Playing Poker

Life resembles a poker game.  None of us has any choice but to play out the cards that we’ve been dealt, one hand after the other, until the game is over.  In this country, for the most part, we can reasonably assume that the deck is not marked and that the dealer is honest – or, if he is not, that he will be replaced.

There are those elsewhere who don’t enjoy that advantage:  Today, one of the worst subhuman games of rigged poker is being played out in the hostile environment of northwestern Iraq, close to the Syrian border to the west and to Kurdish territory in the north, where the chances of ever being dealt a decent hand are low to nil. 

In America, some of us appear not to have internalized the concept of our blessings in this nation – not so in other parts of the world where disadvantage sits on the very sharp edge of persecution:

The Yazidis running away in fear of Islamic terrorists in the hostile Sinjar mountain range of northern Iraq know all about a badly dealt poker hand.  They would give almost anything to be holding the cards that we in this country have been dealt, no matter how much any American thinks he or she may be holding a lousy hand.
 
These persecuted people look yearningly at America across a vast gulf of misfortune and can only hope for a mere fraction of the benefits that our way of life provides.  Some of them are still struggling to avoid the dragnet cast by Jihadists of the Islamic State seeking to kidnap, rape, or murder them.  (The video accompanying this link will chill your conscience.)

Don’t like or respect America?  Consider this:
 
Somewhere in the unforgiving terrain on top of mount Sinjar, or in eastern Syria, or in Iraq’s Kurdish region, there are thousands of exiled Yazidis who in a heartbeat would eagerly exchange their fraudulently dealt poker hands with any of those which we Americans are holding.

Let’s chew on those observations for a few moments as we enjoy this late summer weekend.