DIRTY FALL SEASON

Christmas is a season of a forgotten cause and ignorance of reality. Parts of Western society get covered by endless consumerism, indulgence in foodstuffs and abhorrent bad taste. The climate doesn't help, neither does the news. In Europe the trees are barren and the mood is bedridden.

The EU resorted to a trick of sorts to decide starting adhesion talks with Ukraine. Financial help was postponed until the proper corrupt deal will be found to stop Hungary's insane objection. Is there any rationale for the EU to keep Hungary in a normative club? 

The EU formidable players are all gone. The salesmen/women who now occupy the various posts are a pathetic lot, wherein the good drown.

The Gaza conflict has made thousands of victims and one major casualty: Netanjahu's Israel, which has lost its moral compass and its friends' respect. He is more and more the reincarnation of Theodor Herzl, whom Cristopher Hitchens saw as a race theorist and nationalist.

The United States enter an ugly electoral year wherein the Neanderthal Republicans will create every form of havoc under the sun. Trump is already the puppet-master of this descent into hell. He had better not overplay his hand though, because King Lear's loneliness might still have more appeal than the empty thunder of a freak.

The noise is now such that the many ailments in the world receive less attention than the deafening Christmas pranks here and there. When was Sudan last mentioned?  How are the Taliban doing? What happens in Myanmar? What is on P.M. Modi's mind? And one can go on, arriving at the climate farce of last week.

In Europe, not since Hitler and Stalin, have we seen a personality as ruthless as Putin, who appears clinically obsessed by remembrance of a lost empire. It becomes hard to imagine that he might ever become party to a solution of the war in good-faith. Eventually the Ukraine situation will have to come up with some form of diplomatic formula. It is a safe bet to predict that Putin will get away with it, and then find a way to stir the waters in the Baltic and the Black Sea. He will patiently wait for the next US president, praying for another deranged Trump administration.

People are glued to The Crown. Everybody realizes that the monarchy looks mostly out of touch, but many start to realize that therein lies its endurance. Being above politics makes the formula acceptable to most, while remote to all. At least it doesn't fear  being contaminated by the abysmal vulgar and often ignorant assertations of the political class. It might appear clueless but it is not an accomplice.