Tuesday, February 18, 2025 at 6:18 PM

I realize that I cannot keep complaining about Trump and his policies. I can’t keep complaining about everything that upsets me. After a while, people get sick of hearing you whine about the state of the world, or your life, and they tune you out! It’s like the story about the boy who cried wolf so many times that when the wolf finally appeared, no one heeded his warnings. Not only that, but people are averse to being bombarded with bad news day after day, ad infinitum.

I believe that this is one of the same reasons that religion is failing. Ever since Constantine co-opted Christianity, and merged it with his Roman pagan background in the 3rd or 4th century, the alarm bells about the ending of the world began to take hold. Two thousand years later, it is still the reason given for us to convert, or be damned in hell’s fire everlastingly. Over the centuries, science and technology have lessened that fear of eternal damnation, and religion has lost its lustre and its tight and powerful grip on us. I’m not trying to bash religion, just using it as an example to prove my point.

We live in a world of winners and losers, in my opinion. Some of us are born losers, no matter how much we try to change our circumstance. We inherit diseases from our families. We manage to fall prey to every illness, and live uncomfortable lives until we give up and die. Or, we are born poor and remain poor for the rest of our lives. Some of us are born into wealth and good health; the two are not related, but we are born wealthy and remain healthy and comfortable, regardless of our input, or the direction in which we choose to take our lives.

Some of us are born black or brown, and suffer the consequences of our color in a world that is presently ruled by white peoples. Some of us are slaves, and some of us are masters. We struggle for equality, which will never happen in our lifetime, for those of us of color, that is. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule; but on a scale of fairness, the whites are winning, bigly. Chris Rock, the comedian, at one of his concerts pointed out a white waiter, using him as a metaphor for white power. He said that he, Chris, was rich, and opined that the waiter wouldn’t trade places with him. The poor white waiter. Wat a ting!

The unfairness of life isn’t about racism or wealth or slavery or diseases; it is a combination of all those factors and more. We are all born into this worldwide lottery system, guided by some unseen hand that determines our fate, in my opinion. We have no control over our fate, even if some of us think we do. I believe that we are born into this world and are immediately thrown into this eternal stream that takes us all in our respective directions. It is as good an explanation about the unfairness of life, as any.

If life were fair, the Crimson King and the parasitic illegal alien (that’s how Steve Bannon, one of Trump’s most devoted sycophants, describes Elon Musk; he claims that Musk overstayed his visa and eventually wrangled a citizenship out of the US government) wouldn’t be running the government, and for all intents and purposes, determining the fate of the world. If life were fair, children would not have to suffer abuse and neglect and starvation and violence in their formative years, and even later on in life. If life were fair, we would all be living in Thomas More’s Utopia.

There would not be worldwide oppression and suppression of the weak. There would not be any circumstance where the super-rich rule the world; everyone would have a chance to succeed, which again is unrealistic. In this zeitgeist, power and wealth are in the hands of the few and the corrupt, and they are using and abusing those instruments with little regard for whom they hurt.

And so, while some of us will wait for our reward in heaven, which is not a guarantee, in my opinion, life goes on. Life is unfair, and we have to live it in our own manner, cognizant of that fact! And there’s nothing we can do about it.

Look around you, at all the suffering and displacement and despair that are weighing us down. All the revolutions and battles for a better life have been illusory, not reality. We have regressed into the time of serfdom and will remain that way until we die. I’m not here to make you feel good; I’m here to show you this f*#@d up world the way I see it! Deal with that!

   “This is the way the world ends

   This is the way the world ends

   This is the way the world ends

   Not with a bang but a whimper.” —  T S Elliot, The Hollow Men

Glen