’t ask me, I’m just a wooden puppet who wants to some day become a real boy. 

Maybe, though, each of us is like the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion.  No one can give us what we already have, the brains to think for ourselves rather than accept the piles of Orwellian bullshit being spread over the landscape to further fertilize the fields to grow crops of wealth for the plutocrats and oligarchs, the courage to resist the long train of abuses and usurpations evincing a design to enslave us all under absolute despotism, and the heart not only to survive but to lift up and fight for not just ourselves but for each other and for those around us, and not just those, but also for those across borders and oceans, mountains and deserts, classes and religions.  There is but one race, the human race.  And there are no aliens, because we are all from and of this planet.  We are all Terrans, citizens of Earth, and we are all each others’ brothers, sisters, and cousins.  An injury to the least of us is an injury to us all. 

Yes, with Peter Pan incarnate and his Merry Band of Lost Boys and Girls mainlining liquidized volumes of Atlas Shrugged with the Repugs in firm control of Congress while the Dems aid and abet them every step of the way, we are in for a rough ride.  But if Saturday’s outpouring of unity and goodwill all across the world has taught us anything, it’s that the vast majority of us all around the planet are willing to stand up and say, “No more”, that “we will not go gently into that good night and we will not vanish without a fight”, that the needs of we the many outweigh the greed of the very few, that this world and its people are theirs no more.  We may be in for a rough ride, but I recently heard on a TV show that the only way to get through hell is to go all the way through it.  Our day will come, inshallah.