The world really is a mess right now. I’m old enough to remember when duck and cover was a thing that was taught to elementary kids in case of a nuclear attack. I grew up in that era. With a halo over our heads shaped like a hangman’s noose. Never sure when it would drop and snare us. When I was a kid, I remember asking my mom what would happen if they dropped the bomb on us. She told me she didn’t know and that we shouldn’t worry about such things because if we did, our nightmares would spill into the daytime. And then we could never be happy.
Mind you this was before I knew the other things. The many, many, many other things. What things, you ask. Well, thank you for asking, just as a for instance: Ronald Reagan, AIDS, poverty, the 1%, cancer, Alzheimer’s, COVID, Iran conflicts, Trump, that asshole neighbor shooting at my house because I flew a rainbow flag. Death. Lost friends. Lost loves. Lost families. 9/11. Chicken Little. The onslaught of information 24/7 filling my brain with false rationale. With stories of how plastic straws are killing the Earth. How the rich will break us to fill their coffers, but don’t worry, because the wealth will trickle down, just like the blood from the souls that gave their existence to feed the mega-machine of capitalism.
But this isn’t political.
Who knows what makes someone so flawed and corrupt think they are far superior to the mother raising a child without the luxury of a roof over their heads. Or food in their belly. Or the ability to educated that child to give them hope of something more than learning how to duck and cover to save a life that’s only purpose is to feed the machine.
To work ones life to look forward to retiring and enjoy the things we missed because we were too busy feeding the machine, just to find there isn’t enough of anything to support your daily bread, so we pray. To God, to Buddha, to whoever will listen. I recall my grandfather working all his life to repair transmissions of Oldsmobiles to support his family. Struggling to make ends meet on a salary barely enough for one, let alone three. But the promise of one day, you will be able to retire and live like a king. But that’s before they take the taxes out, and the insurance premiums, and the mortgage payments with 8% interest for 30 years. The dentist visits, because your teeth are not part of your body and therefore are not covered under health insurance. And eyes, you don’t need those either. He worked 40 years of his life making just enough to pay for all of this, while the rich got richer. Waiting for the trickle down until he starved to death, because he couldn’t afford food, let alone all the insurance to keep his heart beating. And he couldn’t read that fine print that said if you don’t keep up with the mortgage, they’ll take your house. A respectable man. A decent man. A dead man.
Not political. Late stage capitalism.
Jaunty-Rabbit 