So Many Smart and Wise People, So Many Foolish and Awful Outcomes

    Over the course of history-- pick up any book that covers more than a few months-- and we find that people are always making choices that lead to the often grizzly or horrific ends of others. We look at genocides as one example, that crops up too much, but there are smaller and more telling stories of how us humans are simply poor at making the right decisions, rulings, judgments, policies, standards.

    We are all imperfect, we know that. Yet, despite our best and worst errors, which are often simply accidental, we also commit horrendous mistakes that are intentional.

    George Orwell illustrated this in his genius novels. He summed us up in allegorical cartoons satirizing communists and those that thought they had better ways to improve humanity, our shared living quarters and spaces on this one planet where we have been rubbing shoulders on since time immemorial. Time immemorial? That is a reference to the times that we do not have much known or written about it. We gather clues and evidence from paleontology, anthropology, archaeology, and all the other studies. Ice samples. Carbon dating. Art and bones and cave drawings.

    I had a neighbor who died of her health condition--she was older and had diabetes--but she should have had her medicine to avoid the unfortunate and preventable demise, because her few days waiting for the insurance to purchase the right medicine was lapsed. In other words, the delivery of the incoming medicine that she depended on did not happen because of poor timing. It was a matter of a simple payment schedule that killed her.

    Whose fault was this? Not coming from a wise or smart person, in our collective opinion, yes? Was it the woman or her family's fault, or the system that allowed the lapse to occur? Perhaps a combination of the parties involved?

    People make bad decisions on short term bases and over the long term. A guy gets drunk and kills others in his car, whereas another smokes cigarettes and gets himself cancer and even puts secondhand smokers at risk.

    Then we think of the politicians and bosses and companies that help us or hurt us. Some think that they are doing us wonders, while others may not care much other than their personal bottom line, which is usually money.

    There are religious people and organized faiths that can hurt or help others. People make mistakes in these groups and organizations. Some believers with extreme practices can put others at risk. Militaries and law enforcement personnel are blamed for hurting and killing others, egregiously. Most of us, I think, believe that the law enforcement in most communities are protecting us more than they harm us.

    There are wise and foolish in every profession and place.

    Who are the most foolish? Are some purposefully hurtful towards others for their own gain? Case by case, many of us may review what the goals and purposes of individuals and movements and parties were over time. We may debate who meant well. Marx and Engels thought they had the answers, but it seems that repeatedly for almost two centuries those who tried to implement socialism or communism came up very short: too authoritarian, too draconian, too stagnant, too self-serving, too unnatural, too against real economics.

    Here we are in 2025, watching and observing some men and women making decisions that on some levels seem to be "stopping waste" and by implication corruption, malfeasance, wrong-minded programs and jobs that do not do anything effective but give some cush jobs to some superfluous and deplete the tax payers' money. This in the United States, which is not as bad as Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, Sudan, and a few other war-torn parts of our planet. 

    Humans doing terrible things against other humans. In ghastly, violent ways.

    Meanwhile in our country, thousands have arbitrarily lost their jobs, which sooner and later will lead to deaths, some by consequences that were not thought of judiciously, with so many of their positions and whole missions were cut. Here and abroad, people are going to die due to DOGE purges. Musk will have blood on his hands, graves and cemeteries will be filled of those that are getting cut under the rather unhinged and mean auspices of Donald J. Trump.

    The peacemaker, or so-called would be "wise guy" deal maker, is sowing a bitter crop. Perhaps he has cut a deal with the Devil? Putin is bad enough. Thousands of souls will haunt that murderous despot till eternity roils over, however that works.

    Wise fools, like the sophomores are known as. But this is not sophomoric, only, this is for real.

    Awful outcomes will befall the allegedly smart and wise. Do not take us all for fools.

    We must survive. Smart or dumb.

    Wars and crimes, the fighters and the bullies and the law breakers have their place. Then there are the rest of the dunderheads.

    May we know the difference. And act and behave accordingly.

    May we go forward with diligence and the wisdom that remains with us.

    But, I think the abruptness, the very obvious