A Warning Wrapped in a Tirade Surrounded by Mumblings

It sort of seems like the end of the world is coming sooner than expected. What with all the revolution in the middle east, rising gas and oil prices, the republican douche baggery in the mid-west, federal investigations into "radical Muslim" Americans and now this tsunami that almost destroyed Japan. It seems that the end of the world is to be fraught with a bunch of little shit gnawing at the edges of civilization making it merely uncomfortable and difficult for a while till the axe man cometh to deliver the final blow.

I was more or less under the assumption that it would come with a lot of pompous fanfare. I’m not going to lie, I’m kind of hoping for the heavenly host to descend from heaven and begin rapturing the hell out of everybody. At least, then, one minority group can claim victory and we can end the religious argument once and for all. I’m not a terribly religious man, and if the world does end in a religious prophecy, I don’t particularly care which one. It would be nice if it ended on a more positive Buddhist note, with everybody attaining enlightenment and ascending to a non-corporeal existence, but people are, en masse, too stupid and selfish to attain as complicated a notion as nirvana.

Putting end of the world scenarios aside (with great reluctance, because they are kinda fun to postulate on), I’ve been hearing about all of these events that are taking place around the world and here in our own back yards and I have noticed some disturbing correlations. I could use the old cliché; those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, but I wont. There are plenty of smart people out there who are paying attention and trying very hard to get the rest of us blind idiots to see what is happening. Take the Middle East and northern Africa for example. Egyptians stage a successful, mostly peaceful and non-violent revolution in January of 2011. Then the next thing we know Yemen, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and Libya are all experiencing some sort of civil unrest. The leaders of those countries are power hungry despots who, for what ever reason, can’t or won’t listen to the will of the people they are governing. I’m not trying to cast blame or judgment or claim that there is a better way of governance. I’m just making a laymen’s observation. Now that all of these Middle Eastern and north African countries are experiencing civil unrest to varying degrees for varying reasons it has affected things here at home also. The countries are major oil producers for the entire world. Let be explicitly clear that I am in no way developing a conspiracy theory. These are just observations about recent events and the connections between them as I see it. So now that there are threats to the power structures of these oil producing nations oil prices have to go up. That means more expensive gas for us here in a country whose entire economy is based on ridiculously cheap petroleum.

I’m sure that some reading this is rolling their eyes and groaning because they are trying to see where I make the conspiracy theory, or because they think I’m full of shit and don’t know what I’m talking about. That’s fine, go ahead and roll your eyes and groan. It cannot be argued against that our country relies on the cheapest gas and oil prices imaginable. Without it our cities would crumble. Good bye New York, good bye Chicago, goodbye L.A. none of those places would function very well without cheap oil. But I’m getting distracted form the current events theme of this tirade. On to the mid-west. Now we have a lot of republican duche-baggery going on here. Both the Wisconsin and Michigan governors are pushing legislation through that can essentially enable them to become the kind of leaders that are being evicted from their offices in the Middle East. They are stripping people of some serious rights. If unions lose any kind of power the dismantling of our rights is quickly ensured. It’s a very small hop from dismantling, discouraging and stripping unions of their power to suddenly banning public assembly for any cause or reason. What the fuck would happen if the planned parent hood funding dries up completely and then some pro-choicers want to hold a protest about it. Do we get to see the riot cops show up and disband the assembly like they did in Wisconsin to prevent the democrats from entering the senate chambers? That’s not something I’m ok with.

Then there is this new shit in Michigan where the governor is trying to push legislation that gives him the right to declare an economic emergency in any town in Michigan. Then he can appoint ANYONE he chooses to come in and act as the relief coordinator, including but not limited to corporate representatives. These relief workers have to power to nullify contracts, remove elected officials from office, and remove township status of cities and towns. What the fuck! That has the potential to bring back company towns and company script to replace the ever weakening dollar bill. Might as well go back to the gold standard. At least then we know what is actually worth something. Again, I’m not trying to create conspiracies where none exist, I’m just making observations.

So we seem to be living in an era punctured with unusually potent social and political unrest. This, in my opinion, is a good thing because it’s the only way humans are going to evolve at all. But will we even survive that long? For the past few years it seems to me that we have been witness to more and more devastating natural disasters. There was hurricane Katrina, the tsunami that killed 300,000+ in the Philippines, the Haitian earthquake, the tsunami in Japan that was caused by an 8.8 earthquake. When are the volcanoes around the Pacific Rim going to start exploding? It’s getting to the end of days here folks. I’m convinced of it, although I probably haven’t convinced any of you and that’s fine.

I was beginning to worry about the whole end of the world thing but I changed my mind. The world will remain, it all just relative really. And perspective. Whether the end of the human race comes at the hands of dissatisfied constituents, power mad rulers, good old mother earth, aliens or the righteous hand of god has yet to be seen but I think that we will see increasingly bad shit happen over the next few years till it all comes to a breaking point and the shit really hits the fan. But like I said, I’m not going to worry too much. The worst-case scenario is that I don’t survive the coming calamities at all. The best case scenario is that I do survive and won’t have to pay my student loans back.