A Very Ugly Place Indeed

The world can seem a not very pretty place these days.  No reflection (especially on Earth Day) on the spectacular show that nature stages every Spring. Rather, it has to do with the way the top of the food chain is trashing the place.
Politically, for just a couple of examples, the local solons continue their process of mucking up the school situation in our fair metroplex. You don't want your kids in school with mine, and I don't want mine in school with yours. I don't want to pay for your kids, and you don't want to pay for mine. Or yours. And so the stomach turns.  Then there are the Feds, who have their hands full with a petty thief out West who wants to make himself out the Great American Patriot.  He isn't Robin Hood, unless Robin's story got backward somewhere along the line. I suspect that the various agencies are a bit anxious about another Waco or Ruby Ridge breaking out. To me, it's time to give this clown a date certain to pay his bills, or his property gets seized. No more ifs, ands, or Fox News butts.
Spiritually, if there still is such a thing that can be taken seriously, the church continues in the throes of an inability to stand up for what's right. Some of those in positions that they feel requires them to make "bold" pronouncements on How Things Should Be, tell everyone else-who are chastised for calling one another names-that if they weren't so stupid, they could see the damage the debate is doing to the church, and if they were only as "holy" as those making the pronouncement they wouldn't be hung up on little things like right and wrong. In the church.
Which explains the church's lack of credibility on anything that matters.
The debate isn't doing the damage. The damage is the result of milquetoast leadership that can't find a position with both hands, and doesn't have the courage to do anything that's right if it's going to endanger the job, or the fantasy of episcopal election, or becoming a unicorn herder, or whatever.
While it would be easy to pile log on log of the conflagration, I'd suggest a couple of little bumps on the proverbial road to fake hell. First, something possessed Rupert Murdoch to put Neil DeGrasse Tyson on television for an hour a week to tell some truth. Yes, Rupert Murdoch. Master of Faux News. Hacker of murder victims' families' cell phones. Rupert Freaking Murdoch! Dr. Tyson is the preeminent spokesperson for education, intelligence, integrity and honesty in what passes for our current public discourse. Watch Cosmos. Feel better about doing your own thinking.
Second, at the risk of appearing immodest, opt out. Ditch what's killing you. Stop wasting your life if what you're doing is worthless or doesn't lead to your bliss, in the Joseph Campbell sense. I have found salvation in working with special needs teenagers. This work makes a real, tangible difference in their lives every day.
If you trusted people with your life, and subsequently discovered that you had been deceived by deceivers and are somewhere between spinning your wheels, murder, or suicide, take the reigns back. You do not owe liars your life.
Remember your dreams. Find the place to make a difference. Change the world.
It can still be done!
And then the world starts to look like a more beautiful place again.