EXITS

  Today, upon entering a venue of some sort, be it movie theater - and long may these stay open - or stadium or lecture hall, one looks for the nearest exit, planning a route out, informing the person with you as to these plans. The next step is to survey the audience for characters that raise your hackles, and you plan again. Uncomfortable, sad, even tragic, for what it says about the state of the world, but reality is what it is.

The question is, how many of us really do understand the concept of reality and adapt our behavior and thoughts to it. So many of us have constructed our own individual la-la lands and refuse to recognize that alterations and rehabs are necessary. Leaks from a roof must be attended to, foundation cracks must be addressed, and the same with society. That is our home and we must make sure that it remains viable and stable.

We have fallen down on that task, failing abysmally. Society is so rife with cracks, fractures in its very foundation, that one wonders if there is any hope. Hypocrisy and 'outrage' rule the day. Talk to an intelligent young adult and you will hear the cynicism our behavior has engendered in them. Yet these are the people who have a great burden: either they attempt and succeed in rehabbing this society of ours or the new society will take its place and we are lost. We will have failed to find the nearest exit, failed to plot our escape route, and certainly failed in our evaluation of the attendees in the society with us, misreading them and the danger they pose. 

Yet more shootings over the weekend and this is the comment we get from a supposed to be responsible leader from our politicos. "Evil exists in this world. HB 1927 gives law-abiding citizens the ability to fight back, to protect themselves and their families w/out being restricted by the govt," ... "God bless and comfort those killed and affected by the shooting in Austin today. It's time for us to fight back."  It is in support of a bill that loosens even more the restrictions on obtaining guns, and pushes the argument that gun owners should fight back - more shootings, more death, an ever growing rancid and hate filled bloody concept.

Yet there is no blowback from the GOP about this comment, just as they defended Trump's incitement on Jan. 6 and ignored the obvious and ever growing heap of proof of the prep work that went into it. No, for they have found their new Public Enemy #1 - Maxine Waters - a feisty woman courageous enough to state the truth that everyone knows yet are afraid to voice and the reality of what will happen should one verdict or another be given in the Chauvin trial. Her remarks “I hope that we’re going to get a verdict that says guilty guilty guilty,” she said ... “And if we don’t, we cannot go away.”  - are atta Wcked by that "white lamb" Cruz, Mephistopheles of our time. She added -   “We’ve got to stay on the street. And we’ve got to get more active, we’ve got to get more confrontational. We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business.”  What that means is to continue to protest, but those with violence in their heart will put a different spin on it, projecting their own views upon and over hers.

So the question is this. Do we have an exit strategy? Do we know the nearest exit or substitutes for it? Do we have several routes planned and have we kept our companions informed. Have we spoken plainly? Have we attempted to avoid violence and riots and pandemonium or have we ceded all to the  cracks of society, and to the dangerous ones who fear only justice, compassion, equality, honesty, and safety?

The answer is awaiting finality. We have to choose. WE have to opt for sanity or hatred. WE have to choose between a future for our kids or a Mad Max society. Will we choose correctly? ........