OVERDRIVE

    I wish someone would explain that term to me, especially within the various contexts. The dictionary defines it as a gear in a car's engine or an amount of great or excessive activity. Well, great, but what does that mean in real life and is it a good or a bad thing.
     An example: my phone, the stupidest smart phone ever, sends me a message that it is going into overdrive. Huh! What does that mean? Will it change something, anything? I already do not understand half the things it does in a seemingly independent behavior and mind. At times it shows me a shot on the screen of what appears to be zillions of files going into the background unto infinity where I imagine them meeting Buzz Lightyear! My response? Help!! My head then goes into overdrive and I quickly take my most excellent step to combat this - I shut it down or change the screen. There! That did it!
      If we are talking about great activity then we can turn to other areas as well, areas where I am just as concerned as when my phone turns rogue. What the heck is going on in this overdriven by far race for Democratic candidate. Almost every single one of them has voiced the opinion that if they rip each other apart, we are providing fodder for the enemy - Trump - and trust me, he is the enemy - and then what? A country driven into overdrive as we speed into a bad future, one where no overdriven gizmo will slow it down as we trash over two centuries of our history? Perhaps we need to go into overdrive in protecting our country, in making our displeasure known to all those pols who are forgetting what they are supposed to be all about?
     As I look around I see more areas of overdrive where a considerable amount of overdrive needs to be reined in. $1.737 trillion dollars lost over two days from the market and there appears to be no end in sight. This after a period of uncertainty and ups and downs, a lousy year where we have lost whatever gains we made. I know the damage, the hurt, the fright, for my heart goes into overdrive as I check the numbers and see my savings just melt away, in a fevered overdrive, thanks to idiots who see not the truth, who prepare not for life, who could give a good goddamn about me and all the other little people.
     Everything these days seems to be on overdrive. We are used to the flu epidemics. We are even used to epidemics of scary diseases such as Ebola or Marburg, the return of dangerous 'childhood' diseases because parents have become fools in overdrive gear, but this possible pandemic, well, that is frightening. And all the while this country has done nada to organize and face it when it inevitably hits the USA. We damaged our relations with other countries so there went that option. We refuse to believe the facts - a standard of the day under Trump - and so we sit, twiddling thumbs, blind as bats to the scary overdriven future of this disease.
     Just look around and find the other areas of damaging overdrive. The hatred, the xenophobia, has morphed into a monster eating up the world, right along there with the overdriven environmental crisis. We are destroying each other in tandem with destroying the world and as that danger increases, so will the other, for resources will dwindle and panic will be in overdrive, all the while knowing that there is too little too late, no overdrive at all in the protection and saving the world. Just look at recent pcitures of the Arctic and the Antartica and chew that thumb of yours and contiue on in overdrive as you chew up all the nails on your hands. Worry in overdrive, especially as those in power refuse to acknowledge this problem. And on we go in our merry destructive path.
     Our systems of justice have degraded in overdriven speed, with Trump attacking judges, calling for recusal of anyone who does not like him, attacks jurors and forepeople according to their verdicts, and on it goes as he packs the benches with more and more incompetent objectionable judges, the future of justice within this country falling ever deeper into an abyss, where that famous monster down there awaits, all the better to chew this country up, all the while we allow this to continue.
     Oh, but not to worry, for the future is saved. Ivanka poses in a replication of an iconic pose of Princess Di, as if, truly, as if. All this overdriven   behavior, the paths we have taken as our country erodes the very ground it stands on, all this and  more have these people concluding that they are the future, they are the dynasty, they will be the future royalty of this country, in name or actuality, whatever, for the power counts and nothing else.
     Folks, we need to go into overdrive and quickly. never mind those annoying stupid phones. Never mind all the outside and inconsequential static of these days. Just go into overdrive where it counts - in the struggle to insure the future of our country as the USA of history rather than the weak and dirty imitation of the fall of Rome, the fall of ancient empires and even the fall of governments today. We need help and the only help to come is us. The person in the mirror. The person who will check off the right box and get us back onto a clear and smooth road, even as we fix the damages as best we can.
     There is hope and encouragement to be found in the words of a famous author. Ernest Hemingway, in A Farewell to Arms, states:
   "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places."
     We now have many broken places, but we will be stronger there, we must be stronger there. We must know that we have to rebuild and recover,  the sooner we get started, all the better it will be.