An Antidote To the Cruelties Of Our Time

Photo of a Namibian sand gecko in Chantel’s compassionate hand

THIS STORY WAS PUBLISHED IN MEDIUM’S THE CHALLENGED.

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Stephen Dalton asks us to find a current match for the cruel remark about commoners, “Let them eat cake,” allegedly by France’s last queen, Marie Antoinette, before the French Revolution in 1789. Marie may or may not have said this, but it stuck because of her indifference to the plight of those in France who didn’t share her unearned good fortune of being born into the royal family.

Unfortunately, in the America of Donald Trump and MAGA, where cruelty reigns and is the point, there are plenty of examples. (source)

Doubly unfortunate, for citizens of my state, Iowa, Joni Ernst, one of our Senators, served a main dish of heartlessness, which she then followed a day later with a dessert of fecklessness.

You can read a terrific article about both here.

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I appreciate Stephen’s prompt because an equally powerful antidote of compassion must counter every thoughtless cruelty. That’s why I am giving no oxygen inside my story to the stupidities of Senator Ernst. For that’s what cruelty is, ignorance interwoven with indifference.

However, I will tell you a little about Chantel, whose hand is featured in the first photo. She was our guide a week ago on a Living Desert tour in Namibia’s Namib Desert.

Photo by the author

Before our group of ten emptied into the desert, Chantel asked us to follow her in a single file. As you can see, it took us a couple of tries and gentle reminders before we synced with her plea to remember that everything under our feet is a home to some animal.

Photo by the author

Like the sand gecko in the first photo. And the Namaqua chameleon pictured below.

Photo by the author

Upon meeting us, Chantel fist-bumped each, explaining that the oils on our hands would put the animals she touched at risk of their predators, using the phrase she learned two decades ago from Tommy, her mentor:

Anything can be anywhere or not.

It’s difficult to separate the children of immigrants from their parents if you hold the meaning of this sentence in your heart. Or cut America’s Medicaid program (health care for the poor and their children) to give tax cuts to the wealthy, or utter Ernst’s inanities.

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