SNAP! SNAP!!! SNAP!!!

  Do you hear those snaps, growing in volume, growing in pace? Do you see the growing holes, the fraying of threads of sanity? Do you wonder, stare at the ceiling at night, afraid, to the very core of body and soul, frantic, almost, at the thought of the future and what it portends? Do you take stock of your friends and notice a pattern? That pattern mimics the national pattern, with changing social  mixtures; those of one opinion on one side, with those of another in a separate grouping. Once, differing opinions did not determine friendship nor have exclusionary codicils, but today, today is different. Along with that difference goes the increased volume of SNAP!! Bad juju, folks. Manifestly so.

We, as a nation, are increasingly forgetting the importance of rules, of behavior, of inclusion of others in the determinants and guidelines of the behavior of all. Today, one is almost a sap for thinking that the welfare of others should influence one's own behavior. Suddenly it is okay to run people down. Suddenly it is okay to indulge your impatience at an impediment to your journey in a car so, okay, let's go up on the sidewalk and oops! Six kids down and out for the count, two permanently, four severely injured. The car and driver? Oh, Hell, off they went on their not so merry way. What else do we expect any longer?  

We can expect nothing less than this egregious behavior; in fact, we can expect even worse. What can one say to refute that? Nothing, really. A nation that indulged its own rotting connection to sanity, as demonstrated every single day, well, how do we reattach those snapped tethers to reality and sanity? Is that even a realistic possibility any more in the increased dissonance and roar of the mobs? Yes, mobs, for 'crowds' no longer holds the truth in these gatherings any longer. These gatherings of the deluded are now rabid.

Witness the crazed behavior of traitors on Jan. 6 as they climb over people, stand on them, whack in frenzied motion at the Capitol Police who are defending the country, the legality and integrity of its elected government, defending, ironically, traitors within that very building, traitors who colluded in this attempted coup. They were people, thinking beings no longer, morphing into a herd of unthinking, unreasonable buffalo, following the broken leaders of choice, insanely chanting USA USA, erecting nooses, threatening death to those they opposed. After all this, after the exposes via cameras and phones, we still have a Fascist, Paul Gosar, who backs a crazed candidate as a true America First person. Well, Heil Hitler to you too!!

Nor is the world at large immune from this epidemic of snapping tethers. Russia threatens its neighbors in Putin's mad campaign to reconstruct the Russian Empire. Then they deny it, for these days open lies are considered valid policies.  China is insisting on its own attempt to reconstruct their own remake of a huge Chinese Empire, buying all to grab a place under their umbrella. Their own citizens? Seemingly not their job! 

Please do not forget the scapegoat of the world - Israel. The leader in the campaign against COVID, it is not even mentioned in a list of nations, ranking them in their vaccinations campaign! Ahem?!  Even as Israel contemplates with horror the growing odds of a crazed war, carried out under the auspices of Iran, Russia, hiding out there in the wings, as they face enemies on all sides armed with almost  200,000 missiles. Yet they were successful.   But never mind, back to the future that mirrors a catastrophic past.

This insane behavior, these misguided priorities, are both symptoms and outcomes of the insanity plaguing the world. Worse, those who indulge themselves in anti-social behavior, plead excuses ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. Alien germs. Deep State. A hoax. A genocidal campaign to kill all GOP and right wingers. And of course, the winner: it is "the illegals" who brought this in and who are spreading it, not the unvaccinated. Of course not! What were we thinking!

 Perhaps we have all lost our respective minds!

In the meantime, SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! go the tethers to and of reality. When will the final one fail? Not far away, folks. All we need is for the GOP crazies to win in 2022 and we need not wait for 2024. Nope, for these fascistic critters who gain office will finish the job - no voting rights. No impartial Electors or election supervisors. Made up numbers of votes. Why not? And not to forget that most important mantra of our homegrown fascists: America must resume, return to its roots - with a dominant white, male, Christian, property owning elite and all the rest relearning their "place".

What a world. Even Brazil, under a lunatic Bolsonaro who claims the vaccine can turn one into bearded ladies and crocodiles, has vaccinated more of their population than we have. There is something very wrong in the world today. The whole world sees our struggles and wonders if it will happen to them. They wonder who will lead the world on the right path. Certainly not a crazed, unbalanced, broken America. Most definitely not. How the Hell has it reached this point?

As for me, and many others, we lay awake at night, wondering what will happen should this country totally lose its collective mind? Will we have our own 'disappearing' squads, our own "hit" squads taking out the 'enemies' of the state? Will we have our own desaparecidos and their anguished mothers, marching, crying, in public squares? Snap, snap. 

Am I over the top? Years ago, I warned of these outcomes, of the turn of the GOP to the dangerously deluded, of the dangers of Trump and his posse, of what was happening and will happen to this country unless we quickly learned to fly straight. Will we turn into a miserable  equivalent to a Third World nation? Lordy, but I hope not. Do I know not? No way. We are that deep into a perilous reality - or rather a denial of that unfortunate reality.

Snap.  Snap.   Snap!  All done.