Fact is that during short time allotted there’s a glut of input and surplus of stupidity. Whole of internal logic, poetic rhyming, suggestive innuendo, and whimsical wordplay gets totally lost in translation, meaning filtered from consciousness of most readers whether or not foreign or native language fluent. Audience flocks to whatever bundles, digests, and eases reach, usually radio or television, then Twitter memes or websites. May attend live lectures or performances, but whenever highly motivated most knuckle down and read chapters and paragraphs. If you think about it, literature originates raw material for all other media, yet remains the least loved. A bond must be formed between audience and author that requires extraordinary effort from both, even undeserved pain, to achieve rapport, meld minds, and start word of mouth that breaks barriers. Wastes too much time.
Same dynamics describe transportation choices. The path of least resistance appears to be a private passenger car... that is, until gridlock becomes intolerable, parking impossible, or roads impassable. Then you’re back to walking, for which most are so out of shape they’ll pathetically stay in place until death overtakes or situation resolves. Planes and trains never reach where you want to be, so you still must rent a car or take a taxi. Costs and hassles of arranging, boarding and delaying have become so bad motorists may often be tempted to drive thousands of miles instead. Along with distracted and intoxicated, sleep impaired motoring is a major cause of accidents and fatalities, though many find it impractical to snooze aboard planes or trains, then drive upon arrival anyway.
Exactly half a century ago many of Earth’s three billion six hundred thousand people - less than half its current population - were riveted to Apollo 11 broadcasts. CBS anchor Walter Cronkite invited futurist fictionist Arthur C. Clarke to comment, since Clarke had speculated in books a generation earlier all that was about to occur, though admitted going to the moon was a lot more complicated and costly than imagined. Historic precedents excite, but space exploration since has drawn less acclaim than criticism, even with another moon landing planned around corner. Although you’re tracking more junk in orbital plane than you care to admit, because its influence is plainly incontrovertible, you live in a gravity well that's hard to escape and mustn't be taken for granted. News of alien visitation wouldn’t make things any weirder than they already are. Nobody at that time was reading instead of listening or viewing. During current events, literature gets abandoned, then resurges when buzz passes and people seek new perspectives. However, authors seldom rate among celebrities. Action heroes amass accolades. Wordsmiths are accursed.
A perfect case in point was Marshall “Major” Taylor, the first African-American international sports star. Not only did he set USA cycling records, Taylor surpassed all competitors on three continents and won every championship. Despite denial, racism, and violence stateside, the Black Cyclone was invincible from 1896 to retirement in 1909. He sat atop a fortune in winnings when age and rivals began to catch up. Although he expressed no bitterness or regrets in his autobiography, The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World, self publishing in 1928 and peddling copies himself, along with crashing of stock market and declining popularity of bicycling, ruined his marriage and net worth. Residing penniless at Chicago’s YMCA, Taylor succumbed to heart disease at 53 years old, about same age Labann began publishing Bike&Chain. So, fans lavish cash upon athlete, yet look past author as if he didn’t exist, even when one in the same person.
There used to be an anti-religion, immigration hostile Know Nothing Party. Ever wonder what happened to it? Lincoln drew its xenophobic adherents into Republican Party. This same thinking monolith of anti-intellectuals, bigots, denialists, and racists represent only about 25% of Americans, which, coincidentally, is the same proportion of insane people loose in society at any given time. Without scruples they are better organized than any other party, especially Democrats, a loose confederation of idealists, labor unionists, and splinter groups that collect over 45% of voters, though not all routinely show at polls. In the 1930’s, Republican Smoot Hawley tariff was principally to blame for deepening The Great Depression and making recovery impossible, now known as the most catastrophic act in congressional history. In 1940 another of their bills, Taft Hartley, restricted unions to keep wages low. In the 1950's, McCarthy's communist witch hunts, with his protege Reagan, condemned innocents and curtailed progress. Nixon was forced from office for his misconduct and paranoia. Politics were much healthier before Reagan destroyed unions in 1980’s to end labor’s clout in picking candidates and speaking for up to 35% of voters. Unions have since dwindled to municipal, paramilitary, and shrunken industrial groups, only 5% of today's workforce. Bushes gave billionaires bailouts and tax cuts precipitating recessions that savaged all but the wealthiest few. Yet dunces who couldn't see trough this century of lunacy and villainy elected Trump. Just how stupid can Americans be? Who can you blame but yourselves for this condensed history from New Deal to No Deal?
People react as if astonished that a politician dares to cheat and deceive them. It's all they ever do. Honest folks have no place in office. Even when they do get elected, they're forced or maneuvered out, usually through sex scandals, as if intimate encounters weren't healthy and normal but lewd and shameful. Probably dupes celibates, crones, and virgins. Rest of voters engage in some frequency from "get lucky once" to "once an hour on average". Scandal tactics don't work against Republicans, who are the first to accuse others of what they themselves have been caught and doxed doing countless times. Over the last 3 GOP presidencies alone that includes homosexual trysts, pedophiliac perversion, rancorous infidelity, and statuary rape. More outrageous than this bitchy behavior is their outright hypocrisy.
Maybe relative decency, social programs, and wide tolerance weren’t so good as strategies when planet’s population doubled since 1969 threatening natural resources to tipping point and tripling traffic with which you have to deal. Yet non-stop war over same period did nothing to reduce, single child laws failed to achieve zero population growth, and threats of apocalypse urged births to preserve species. If world’s going to end soon, what’s the difference? Validates don’t-give-a-f*ck attitude of climate denialists, self servers, and unchecked sociopaths in office. GOP’s gross misconduct emboldened miscreants, enabled worst transgressions, and exposed an execrable underbelly allowed to operate in society. Nobody expects perfection, only works toward it to bring improvement.
Situations change while stuff stays the same. Bush recessions hurt, but collapse of social entitlements earned over a lifetime would be ruinous. Most of all Neocons drool over trillions duly invested into Social Security, the last federal treasury from which they’ve not been able to steal. For many retirees, it’s still an important foundation for monthly income, though small amounts doled out represent less buying power than dollars involuntarily contributed. Now they want to take even this away in pursuit of their zero sum game that will kill everyone including themselves. Conservatism describes the terminal scenario before sink hole sucks entire system to bottom. A clean sweep of Congress can’t be done within year left before next election, may take several cycles, would require viable candidates, yet almost anyone would represent you better, and America survived bad administrations before. Worst catastrophe in homo sapiens history would be to allow this conservative cancer to spread to another planet. Colonization must be apolitical and freegan.
“When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equals, except negroes and foreigners and Catholics.’ When it comes to that I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.” Abraham Lincoln, 1855
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