Where Are We Going?

It's curious how one's internal demeanour can go from a state of tranquil, in the moment repose, sitting in the late afternoon sun in the garden, mindful of nothing but being; to absolute outraged turmoil, simply by picking up the day's paper. Pictured, the place of mindful no mind that is our garden, where time can simply evaporate into just being. Then I make the mistake of reading the newspaper, and find a piece by Zing Tsjeng about the rise of some pretty weird far right [so-called Christian] doctrinaire thinking on the other side of the pond. There has always been Christian fundamentalism in the US, which matches [ironically] pretty much the kind of Islamic fundamentalism prevalent in Iran, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, to name but three examples. The home of the brave and the land of the free would seem, from the perspective of this moderately sane and lofty place of sanctuary at any rate, to be attempting to actually become a theocracy itself; mirroring those very other states that it would set itself at odds against, oft-times violently. There is, apparently, a movement afoot in the States to roll back on the voting rights of women - weirdly and disturbingly backed by many conservative women themselves - and bringing those voting rights into the sole orbit of the [male, of course] head of the household once again. Stepford Wives, anyone?