Where We At?

We've made it through the Naughty Aughties, and we are almost done with the Meenie Eenies, so now we got the Lack-O-Plenty Twenties to get through before, well, Doomsday I suppose. (Did you think I was going to go with the Dirty Thirties?)

Because the trend right now is the solution to the Fermi Paradox becomes available sometime in 2032, which is a bummer because I was kind of hoping to make it to 2038. But no, like Dr. Strangelove, I suppose I should stop worrying and learn to love the Bomb. You know, finally we achieve Peace In Our Time.

And the increasing lack of civility suggests we may not even make it much past 2022. History provides plenty of examples. The minute you have a breakdown in cooperation, the Empire falls apart. The minute you have any kind of inequality, people have no reason to pitch in anymore, then it is every man for himself, devil take the hindmost, and the whole thing falls apart.

Ayn Rand's Wet Dream.

Morning In America - for some!

Look, when cooperation itself is used as a disparaging term, society is in trouble. Society has been in trouble since at least 1978, when Ayn Rand's fucked-up vileness was put into practice on a regular basis, starting with Reagan and Thatcher.

The C-word, community, and the S-word, society, have indeed become the C-word and the S-word, and so we are doomed. Unless we change.

Some people would suggest we need a strong leader. Infantile types I suppose, the kind that needs a big strong man (or manly woman) to spoon them when things get scary.

Seems to me that last thing this country needs is another Caesar. Certainly not the current crop of would-be Caesars. Despite the fact that so many in this country feel a need for a strong leader, one that will kick ass and bomb little brown people back to stones, the one thing the United States does not need is another Caesar. We've had Caesars at least since Kennedy.

Is that what we really want? A strong leader? Yeah, I think so. It's not what what we need, but it is what we want. Despite the fact that the last century pretty much provided incontrovertible empirical proof - Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. - that strong leaders are rancid butt-holes that get a lot of people killed.

And to cooperate requires sacrifice. One way I would prefer to do that would be to give up something we want to get something we need. Which means, in a sane world, we give up on strong leaders that don't fucking listen to anyone except themselves and their butt-licking sycophants, and find ones that are willing to -

Ah, ha-ha-ha. Just kidding. Happy Doomsday everybody!