Maidan

When things happen, I suppose they happen quickly.  

One might pray, if so inclined, that the world hangs like a pendulum's weight, and when it swings, the world swings with it. 

Chavez is dead and his successors have inherited a mess they cannot hope to contain, and socialism once again fails.

Yanukovich has fled Kiev and the protestors have taken his home, the government has released the leader of the opposition party from jail. 

The might of Russia, a modern powerful nation, has been shown in no small part to be nothing more than a myth, a paper tiger that cannot even provide working toilets for the Olympics, shaming themselves on the world's stage...

The pendulum swings, tyrants fall and false idols are cast down. 

And yet...

And yet, the world does not hang like a pendulum's weight. The future is not yet written, and too many people still believe in the dream, that the man selling you a life of ease and prosperity, if only you give him more power, can actually provide it. 

The Future is unwritten, as it always has been.  Today the Tyrants are on the ropes, but others remain. 

Tomorrow there may be blood and fire. Tomorrow the Iron Boot may come down.  

For the people of Kiev I have only hope.  For the people of Venezuela I know that there is more blood to come, their fight is not over.  For Russia, they have merely suffered the indignity of their incompetence, their dreams of power and control have not yet died. 

And for us? 

We still believe the man in the pulpit, the liar who sells us our dreams as if they were mere baubles that had been kept from us by greedy children. 

I know in my soul I want the blood. I want the fire.  Justice demands it. The suffering their lies cause cries out for vengeance, it cries out for blood.  I would make such an object lesson of them that the world would tremble, that all would be tyrants, great and small, would know what waits for them.

But I am just a man. 

No. 

I am not even that. I am a shadow, an electronic ghost, invisible. 

Today, I am content.  Today it does not matter. 

Today there is still hope.