I wonder what they were dreaming of?

I should give you fair warning that this is not a story about submarines. It is a fairly graphic story about recent events that you may just want to pass by. I will be back next week with more tails of the submarine world, but this story is about the world around us today (July 19, 2014).

I have been traveling this week so have not had much time to take in the news of the day. Catching glimpses of the stories about the border of the US disintegrating, the ongoing destruction of Iraq and Syria, Israel once again having to defend itself against the rockets of Islam, and of course the 777 shot down by Russian trained and supported forces using a Russian Buk missile system  . After almost seven years of living in a leaderless country, it breaks my heart to see what is happening to the world as a result of our “grand experiment”. I call it an experiment since it is the single most disastrous catastrophe to hit modern mankind. The grand experiment is to have elected someone with absolutely no leadership experience to the highest office in the land that used to be America. Add to that disaster that he surrounded himself with neophytes that also had no clue as to the special place that this country once held.

Reuters reports that after the explosion of the aircraft in mid air (most likely by a Russian surface to air missile), the plane disintegrated and everything in it fell to the ground. Including the bodies (many intact) that had up until that moment been dreaming in their padded airline seats. Many still had the ear buds in that piped blissful music into their ears in an attempt to drown out the plane noises around them. I have flown thousands of times over untold hundreds of thousands of miles in my life. The escape of music during those torturously long flights is indeed a blessing for travelers. Sleep is a better solution though. I have never taken a sleep aid. One of my companies actually used to offer them to us for longer flights. My only excuse was that I wanted to be as fresh as possible when I hit the ground in Paris or London so that I could take a few moments to see what else the world had to offer.

I wonder what they were dreaming of?

There was a large group of people on board headed to an Aids conference in Australia. They were led by a man whose passion was to provide cheaper and more readily available medical supplies to poorer nations that had been passed over by the drug companies as not profitable. Children were on board too, perhaps going on a vacation to see another part of the world as part of their life growth experience. Innocents all. Each with their own dreams and their own plans. I wonder if they ever in their wildest imaginations thought that their lives would be snuffed out by a rogue missile fired by Russian trained and equipped terrorists fighting for a recreation of a monstrous Soviet Union?

As I flew home yesterday over the Midwest, I could see the sprawling Mississippi snaking its way across the middle of the country. Looking around the plane I saw the weary businessmen coming home to their families. I saw a girl captured in a body that was crippled by some dystrophy that required her to be carried on the plane in a wheel chair. She was smiling and chatting with the people near her seat. There were young children and grandparents on their way to somewhere. Both seemed to be filled with a sense of adventure. The exhilaration of the plane taking off is still a thrill after forty two years of travelling. But this time was a bit different. I couldn’t help but think about how sudden it all must have been for that Malaysian airliner as it collided with a Russian missile.

I comfort myself in thinking most of them were asleep and had no time to think as they were ripped from the comfort of that atmospherically controlled space into 30,000 feet of sheer nothingness. I pray that their terror was short lived and that angels lifted their souls to safety before their bodies came crashing down into the fields and houses of the village below. I pray for their families too. They will never get a chance to say goodbye or even hold them in their arms again.

This country is spinning out of control almost as rapidly as the events around the world are spinning out of control. We have a leaderless government that spies on its own people, persecutes political opponents using the very instruments of government made to support us all, and is driving us faster and faster into a wilderness. We the people are to blame in many parts for drifting so far into a selfishness and hypocrisy that brought us this group of American haters. Too many people thought that things would be different never understanding that different can mean so many things besides better. The America that the current administration sees is a weak and feckless place with no more power than Botswana. The clueless people in the White House failed to understand that the thing that made American great was its exceptionalism that it seeks to destroy.

When you total all the failures of this administration, you end up with a list of moral surrenders that led to the shooting down of an innocent plane full of world citizens. When bad people fear no consequences for bad actions, good people die. It is that simple. We have emboldened the enemy and he is growing every day. The only thing a despot fears is that he will be vanquished in such a way that even his deeds will be swept into the ashbin of history. The man who occupies the White House can’t understand why there are so many people who now despise him. He fails to understand that it is the blood on his hands that makes him such an objectionable creature. His legacy is now cast in that same blood and he will forever be remembered as the man who would rather go to a fundraiser than to do his job.

Mister Mac