Easter 2025 by Alfred N.Muggins (Rogue Reporter (please don’t shoot me, I’m only the armchair journalist))

1/5/25
    Easter came in even more haste than usual, it seemed to Alfred, who liked, in recent years, to write something appropriate to this time of reflection and forgiveness. This year he could still not forgive ‘Bad’ Vladimir Putin, the tinpot oligarch of Russia, whose tentacles still gripped that longsuffering State in its deadly grip, and caused it to continue its now longstanding invasion of Ukraine. He was still not going to give up the remorseless attack on the smaller neighbor and erstwhile province of the previous Russian and Soviet Empires, until he perhaps finally would journey to the afterlife of Hell, to which Alfred was famously convinced he was destined. Then the missiles would stop and the doomed soldiers would depart from their trenches and finally go home to their wives and mothers and daughters. Hopefully there would be no one else to succeed with the same determination in the face of all the threats and opposition to his vision of an imperial Russia and his invasion of an erstwhile colony. And then hopefully one day, eventually the poor picked upon Ukrainians would have peace. They could reunite their families, and their brothers, fathers and sons could come back from their trenches to normal life, able to vote for their own politicians, and their own paths
    Nor this year was the fate of the poor Palestinian people at the heart of his reflections, or of the European leaders. There was no one to defend them from the onslaught of extremist Zionist Israel, still gradually expanding their settlements with militant Jews attracted to their expanding State from all over. These poor people and even their militants deserved his concern, for they had been tossed aside and neglected by the free nations, and by the Arab nations, by muslim and Christian nations alike. The money of the Zionists was too tempting, and the American President, who might have restrained them partly was no longer there! He had been replaced by another one, who was guided by no moral principles at all, and was not even interested in the history of the land, or even its peoples, or the fairness of international laws. Not that Biden had really done anything to stop it, or to protect them. The new American Trump obviously had far less moral scruples.
    None of the various interests in Trump’s new regime cared for Palestinians at all. There were no moral principles to prevent them allowing the Israeli Zionist wing to do whatever they wanted. They likewise cared little for Ukraine or Eastern Europe, or even for their own traditional friends and allies. 
    So this was the change of power in the United States, the lynchpin of the western world, or the democratic world, the erstwhile Policeman of the world. America would no longer be keeping the peace anywhere, or even protecting the free world! It had gone over to the Dark Lord and his allies, and would no longer be helping even its own citizens to prosper. 
    So when the sun rose again on Easter Sunday there was a shadow surrounding it this year, as freedom and democracy, kindness and generosity were no longer the guiding principles of an America doomed to the train ride of chaos, at least in the near future.