Turn and Face the Strange

 

The Mighty Columbia at Bridge of the Gods

1973, 1987, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2020

If that string of numbers makes you cringe a little bit, you are probably of my age.  Getting old sucks, and one of the things that getting old takes from you is the buoyant optimism that makes life easier.  After getting smacked around and having plans placed firmly in the toilet by circumstances well beyond your control, you develop a defensive view of life.

Now, there are true believers out there on both ends of the spectrum.  You probably have some of them in your family and in your circle of friends.  I can’t really say anything bad about them, they are trying to get through in their own way.  But true believers tend to think that things fail because of a lack of effort by the hoi polloi rather than a bad plan.

We are sitting in our boats and a storm is a-brewing in Washington.  I have no idea of what is going to happen and I don’t see any of the options being bruited about as being conducive to solving the issues facing us.  

I am thinking that the world and the US in particular is coming to a cleft point.  But the point isn’t in sight yet and I have no map.  I read all the nonsense coming out of the media and they have been wrong so often that I can’t use what they say to guide my way.  He best that I can do is perform a wide sampling of different ideas and descriptions and try to synthesize a reasonable hypothesis about just what the f*** is going on.

But right now that effort (creating a reasonable hypothesis concerning the direction the country is heading) has not produced a candidate.