If you don’t catch the reference to Kool-Aid, forget it ~ you don’t want to know.  

     Genocide is nothing new ~ it is just business as usual in this foolish world of ours.  The Armenian Genocide predated the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews ~ and not only Jews ~ let us not forget the Soviet civilians and POWs, Poles, Romani people (Gypsies), disabled individuals, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political dissidents (such as communists, socialists, and trade unionists), Freemasons, Spanish Republicans, Black Europeans, and other minorities not considered part of the “Aryan” race, all of whom were flushed down Hitler’s toilet.   “It can’t happen here,” you say ?  Just what is it about the present state of the world that gives you such hope ?  

     “Israel should expel the Palestinian population of Gaza to the Negev desert.  Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable,” Jared Kushner mused, adding that Israel should “move the people out and then clean it up.”

     But what is the most troubling about the present genocide in Palestine is the whole hearted support, in both bombs and money, not only of the Biden Administration, but seemingly just about everyone on any side of the aisle.  The skies darken wherever you look.  Assaults on the “freedom of speech” [remember that archaic notion ?] are creeping up on all sides.  The latest shoe dropping is the effort to take away the tax-exempt status from any news organization that dares to protest against the genocide in Palestine.  Universities arrest protestors and dismiss tenured professors who dare to support any protest against the genocide.  

     As I have said several times, all of these indications are related.  Climate Change and the imminent death of our planet is causing a collapse of Consciousness all around, and War everywhere is like a nervous eruption serving to siphon off energy from a planet under terminal stress.  In order to prevent the planet from exploding in chaos, a continuous stream of warfare just has to happen as a pressure relief valve.  In other words, there is nothing accidental about any of this !  Our planet is undergoing an accelerating death-spiral, and there really doesn’t seem to be anything anyone can do about it.  Everyone just looks on in horror or disbelief, numb from catastrophe fatigue, watching the planet imploding, and perhaps soon to be exploding, if the war-mongers and arms merchants have their way.  

     The drag of inertia is overwhelming, and the effort to overcome this inertia is a task beyond the combined efforts of Hercules and Sisyphus.  Is it totally hopeless ?  Is it time for the Kool-Aid, or the flight to a sunny beach with a bottle (or two, in case the world lasts that long) of the proverbial absinthe ?

     All we can do is to hang on as long as we can, shouting into the wind that the entire planet needs to reinvent itself virtually overnight.  There are so many problems cascading one on top of another that it is hard to know where to place any feeble lever for change.  Is it the Climate Change ?  Should we be planting Trees for all we are worth ?  Is it the collapse of Consciousness world-wide ?  Should we be hosting religious revival meetings [or investing in arms manufacturers ~ black humor alert] ?  Perhaps the ultimate Prior Problem is the basis of Power on the planet.  Nothing substantial has changed over the last 66 million years ~ the wealthy and powerful have always ruled the world.  Whether it is the raw power of guns and armies (or big dinosaurs), or the more subtle power of Money, it all amounts to the same thing.  And, as I have said before, this is no way to run a railroad, or a planet !

     There has to be a better way.  Not that it is going to be easy to overturn the inertia of 66 million years, but the alternative is the Darkness, so we just have to put our shoulders to the wheel and try to push this train plummeting downhill (900,000 tons of steel) at an accelerating pace back up the hill before we reach that precipice (which is in sight and looming closer as we speak).  

     I have seen a way forward as early as 1992 (vide: New Solutions, plus numerous more recent essays), but I welcome any other possible solutions to our terminal dilemma.  I keep scanning the internet, trying to discover any other ideas being put forward that can have any hope of achieving the essential objective of dislodging the cabal of Wealth and Power from ruling the world, but I do not find anything at all.  Is it totally hopeless ?  I feel the shadow falling, and, to mix metaphors in these days of Global Warming, I feel an increasing Chill overtaking the world, and I see the Pit of Darkness looming, way too close for comfort.  

     Actually, forget about comfort.  As any resident of Palestine will tell you, “those days are over.”