I found this once again. It wasn’t on my shelf, so I didn’t see the title. Changed that.
The crazies have won and now, Governance has become Revenge Politics. I guess this is why the Speaker was so adamant about becoming Speaker. The last time choosing a Speaker took so long was around the time of the Civil War. And the crazies winning was the price of the role. Tomorrowland was made in 2015; the slides teachers were using in classrooms could have come from this weeks’ news outlets.
Nix: Let’s imagine… if you glimpsed the future, you were frightened by what you saw, what would you do with that information? You would go to… the politicians, captains of industry? And how would you convince them? Data? Facts? Good luck! The only facts they won’t challenge are the ones that keep the wheels greased and the dollars rolling in. But what if… what if there was a way of skipping the middleman and putting the critical news directly into everyone’s head? The probability of wide-spread annihilation kept going up. The only way to stop it was to show it. To scare people straight. Because what reasonable human being wouldn’t be galvanized by the potential destruction of everything they’ve ever known or loved? To save civilization, I would show its collapse.
But how do you think this vision was received? How do you think people responded to the prospect of imminent doom? They gobbled it up like a chocolate eclair! They didn’t fear their demise, they re-packaged it. It could be enjoyed as videogames, as TV shows, books, movies, the entire world wholeheartedly embraced the apocalypse and sprinted towards it with gleeful abandon. Meanwhile, your Earth was crumbling all around you. You’ve got simultaneous epidemics of obesity and starvation. Explain that one! Bees and butterflies start to disappear, the glaciers melt, algae blooms. All around you the coal mine canaries are dropping dead and you won’t take the hint! In every moment there’s the possibility of a better future, but you people won’t believe it.
And because you won’t believe it you won’t do what is necessary to make it a reality. So, you dwell on this terrible future. You resign yourselves to it for one reason, because *that* future does not ask anything of you today. So yes, we saw the iceberg and warned the Titanic. But you all just steered for it anyway, full steam ahead. Why? Because you want to sink! You gave up! That’s not the monitor’s fault. That’s yours.
Last week, in my timeline, there was another warning that will probably be ignored…
90 Seconds to Doomsday
“Humanity is closer than ever to the end of the world.” That was the dire warning this week from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which, since 1947, has been estimating how close the world is to ending by stating starkly how many “minutes to midnight” remain on its signature Doomsday Clock. The clock on Tuesday was set at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest to midnight it has ever reached, according to the Bulletin, a nonprofit organization and publication.
The Doomsday Clock had been set at 100 seconds to midnight since 2020. But the clock was moved forward this year “largely but not exclusively” because of “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the increased risk of nuclear escalation,” the Bulletin said in a statement.” New York Times
“Donald Trump and his supporters and allies are a clear and present danger to American democracy,” [J. Michael] Luttig told the [January 6th] committee on live television.
“We Americans no longer agree on what is right or wrong, what is to be valued and what is not, what is acceptable behavior and not, and what is and is not tolerable discourse in civilized society,” he said. “America is adrift.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/01/31/michael-luttig-judge-jan-6-trump-pence
I think the whole world is adrift [a generalization. I think I know people who are far more ‘positive’ than I am].
Tomorrowland is about the possibility of hope. Hope is internal. Hope has to be cultivated.
They were just high school kids, named Ernest, Elizabeth, Jefferson, Terrence, Carlotta, Minnijean, Gloria, Thelma, and Melba, who made history in 1957 when they became the first Black pupils at their school, in the face of fierce opposition. We start Black History Month here in Little Rock, the state capital of Arkansas, at the Little Rock Nine Monument, named for that group of kids who played an important role in desegregating public schools.
Meanwhile, on the planet Mars:
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Tags: faith, hope, material poverty, mental-health, Neuropathy, persistence, personal excellence, Polyneuropathy, self-employment, surviving
Chronicles in Ordinary Time 