The times they are a-tortuous

Mad, mad world: Opening our phones in the morning only negates whatever rest we may have had during the night because the relentless onslaught of bad news is upon us again. — Others

IS it the weather that can’t seem to decide whether it is going to be wet or dry? Either way it is so hot that you enter a room with closed windows and immediately feel that you’ve accidentally been shoved into an oven. Or you take a shower to wash off sweat and cool down, only to emerge and start perspiring again.

Whatever it is, what I feel is just plain exhausted. If there are still people who do not believe in climate change, they can go out and lie in the sun and burn for all I care. Or drown in some over-filled drain that can’t cope with the day’s deluge. If you’re in the mood for some depressing imaginings of what a climate- ravaged society might look like, read Megha Majumdar’s book A Guardian and a Thief. It tells the tale of a near-future Kolkata where people are desperate to escape the starvation and misery caused by extreme weather. It’s sobering.

But while my body may still have some semblance of energy, the part of me that is truly exhausted is my brain. Every day it is subject to any number of tortuous news. On the international front, we have unnecessary wars that never seem to resolve, not least because they are led by men who speak with forked tongues. Worse, they are men who can’t decide what to do to remedy the situation and try to cover up their failures by painting them as victories.

In some places we see male leaders (yes, they’re almost always male) trapped by pride into an inability to admit they were wrong and hold on to power only to repeat the same mistakes. My brain, however, holds a special fatigued place for the women, especially the brown ones, who keep these ineffectual men in power and who hope to maintain their perpetually precarious place at the top of the totem pole by being even worse than the men.

That’s just the international scene which, while seemingly far away geographically, can only be ignored while we are asleep. Even then, turning on our phones the next morning only negates whatever rest we may have had during the night because the relentless onslaught of bad news is upon us again.

Amongst all that, the only spark of light may be Pope Leo XIV who seems to be the only sane thinking person these days. He says what needs to be said about war, about bigotry towards migrants and about artificial intelligence. You must wonder why the rest of us non- Catholics are deprived of a leader who gives us hope in these dark times. Does none exist at all?

On the home front, things are not much better. It is almost impossible to keep up with who our government is these days. On the one hand, it’s supposed to be the government of unity, of harmony and of reform. On the other hand, why does it feel that we have none of these?

The government seems to be crumbling by the minute, like organisms that are constantly breaking away and duplicating itself. Its own partners seem to have no qualms about slapping it in the face. How does one respond to such impudence while still vowing to keep that united coalition going? The mind boggles.

It is just tiring to be subjected to official words and know that that’s all they are. We read about great “concern” about human rights violations in our prisons. Concern is not the same as outrage. Outrage might lead to action, whereas concern may lead to handwringing, a meeting or two and then the wait for the issue to die out. Yet while we rightly grab international headlines by protesting about human rights violations in Gaza, how do we justify doing the same thing at home?

Most people would probably consider this a small matter if they even noticed it, but I must wonder on behalf of all thinking women what our Great Leader was thinking when he welcomed and entertained Sneako, a member of that despicable species known as a manosphere influencer? Sure, his cap and robe were impressive but a closer look would reveal him as a racist, bigot and misogynist who should not come anywhere near any politician who remembers that half his voters are women. Unless they have views about women and other ethnicities and religions in common?

This is what is exhausting, to realise that words and actions are now revealing themselves to be everything you were hoping for them not to be. Is it too much to ask for our leaders to mean what they say? Sometimes I think it’s almost better for them to come out and say what they’re really thinking, rather than pretend to be what they’re not. At least we would know where we stand.

Given how things are, however, it might mean we have even less hope. And that is even more debilitating.

Marina Mahathir is wondering why stupidity is often genuine while intelligence is artificial. The views expressed here are solely the writer’s own.