Listen:
It is seventeen degrees Celsius in Indianapolis and partly cloudy, which is the kind of weather God uses when He cannot decide whether to bother. The crocuses are up. The dogwood is thinking about it. A man on Meridian Street is washing his car as though the Republic depends on it, and perhaps, at this point, it does.
I am writing this because someone has to, and because the alternative is to sit very quietly and listen to the radiators tick. The radiators in Indianapolis tick in the key of D minor. This is a fact I learned as a child and have never had the equipment to verify.
So.
In Washington, on Saturday night, a young man with a manifesto and a firearm tried to enter the dinner where the President of the United States was eating his dessert. He fired the gun. People threw themselves under the tablecloths, which is what tablecloths are now for. The young man, a tutor by trade, had written down in advance that he was an assassin and intended to take the leadership in order, like a child working through a list of chores. He was apprehended before he could complete his homework.
So it goes.
I want to point out, gently, that we now have a society in which the dinner is the dangerous part. We have built nuclear submarines and quantum computers and self-driving cars, and the most perilous thing a citizen can do is eat a small chicken in a hotel ballroom while the press takes pictures. The Founders did not anticipate this. The Founders anticipated very little, which is why they were so confident.
The British, undeterred by gunfire, are sending a King anyway. King Charles and Queen Camilla will arrive at the White House on Monday for a garden party, an address to Congress, and a banquet. I assume the banquet has been catered. I assume the catering has been screened. The British have always been tremendously good at pretending that nothing is happening, which is the principal export of the British Isles and has been since the invention of tea.
Meanwhile, in Mali, a car bomb killed the defence minister at his own house, which is the location at which one is theoretically safest. He had been the country's defence and was unable to defend his own front door. The men who killed him were, depending on the morning paper, jihadists or separatists or both, and they had attacked all over the country at once, in a coordinated way, the way termites do.
So it goes.
In the eastern Pacific Ocean, the United States military blew up another small boat. Three men were on it. The Pentagon says they were trafficking narcotics. The Pentagon has now killed one hundred and eighty-five people this way, on small boats, in the middle of the sea, where there are no juries and no judges and no lawyers and no witnesses except the dolphins, who are not subpoenaed.
So it goes.
In Colombia, a bomb on a highway killed nineteen people in the run-up to next month's election, which is how some democracies decide to RSVP. Forty more were injured. Meanwhile, the United States Mint, according to a newspaper story I read with growing wonder, has been buying gold from cartels in Colombia and stamping it with American eagles, the way a child sticks gold stars on his own forehead and announces that he has won.
I love America. I have always loved America. America is the only country in the world that has the gall to launder its money through itself.
Forty years ago this week, a reactor exploded at a place called Chernobyl. I remember it well. We all said, then, Never again, in the firm tone we reserve for promises we don't intend to keep. The reactor is still there. The wolves have moved in. The wolves are doing fine. They are, in fact, the only constituency in the entire affair that came out ahead, which proves something about wolves and something else about us.
In the meantime, the world's nations spent two trillion, eight hundred billion dollars on weapons last year. This is more money than has ever been spent on weapons in any year in the history of the species, which is the kind of record that should be printed in The Guinness Book between Largest Pumpkin and Most Marriages by a Single Person. Up two-point-nine percent, the report says, in the dry voice of an accountant tabulating ruin.
Two-point-nine percent! Imagine the meeting. Imagine the slide deck. Imagine the small woman from Stockholm who has to type the numbers and go home for supper.
In New York, in front of the United Nations, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are marching again, ahead of a review conference on the Non-Proliferation Treaty. They are very old now. They have been marching for eighty years. They are the most patient people on the planet, and the planet has rewarded their patience by adding more bombs.
So it goes.
In Tehran, the foreign minister has packed a small suitcase and flown to Moscow to confer with Mr. Putin, since the talks with Mr. Trump did not happen, on account of the talks with Mr. Trump never happening. Mr. Trump, for his part, has said the Iranians may telephone him whenever they like. The Iranians have not telephoned. Oil prices, sensing that nobody is going to be reasonable any time soon, went up two percent, which is what oil prices do when grown men sulk.
In Pakistan, the city of Islamabad locked itself down for talks that did not take place, then sheepishly unlocked itself. A shopkeeper was quoted asking why he had closed his shop. This was the most cogent question asked by anyone, anywhere, last weekend.
In Lebanon, satellite photographs show whole towns reduced to gravel. From space, the gravel looks tidy. From the ground, I am told, less so.
I have a theory, which I offer free of charge:
The human animal is the only creature on Earth that can hold simultaneously, in the same skull, the conviction that it is the chosen species and the conviction that everyone else is the problem. This is what theologians call free will. It is what I call the trouble.
Out my window in Indianapolis the partly cloudy sky is doing what partly cloudy skies do. A robin is on the lawn and very pleased with himself. He has not read the newspaper. This is his great advantage over me.
Somewhere a King is being measured for a tuxedo. Somewhere a tutor is being read his rights. Somewhere an old woman from Hiroshima is putting on sensible shoes for a long march. Somewhere a wolf in Pripyat is having a very nice afternoon.
And so it goes, and so it goes, and so it goes.
If there are any Tralfamadorians reading this, please send help. Or, failing that, please send a good joke. We are running short.
