The struggle for existence

If I had known that winter was going to die out in my lifetime, I would not have wasted all that time learning to ski. My life would have been very different. Chaos being chaos, once you change one thing you change a myriad of things. Multiple universes beckon in every fraction of a direction.

In the world we know, many of us invested time and energy in the continued existence of winter. The lack of it is going to cause a great deal of inconvenience for everyone, whether they choose to believe it or not.

In one small sport shop in one small town in one small state on one small patch of the Earth's surface occupied by the self-styled greatest nation on the planet, we struggle to survive. Our biggest adversaries are the weather and the economy. Their allies are other activities we do not service and the human tendency toward sloth.

We can't do much about the weather because too many people don't agree that we were capable of damaging the global climate in the first place. We can't do much about the economy because it is controlled by madmen with self-serving theories about who should prosper and how that is accomplished.

The attack on 9-11-01 was a blow, but the nation's response was more damaging. This was part of Osama bin Laden's plan: he knew that the powerful emotional response, coupled with our diverse philosophies, added to our technological ability to over-react would create massively destructive tension in our tenuously joined society.

The economy is bad, but it is made worse by the Republican immune system's response to Democrats. In the coming election we can either elect a Republican president who will join the misguided right wing of Congress to  strengthen the grip of oligarchy on our society or we can re-elect the Democrat and face four more years of destructive opposition from the Republicans as they try to make the economy such a mess for the average citizen that we will vote for whatever platitude-spouting orator they put forward in 2016 to promise to fix it.

Elections are no longer about leading this country to greatness or even goodness. They're about picking someone to lie to you for a few years until you have to pick a replacement knave or fool to occupy your television screen while unseen minions have their way with the nation's finances.