According to the Oxford Dictionary, powerlessness is defined as “the subjective feeling of having no control, authority, or influence over situations, often resulting in vulnerability, stress, and behavioral inhibition.”

There are a lot of people out there who are feeling powerless these days and I’m one of them.

We feel powerless over the what’s going on in the Middle East and the impact America’s unprovoked war on Iran is having on our daily lives, unless you’re one of those people who choses to ignore what’s going on in the world around you, and if so this, editorial is particularly aimed at you.

When Donald Trump tweeted, “ ‘A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,’ if a deal isn’t reached by 8 p.m.” last Tuesday, it triggered a level of anxiety that hasn’t been felt since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. I was only a year old then, but my dad was serving in the Canadian Navy at the time and he told me about how tense it was among service members, their families and most of the rest of the country.

Of course, there was a part of me that thought it was all just a lot of bluster on Trump’s part. After all, didn’t he start this war because he wanted to change the regime and free the Iranian people? But then again, if he really did do something that crazy would anyone be surprised?

And again we feel powerless because we came to the realization a long time ago that there is no one in the United States who is capable or even willing to try to place limits on the lunacy to which he will sink.

He is operating with complete impunity and the knowledge that he has one to answer to, because he can’t run for a third term.

Most of us also feel powerless over what’s going on in Lebanon and continues to go on in Gaza, where the Israeli Defence Force has been operating with complete impunity as well. And their actions are beyond reproach for fear that anyone who criticizes them will be labeled antisemetic even though their are thousands of Jewish people in North America and even in Israel who are against the military action as well.

The images from Gaza were bad enough, but now you have residential apartment buildings being bombed in Beirut and thousands of Meronite Christians in southern Lebanon risking their lives because they refuse to abandon their towns and villages.

What’s going in this world is crazy, and that’s just one of the many words that can be used to describe the times were in.

I feel powerless and anxious and often sick to my stomach and I’m a 64-year-old adult. I can only imagine what many young people and children must be going through if they have access to news about what’s going on. Unless there has been such an overload of news about war and genocide and bombings and threats to wipe out an entire civilization, that this is the new normal. And if that is the case, then I really feel powerless about everything that’s going on and I weep for my children’s future and that of their children should they have any.