Deep Freeze

Talk about change! New England is in the deep freeze, only a month away from those days when the temperature exceeded 50 and barely went down below freezing. It is dramatic. Over three feet of snow so far this year, and many days where the temperature has been at and below zero. And about six weeks from now, we'll have the longer days, little to no snow on the ground and if we look closely, we will begin to see buds on shrubs and trees, tiny shoots from daffodils and crocuses, but this is far from today. Who knows what six weeks will bring; the history of our lifetime may fit into a broad template, but its details are endlessly bizarre and unpredictable. Looking out across the rooftops, they are all white, and trails of steam vent everywhere, blown rapidly into invisibility. On the airwaves, the discussions center on the elections in Iraq, on America's exportation of democracy to a resistant world, on the Super Bowl between the Patriots and the Eagles, the weakened U.S. dollar in international markets, terrorism generally and with Al Queda, the Oscar nominations. A tossed salad of serious and often lightweight fluff. Whatever gets us through, I guess. We live in trivial, self-preoccupied times. And what right have we to be dictating our economic and political system to others? How are we different from the communists of the 1950s and 1960s, the domino theory of George Kennan, the "we will bury your grandchildren" of the USSR's Nikita Kruschev? Oh, America is benign, beneficent, welll-intentioned. But wait, I am an American, and I certainly do not trust my own government, so why should someone else in another part of the world with another way of living, a different religion and another form of government?