...
That was my immediate thought when I first heard about the meteor. I thought those people must have thought they were being nuked. How could they not? Wouldn't that have been the first thing anyone would have thought? Maybe not Americans. We feel too special for that. But certainly just about anyone anywhere else. That would be the natural first thought.
I got up today to be greeted by an email from Billy that linked to the findings of one of our million and two "taxpayers' associations" here in California. They had done a great job of uncovering a number of fiscal outrages right here in cash-strapped California, and griping that their efforts to clear these up had only elicited responses from politicians that this stuff was "peanuts". I guess I was supposed to be incensed by the perfidious wastrels misappropriating school lunch money and salting away various millions for that dread rainy day, but I replied that it was all indeed peanuts, that it was actually total twaddle to be concerning ourselves with this crap just now.
It's identical to devoting oneself to, say, election integrity. What the fuck does it matter which psychopath claws its way into office? The problem is the psychopaths. But, no, fixing that is too much like outright lethal and so it's just safer to be "concerned citizens" by bitching our heads off about twaddle... now isn't it? It is.
They know this about us. They know we will pick scratching each other's eyes out loooooong before we will turn on them, and they are masters at titrating that action to a nauseatingly precise kind of precision. No one gets to have a beautiful life in a beautiful world because normal people can be relied upon to be peaceful right up to the point where they lose their minds from literally having nothing more to lose. Spoiled rotten fat people who never had to concern themselves with making real human, strong, loving communities—never had to become adults, and so just flat out didn't—are easy, easy, easy pickings for those who would farm their pacifism for the power to terrify the whole world.
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