Missive For Some Patriots: Don'T Believe What's Before Your Eyes Poem by Frank Avon

This reminds me of a brief story MarkTwain wrote about people in a church praying for God's help in their war against their neighbor. A ragged man bursts in and shouts, Do you even know what you're praying for? And then he describes in vivid detail the young men on the other side maimed or killed, the farms and crops destroyed, widespread famine, orphans everywhere, the total collapse of society. That's what your victory will entail! he says. Then he leaves and everyone in the church agrees he was a madman. Mark Twain left instructions for the story to be published AFTER HIS DEATH. He was a wise and clever man. But here we are in the early 21st century, fighting wars continually, one after another, and no politician even suggests a way out of this abyss of violence. I certainly don't have a solution, but Carl Sagan's mantra during the Cold War was - OK, your aggressive foreign policy is directed against Communism's spread, and it's lasted for forty years, and in those four decades WHO SPEAKS FOR THE EARTH? Amen to that! Who indeed speaks for the Earth? (Or to borrow Shakespeare, A PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES FOR THEY HAVE MADE ME A GRAVE MAN.)