I think the entire world must be watching the United States now. I mean, we always do anyway, but now that the ratings have shot through the roof, I think it’s become a global addiction. My own Sunday morning ritual is perhaps typical. I like to start easy with coffee and CBS Sunday Morning (mostly an arts and letters show), then on to grazing the various Network news shows, finishing with the calm rationality of Fareed Zakaria. But Fareed wasn’t on today because of live coverage of Harvey the Hurricane who/which is in the process of creating a huge physical wound in the soft underbelly of America. 

Today is a hell of a day, we have the minute by minute unfolding of a natural disaster in Texas, we have yet more palace intrigue, we have a presidential pardoning that’s deepening the already infected fracture in the American self image, not to mention her international image, and what else?…oh yes …donald trump says Canada is being very difficult in the nafta talks, so he may have to terminate. 

I say, ‘Go team Canada!’ 

I feel both lucky and cursed to be living in an age where I can, if I want too, get constant updates as world events unfold or (and this scares me) spend all day and night watching the moment by moment creation of the ‘ultimate drama’ that is taking place south of the border and which is of concern to freedom loving folks everywhere. 

Here we are now, in 2017, living in a science-fiction tv show from the nineteen-fifties.  As the story goes, an entire society watches, on tv, in real time, it’s own self-destruction. 

Heavy! 

 I do sometimes wonder, though, if we don’t all have some kind of deep programming about our species' inevitable demise…some deeply planted suspicions about our worthiness to exist. 

Oh wait a minute…of course, I forgot, we have religion. All (or most) of us, here in the west, have been raised in, or subjected to, the belief systems of Christianity, Judaism or Mohammedanism (Islam). 

The ‘end times’ theme is common to all three of these religions… you know, judgement day, when the unworthy get their comeuppance, (a very comforting idea for the perpetually pissed-off). 

So my concern is…my question is… given that so many of us are operating, even if subliminally, in support of  an ‘endgame’ scenario, will that cause us to actually create it? 

Let’s face it, all the destructive power necessary exists, it is in place, armed and ready, and it is predominantly in American hands. Now that used to be a comforting thought. America was the good guy, standing tall for the oppressed and forgotten. But aren’t we all watching, with a cryptic intrigue, as a seemingly perfect cast is assembling for what might well be a grand, insane, final performance? Would this cast of characters not be totally believable in the roles of men gone mad…of power gone mad, of cowardice and corruption and collapse? Great egos abound, perceptions of reality clash, omnipotence and ignorance reign. 

I imagine it would go down in ‘not history’ as a brilliantly conceived and carried out production of the collective human fantasy movie “End Of Days.” Not to mention an absolutely stunning exit for a shit-head species. 

Religious scholars (if there were any left) would say, “See, gotcha….we’ve been right all along. The lord has dun torched his beloved creation.” 

But why?  Just for spite ? 

It makes no sense. God, whatever our limited conception may be, is generally assumed to be of an infinitely higher nature than man and possessed of a much expanded level of perception…. not some low-life who gets pissy and murders an entire planet. 

Hey…it’s  a possibility. 

Or we could just grow up instead. 

We could save, from our programming, all that is built upon love and life …and forego the rest. Forego doomsday and judgement and suffering and sacrifice. We could re-program ourselves with a ‘no-endgame’ scenario, convince ourselves that humanity has a brilliant and eternal destiny and that we are magnificent extensions of God, as like to whatever-that-is as our earth children are to us. 

We could do that. 

And besides, I truly doubt that terminal nuclear war is much of a possibility. What I don’t doubt, though, is that nukes will be used again on earth, and that it will be catastrophic. But it might take watching the murder of 20,000,000 Koreans (or whoever else might choose to bait the devil) live on tv to bring home the utter shame and disgrace that any user of these monstrous weapons would necessarily bring down upon themselves. T’would be a crime of unimaginable consequence. A moral outrage from which there could be no recovery. 

Don’t do it Don! 

What happens in America will eventually happen everywhere; she is the canary in the coal mine. It is possible that all the ruckus and pain in the US is exactly what is needed now to make her confront and conquer her demons. America must eventually abandon war and seriously re-think it’s version of capitalism if it is to regain the confidence of the rest of us. 

If America can heal herself, if Americans at every level will be brave instead of afraid, then all the world can relax and have a REALLY BIG party. 

Now I don’t expect to be at that party and likely not my children but… maybe the grandkids? 

Now that would be something to write home about.