Nowhere to run

This level of ugliness has to be the result of some sort of system failure.

How is it that Americans have to choose between Joe Biden and Donald Trump as the next president of the United States?

The whole situation is overwhelmingly putrid, a pot of stew that started with bad meat and then sat on the stove for far too long.

It’s not just rot-at-the-top. The vegetables in Congress are utterly dysfunctional. Stonewalling has become a game where “we won’t work to benefit America if your side will get credit.” The grandstanding, the pettiness, the abject intellectual dishonesty is burnt yellow smoke that won’t lift.

If Alternative Intelligence wants to destroy mankind, it might do worse than put the current crop of lying, self-absorbed, manipulative, power-obsessed partisans in charge of the levers of government. And it’s getting worse, not better, despite the hopes of those who can’t believe it’s gotten this bad.

It doesn’t really matter if you’re conservative or liberal anymore, because the principles upon which that distinction could be made have evaporated. Oh, sure, you can sit behind your barricade and throw rocks at the other side for their foul absurdities. And you can dodge the rocks they throw back at you. But let’s not pretend that’s a dialogue.

Pointing out the differences doesn’t really matter. We suffer a systemic disease that has metastasized and made even the simplest progress unobtainable. There’s nowhere to turn for “The Truth,” which may not even exist anymore.

A wise man once said, “if you’ve fallen off a cliff, it does little good to cling to rocks and roots falling with you.” This is not a movie, there are no eagles coming to catch us before we hit the ground.

It feels like, as a nation, we are designing our reality upon reality shows that were … not … real. Sucking up drama and chaos because that’s better than coffee to get us up in the morning, because that’s more powerful than empathy and compassion, because that’s what sells.

There are many theories about the source of this corrosion. They might be partially right, they might be wholly wrong, but any that focus on one or two causes, especially if they lay blame on “the other side,” are incoherent or incomplete. 

It’s everywhere, it’s piling up, it’s unstable, and now feels like it’s about to topple. The problem is, there’s no place to run. And apparently, no one able to fix it.