Houston, we have a problem

April 4, 2018--Sycamore Gap Hadrian's Wall

News from the U.K. reports a maddening and hateful act of vandalism.  The Sycamore Gap Tree (in a protected World Heritage site) was deliberately felled overnight, September 13th or early 14th.  Two suspects have been arrested for the act--one a 16-year old and one a man (so-called) in his 60s who should've known better.  The investigation is ongoing.

The Sycamore Gap Tree (informally called Robin Hood Tree after its cameo in the 1991 movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves staring Kevin Costner) was sent smashing into and over the top of the 1,900 year old Hadrian's Wall.  Damage to the wall too is inexplicable.  Hadrian's Wall is a world class archeological site, one that is visited daily by people from the world over.  The wall once marked the edge of Rome's Empire.  As to social development, it was instrumental in the evolution of both England and Scotland. 

Barbarians from without are not so reckless as those from within, it seems.  One could wax philosophically upon the senseless assault upon the symbolic life of Northumberia that the sycamore represented.  But words would change nothing.  And besides, we are daily besieged by similar cultural attacks and wanton environmental destruction replicated (or mutated) worldwide nowadays.  

April 4, 2018--Sycamore Gap Hadrian's Wall

That is certainly so in America.  No longer are we confined to mere spray painted graffiti and tagging.  We are hurtling toward a Taliban-like thuggery by malcontents through which extreme nazification is metamorphosing before our very eyes.  A transition from juvenile delinquency into full grown hate mongers who repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to mass slaughter, all for no real grievances at all beyond their own madness. 

April 4, 2018--an "interesting" weather day on our Hadrian's hike

Their only apparent goal is to rid this world of any life, any joy, any kindness or compassion whatsoever.  What a wretched empty existence they salivate after!  Crazed by demons themselves, and condemned to their own self-inflicted emptiness, the road they take certainly cannot be mistaken as one leading to the Promised Land; nor does such brutish vandalism lead to salvation.  Far from it.

April 4, 2018--Hadrian's Wall

We endure the cultural wreckage wrought by value sets such as the fundamentalist Taliban who destroyed the significant Salsal and Shahmama Buddhist sculptures in 1991 as being un-Islamic.  But this is not limited to one religion.  The Taliban are little different than were the iconoclasts who defaced ancient Christian monuments during Cromwell's day.  Senseless degradation has been taken up by such practices as "rolling coal" where diesels are deliberately converted (despite federal and state laws banning the practice) to create black smoke screens of unburnt fuel that dangerously clouds and obscures the roads (so called "Prius repellent") to say nothing of everyone else breathing the stuff.  Senseless, considering the price of fuel lately.      

April 4, 2018--Sycamore Gap Tree

On it goes.  Normally, rational beings analyze their actions or at least measure whether their return is worth their effort.  What return could there possibly be in walking over a mile off the B6318 road that traverses Hadrian's Wall, traipse across wet moorland that has been sectioned by barb wire while carrying a long bar chainsaw in the middle of the night...just to cut this 300 year old world renowned landmark down?

The only evident return from this act was to feed cruelty.  As if our world had need for any more.  

We are beyond what is called schadenfreude, the human psychological deformity that was metastasized by the Nazis, all the way from Blockleiter to Reichsinspekteur.  We again return to the realm of vicious sadism, a Reich that should've stayed buried 80 years ago.  We are in serious trouble as a society, as a civilization.  Infested by demons that cultivate cruelty, they feed like gluttons upon suffering.

The debris field is expanding.  Houston, we have a problem.