The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is Our Fearless Leader

[bloodyrosemccoy]

I have become a Cynic.

 

For almost five years now I have watched Dubs flout authority and the law, downright break the law, trample all over common human decency and goodwill, commend the virtues of willful ignorance and intolerance, sell more whoppers than a nunchaku retailer, and demonstrate levels of douchebagness and dumbassitude that should be considered criminal in and of themselves.  If there were such a thing as a just and loving gawd watching over America, he should have smited, or possibly smoten, Our Fearless Leader long before he became such, using the ever-popular method of one too many “Hold my beer and watch this” moments.

 

And through all this reprehensible tomfoolery, he has not gotten retribution.  He has gotten laudation, loyalty, and away with everything from a fixed election to mass murder.

 

So now with this leak about how he’s got his little hidden cameras all over the place and sees you when your sleeping, knows when your awake, and knows if you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness’ sake, I find myself to be

1)      Unsurprised, and

2)      Fatalistically assuming that nothing will come of it.

 

Good gods, I hope I’m wrong.  It is possible that this is the final blow—because there are crimes against humanity, but in a totally different category there are crimes you can prosecute.  We can only, only hope that you can prosecute them successfully.  There is a spark of hope, but I am reluctant to go toward it because I expect it to die out.

 

At this time of my life, I should be a starry-eyed college kid.  I should be all for Changing The World For The Better, and involved with so many organizations that I have a plaque donated to me because of all I’ve done for my Cause.  I should be out there preaching nuclear hellfire against the evils of capitalist meat-eating polluting industry fat cats who get away with war and weapons, and maybe I should get arrested for civil disobedience or something.  I should be vegan* or something and walk everywhere, including back to Oregon from Utah.

 

But the truth is, I am not that sort of person.  I have a crippling, horrible weakness in the face of issues, and that is optimism—the wrong sort of optimism.

 

Not optimism with the progress of Causes.  I’m jaded about how much difference demonstrations actually make.  These volleys may hit the people in charge, but they have an armor coating composed of the certitude that they are Right and we do not know what is good for us, while they do.  I can refuse to buy from Wal-Mart and maybe I can donate to projects like Direct Relief and Heifer International, and send some money sometimes to the Sierra Club or Nature Conservancy, and I can volunteer at the Children’s Center, and I do feel that these things help, but it feels like that’s all I can do—small changes, because if I tried too hard to fix big things I’d realize how bad the situation is and crumple into a heap of jelly.

 

And then there’s the optimism.

 

It’s the big reason I don’t feel the urgent need to go thundering off to Save The World.  It’s not something I can change, because it’s as ingrained in my psyche as the Super Mario Bros. song is.**  Deep down, under all those layers of cynicism and ethical dilemma, is an immobile, completely indestructible, insidious little philosophy which says that: somehow, when all is said and done, no matter what happens in the interim, it will all turn out all right in the end.  This is a weird kind of optimism, because it extends all the way to the end of the solar system when the sun goes out and further to when the Universe either runs out of energy or collapses back in on itself or whatever it plans to do.  Things will still be all right.  We can blow ourselves up, or fix things, or exceed the Earth’s carrying capacity and resort to eating each other as every other species dies off or whatever we bloody well do, and it’ll all still be okay somehow.  I don’t know how.  I just think it will.

 

And thus, fixing the world is not my priority.  Reasonably I know that’s a dreadfully apathetic way to be, and it doesn’t always win over my other deep-seated philosophy that Now is as important a time as Later to be happy, but id does get in the way of the developmental stage of World Saving.

 

But it makes me feel better about Dubs, anyway, because whatever he does is temporary.  And hell, this time just might be the one that gets him.

 

 

*I don’t mind vegans themselves.  What I mind is when they tell me why I should be vegan.  I argue biology and the Circle of Life and my philosophy of Be Nice To It Until You Eat It, but they don’t want to hear that.  Why should I be required to hear their side if they aren't required to hear mine?

 

**I believe if you opened up my head, you would find a physical representation of this song in my skull somewhere.