We live in a crazy world. Doubt it? Here’s an example.
This weekend the news has been full of stories from the ‘snowmageddon’ on the east coast of the USA (because just calling it ‘very heavy snowfall’ isn’t anything like as exciting, right?). Two feet of snow falling in just a few hours, closing airports and freeways and causing state governors to declare a state of emergency while making one Washington panda very very happy. You can see how much I’ve picked up, and I wasn’t particularly paying attention…
A couple of hours in, and the rolling news was – naturally – looking for a fresh angle on the story, some new titbit for the viewers at home to savour from the comfort of their living rooms. So they found a woman in Baltimore who works with homeless people, and asked her how her charity was coping with this extreme weather – I don’t think any of us were surprised to learn it added to their workload, but this wasn’t meant to be cutting-edge investigative journalism, it was just five minutes of filler on TV. And at some point the charity worker was asked how many people her charity helped. 2,600 she replied. There were families, there were old people, there were kids. 2,600 of them. And the conversation moved on.
But let’s just rewind a minute, forget about the snow, and look at what wasn’t considered worthy of headlines. What didn’t even raise a flicker of concern. Which is that every day, in just one city in one of the wealthiest countries on the planet, there are 2,600 homeless people reliant on charity just to get by. Come rain, come shine, come two feet of snow. Families, old people, kids. With nowhere to live, and in need of soup kitchens and shelters to make it from one day to the next, in a society awash with money, which positively worships wealth.
There’s something profoundly wrong with this picture. But then it’s a crazy world.
Imagine a world which wasn’t.
Imagine a world where a person of wealth and substance, a modern-day Croesus, a – for the sake of argument, let’s say a Donald Trump – halted his campaign for power and glory, and his gospel of hatred and fear, and declared he’d thought about those homeless people, and how just a fraction of his $4.5billion fortune could help them.* Imagine a world where it occurred to him that this might be a noble and worthwhile use of his money, one which would – arguably – provide him with a greater legacy than building yet another exclusive golf course no-one will ever see. Imagine a world where he got up behind the podium at one of his rallies and announced to his supporters he was going to use his wealth to help the poorest in his country…. Go on, give it a go.
Not easy, is it? Now tell me it isn’t a crazy world.
* If Trump did this, even I might be tempted to vote for him. Although, in honesty, it’s not that likely.
And he’d still have to do something about the hair.