Reader comments under Huffington Post's recent post about the 15 biggest Wall Street payoffs to members of congress are full of the usual vitriol and snark. No doubt the streets of Rome rang similar insults and recriminations in the weeks and months leading up to the end of that civilization.
The vomitous mess we're in won't be solved by us shrieking insults at each other.
The crisis is real.
We are on a socio-economic-industrial runaway train together.
The few people with access to the control room of this train are caught up in a video-game like delusion, as if all that really counts is their individual score at the end of the game.
Meanwhile we're thundering down the track headed for a crash that really will end life as we know it, and not in the too distant future.
It used to seem that nuclear war would end everything.
Instead it is this unstoppable global orgy of consumerism, greed, corruption, and passing the buck.
This time around the empire itself is too big to fail, and when it falls it will take everything with it.
No one with the courage or integrity to confront the lies that hold it all together will be permitted anywhere near the controls to this juggernaut.
No matter what party, what station, what anything.
There are no working checks or balances or brakes left anywhere on this train.
Will we tear at each others' throats over the ignominy of it all?
We, neighbors one to another, will have work to do to after the looting and gluttony leave behind ashes and wreckage.
We will each fare better, with hope of avoiding another narcissistic mess like that which plagues us now, only if we can commit ourselves to doing the work together.
