Monday, September 12, 2022

Waiting for Godot, or God

 Ever since I wrote that piece about someone throwing the Climate Change “ON” switch, I have begun feeling like “Waiting for God” is the most likely description of ME.  I wish it were “Waiting for Godot”.

But two things seem to have settled in around everyone at least in America. First, Climate Change is real, and now seems deadly. And second, The Republican Party is dead and it has been taken over by some neo-Nazi clique.  The awful realization that has now taken over my brain is that both of these things are now permanent and may prove fatal to everyone in America.  We may in fact have destroyed the Nation within which we had hoped to see our kids, grandkids and even great grandkids mature and live happily.

When I was younger, I always assumed the best. That if one political party or the other became seemingly errant and potentially destructive to our Nation (see Reagan, or Nixon, or George W. Bush), they would soon be voted out of office and the people would regain some semblance of reality and maturity. And Climate?? Well, the Climate was always changing, not only seasonally, but from one year to the next.  One year we would have horrendous hurricanes, the next not so much.  One year, it would snow like we all lived in the Arctic, and then the snow would give way to daffodils.



And then, slowly it might seem, we began reading that we were facing a bigger Climate Change scenario, one that would literally give us a totally new game. Except, this game might kill us. But not to worry, it was going to be a while before that kicked in and we still had plenty of time to mount corrective measures. We would be fine.

And then, well, nothing happened. Everyone still wanted their gasoline engines, or their coal-fired furnaces. We still continued cutting down forests. Emissions controls??? Heavens, No, what are you thinking? That would require us to change our lifestyles and maybe even change the way we allocated resources.

But, you know, we sent some dudes off to the Moon in a fiery rocket thing. And they actually sent us some cool pics back.  And, of course, we continued killing one another in one war after another.  Turns out Wars are not good for the environment either.  And since I was born, we’ve had World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the endless Middle East killing fields, and the list goes on. We do seem to love killing one another.  And think of all the dudes killed in those wars. Some of them might have wanted us to engage in Emissions Control approaches. Who knows? Crazier things have happened.

And then there’s our politics, speaking of killing machines. We have always had kind of a weird system.  We moved away from the Royal-Kingly systems.  For some reason, we thought giving the power to select our government leaders to the people was better than having kings and queens selected randomly by a few dudes and dudettes. That remains an outstanding question with no serious answer.

But at least we seemed able to stumble along.  And then we moved into, of all things, a new millennium.  And we battled along, and then, and then, we elected a Black President, Barack Obama by name. And he was a wonder. He actually was capable of rational thought. I know, what a concept huh, a president who could think? And he governed as a wonder also. We (well some of us) loved having this man as President. It gave hope that this country had finally left the Civil War behind.

And then, who the Fuck did we elect??? Donald Trump???? We were given a choice—an intelligent woman (who happened to be married to Bill Clinton), or a corrupt, thoroughly incompetent Donald Trump. Note please, he had never succeeded at anything in life. He had experienced six bankruptcies, with more to follow, three marriages, two failed and a third showing every sign of repeat failure.  He had cheated to stay out of the military—fake “bonespurs”.  Oh, and his daddy seems to have been a literal Nazi. What a guy. And the American people actually voted for him rather than Hillary.  However imperfect you might have thought Hillary—compared with old Bonespurs, she seems a total high IQ saint. Maybe we should have elected her Queen.

Happily, Bonespurs was so terrible that he only lasted one term, with old Joe Biden kicking him out of office. And then, perhaps predictably, old Bonespurs began pretending the election was flawed and he had actually won. He even tried to get various state officials to appoint different electors to appoint him President.  Amazing really.

But beyond his astonishing and ongoing acts of corruption, lying, attempts to steal the election, somehow, he converted his gang of supporters from just ordinary disgruntled republican voters into something different. Just to show how they cared, they stormed our Capitol, with killings as part of their act, and that group now symbolized the opposition forces, led by Trump.  And that violent group continues to this day to dominate the opposition party. We should no longer call them republicans. But the Republican Party of old (think Eisenhower) finally died, and was taken over by old Bonespurs’ Neo-Nazis.  They really need a new name. They resemble the Christian Taliban. Maybe someone can “Americanize” that term.

And so now we have two opposing political parties, one of which—the TrumpAliban-is a violent, corrupt group who do not mind killing people to get their way. Really, think Afghan Taliban for this group.

And now we seem to have gone beyond some point of No Return on Climate Change (it will continue worsening regardless of what we do), and we have a criminally violent political party, led by Donald Trump, trying to destroy America. What could go wrong, huh?

So we are left with this question. Is it still possible to pull back from our headlong rush to throw America off the cliff? Does anyone have any braking mechanism? We will gain some vital clues during this upcoming 2022 election. If Donald Trump succeeds, then our world may finally be finished and we will be headed off the cliff into the canyon of flames down below.  So, let’s see how this all turns out.

Smile folks, you’re on television.

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