The Francis Scott Key Bridge is No More

The following is from Wikipedia:

The main spans of the bridge were destroyed on March 26, 2024, when the container ship MV Dali crashed into one of its support pillars.^[7]

That was a fast update.

It doesn’t reflect, though, the hardships ahead for the families of 6 missing men who were working on the span patching potholes caused by winter weather. Nor does it say anything about the traffic disaster that the closing of this main artery of I-695, the “beltway” around Baltimore City, is causing. Traffic will be so severely affected that it is impossible to fathom.

This says nothing, either, about the shutdown of the critical marine terminals and massive amounts of cargo they handle. Once the wreckage has been cleared, ships will again be free to enter the port, but the bridge was a steel arch type that will be challenging to clear from the channel. Parts of the structure remain above water but end underwater: one end in, and one end out of the main channel. It is a shocking sight.

There’s little here to point to as blame. The container ship lost power and did issue a mayday call, enabling the county and toll facilities police to close all approaching highway traffic. Lives were undoubtedly saved in this way.

The search continues for the 6 missing workers by the US Coast Guard, a zone of no entry by marine craft or aircraft has been established, the governor and Transportation Secretary Buttigieg, Senator Ben Cardin and President Biden have been working on this situation since it happened at around 01:30 this morning. It is a serious matter, and they are fully aware and dedicated to their work.

From Guardian News on YouTube, here is the moment of impact and collapse. Both are within seconds of each other, and I warn you, the video may cause you shock and distress.

Credit: Guardian News, an organization I implicitly trust.

Please pray for the families and the missing, and for the men and women who will be tasked with solving this daunting challenge.

Remembering 2012

On the first day of the month of June, I was with a healthcare worker. As she drove from Columbia to Elkridge, a dark, lowering sky made me uneasy. The worker asked at one point, “Is that a tornado?”.

It sure was. I had never seen one before. Little did I know, there was another one right behind us, a stone’s throw from where my appointment had been.

Doctors…

It was the wrong day to be out. Ahead, the funnel was in the distance, in the very direction we would be going. I estimated that it was over Elkridge just before the sky opened up and rain lashed the windshield too fast for the wipers to keep up with, and then I lost track of it.

Although not far from BWI/Marshall Airport, Elkridge was spared, but someone spotted it grounded at the airport. Once home, reports from local news came in from areas where no storm chasers with access to radar roamed. Nobody could do better than relay sightings. Those became confusing and only later would I find the reason for that confusion: on 1 June, 2012, the records say, 12 tornadoes hit Maryland, a nightmarish event. Although the state isn’t a hot spot for twisters, they aren’t that rare; some have even been severe.

But the next day I did hear the count at 13 tornadoes. Now I can only find records of 12. Still, an extraordinary storm, formidable to be sure.

I believe only one fatality was recorded, but what followed would be far worse.

A high pressure system had parked over the Midwest. It was big. In a summer month, such a mass of air can tend to stop, remaining stationary and preventing anything weaker to budge it. And that’s bad because it sets itself up as an upper level dome, and that’s exactly what it sounds like: a dome, like a structure, with the whole ecosystem trapped beneath it. Air won’t move, and because the pressure where heat should rise is too high to allow it, heat stays near the ground. It becomes like propane, a gas that’s heavier than air. Propane explosions can happen with even a slight leak. The gas doesn’t disperse quickly enough and a source of ignition can follow the gas right to its source. Grills on rear decks of expensive homes have blown up, taking half or more of the house with it. Many times, nearby homes take extensive damage as well because post-1960s, yards became progressively smaller.

As if it were a heavy gas like propane, the air under the dome heated up to record temperatures. The heatwave of 2012 was underway.

Drought rules the day in such a system. This was not a direct cause of global warming, but a weather system. One that global warming certainly didnt help, and one that hadn’t been seen since the 1930s in the area. Forget degree days; every day was a degree day. Temperatures reached 100 and higher with unrelenting consistency and if weather were a living thing, this animal was vicious and relentless. People without air conditioning died. Cooling centers couldn’t help more than a set number of people, and farmers of tobacco, corn, tomatoes and other vegetables shrugged and watched everything die. Even irrigation systems couldn’t save them.

As June wore on, green grass turned brown and ceased to grow. Nobody but fools thought about going near a lawnmower. It was too hot and it wasn’t necessary. The demand for water to homes was great, but reservoirs were so pressured that Governor O’Malley had a team working on a supply from the Susquehanna River above the dam for areas west of it.

Finally there came June 29th and the very worst the stagnant system could dish out. Baltimore City reached 106°F, a record for that date, but worse was on the way. Something nobody would ever forget.

It wasn’t tornadoes. It was much more bizarre than that.

On that day, what seemed like a mere thunderstorm started somewhere in Iowa. The Storm Prediction Center (SPC) took notice. A shape like a bow (as in archery) began to form along the leading edge. Heat fed the storm instead of blunting it. The ouward arch of the bow pointed east. Everything in its path was going to get damaged.

By 23:00, Maryland was under the gun. As rare as it was, this storm survived the crossing of the Appalachian Mountains without breaking apart. Average storm systems are often broken while crossing the mountains, with cells usually surviving to hit Noth and south of Baltimore. Not always, but if a storm stays intact, it’s weakened. This barrier can make things easier to take, but if enough heat remains east of the range, the cells reform and act as though highly pissed off.

This front didn’t have any regard for mountains, rivers, valleys or any other geographic feature. It was a honey badger storm. Didn’t give a shit.

In the hours between 29 and 30 June, high winds came through and caught me off-guard. I was outside on the deck, having a cigarette. I saw some flashes, some cloud to cloud and cloud to ground, of lightning, heard wind, and the next thing I knew, I was grabbed by a gust and almost thrown over the railing. I had never been hit with wind like that. My cigarette vanished into the night, ripped from my hand, then I was bent over the handrail and the air was sucked out of my chest.

In that instant, I had probably been hit by a gust over 70 m.p.h. and you don’t forget a thing like that. You never do.

I had no idea what just happened. The next day I learned that the storms were part of the heatwave. The straight-line winds, called a durecho, happened all the time in the Midwest. Crossing the mountains, that was rare.

My daughter just missed the tornado outbreak but arrived in time from Oklahoma to see the durecho. After living in Oklahoma and North Carolina, it must have seemed like nothing to her.

I never had time to talk about any of this with her. By July 4th, she was dead. While I grieved, on 20 July the Aurora, Colorado cinema mass shooting occurred. James Holmes killed 12 people and injured 58 others. 2012 could not end soon enough for me.

But it was far from over. On 29 October, Hurricane Sandy went subtropical and hit every east-coast state from Maine to Florida and went far inland as Superstorm Sandy (which retained hurricane-force winds after New Jersey landfall). It was a major disaster, but more trouble was on the way.

On 14 December in Newtown, Connecticut, at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 children and 6 adults. He had earlier killed his mother. He died by his own hand.

2012 was a year none of us can ever, and must never, forget. Too many people lost their lives, some by the weather, some by murder. And it never, ever can make any sense unless we keep trying to learn its lessons. Because so far, we have failed to learn a goddamn thing.

I will never forget 2012. My daughter did not survive the year, and to this day, I cry. I grieve, I hurt.

But I am not alone. There are lots of people who curse that awful year.

An awful, terrible year.

If the United States had started 2012 with any innocence left, then by the time it ended, the last of it was gone.

Shame And Terror On Capitol Hill

Yesterday I saw the same things you did. No matter where you were in the world, you know what happened.

At first all I could feel was rage. Then shock mixed in, and finally, shame.

Anxiety? I was screaming. I had to take a damn pill. I hate panic. I hate feeling like the world is about to end.

The first question I screamed at the TV was where the fuck are the police, where’s the tear gas, what about the troops and rubber bullets?

Because peaceful protests last summer mixed with a few looters and some imbecile with a Zippo were met with exactly that.

But white people storming the US Capitol Building after Trump prompted a crowd, stoked a crowd and provoked them were met with Capitol Police. Yeah, and that’s it.

Those assholes took selfies with the fuckers.

By then the crowds had grown, and the building was breached. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. In England it would be like a crowd storming Parliament or the Palace. Think about it. Try that, you’ll be lucky to live long enough to be put in bracelets.

Our elected leaders were forced to hide under chairs and use gas masks. As soon as it could be done, they were evacuated. That’s when people gained entry into the chambers. Donald Trump was begged to say something to stop it. Begged to do something about it. He stoked the fires more, telling the crowd he loved them. Fucking psycho.

Twitter froze his account. For twelve whole hours. Nobody throw freedom of speech at me. All the things I’ve said, believe that I understand. But that freedom doesn’t come without a price and at least some responsibility and Trump used it and held it up and waved to the whole world with it. He promised the crowd he was going with them but, being a pussy, he of course retreated to his chambers and just watched it unfold on TV while he had imaginary orgasms because those are, by now, his favorite kind. Those orgasms come only when he’s misused his power and turned nouns and verbs into weapons. He sits back, thinking he’s a king or dictator and in reality he’s stupid, evil and without a shred of honor. His delusional world has infected ours. Nothing has been off limits to him since he took office. From the nepotism to the swindling of Americans and the kidnapping and caging of Latin American children, nothing has been beyond his conscience. And for four, well five I’d rather say, years, many of us tried to warn our country, our friends and our families that something terrible was coming.

There’s nothing worse than sticking masses of children in cages. The US’s own little concentration camps. Some in tents during a hot summer. Some in warehouses in pens like an animal shelter. And don’t let anyone tell you differently; there were more than what you heard, and more whose parents could not be found, than you know. They were also dispersed in unknown numbers to various parts unknown. Some, of course, must be assumed dead, trafficked or forever missing.

And know this: I never met a Latino or otherwise Hispanic person I wanted to see hurt. They’re beautiful people who take the code of honor in their cultures seriously. You can’t lump them into categories like rapists and thieves like Trump has. Southern and Central America has some of the most beautiful places to visit and some of the most wonderful people you can meet. If some travel is dangerous, think about the United States. I constantly warn people not to visit Baltimore because people die there. 300+ homicides a year in a streak that can’t be broken. Visit Mesoamerica and see the awesome ruins, and the worst thing to worry about are snakes and mosquitoes. And the festivals and dances they put on are eye candy; colors of every shape and hue. What we do? They’re not invited to our shindigs, are they? They stand a big chance of being mugged, raped, murdered or, if they’re really lucky, unceremoniously detained and dropped off at the Mexican border where they’ll be spotted by predators right away. We are so fucked up and racist. And Trump made it all so much more heinous.

And I still burn over that. But with that, we had the chance to realize that Trump was capable of anything.

Some of us saw that. People from Latin America to Germany knew it. Russia knew it. Not Putin. The People. They watched as the United States began to break under the weight of an evil man and his goons. I prefer to believe they had no idea how terribly close we were to worldwide disaster.

Around the world, pundits, politicians and comedians alike gave their attention to the news and Trump’s latest fuckups for four years.

We all laughed at the SNL skits, Colbert’s whacked impression and internet cartoons and memes.

Except we ain’t laughing now. The first thing Trump did when COVID-19 hit us was to set the stage for human tragedy on a scale we could not see at the time. But the simplest minded among us knew that he had condemned people to die.

We warned people that worse was coming. We heard the rumble, saw the comments on twitter and Facebook. We knew if would be bad.

And then came the campaign and the election. What followed led directly to yesterday’s fucked up scene.

The truth is that when we were predicting bad things, people didn’t need us to say anything; they already knew. They always knew. And they did nothing to stop it. Impeached, and the Senate refused to convict him. That essentially handed the man a blank cheque to go forth and use to, without conscience, steal campaign funds, lie about even more outlandish shit and have superspreader events that killed without regard to a person’s political affiliation.

The ultimate psychotic episode came yesterday. While instigating the crowd he said something that didn’t make sense. That’s not new; it’s just that for the first time some people saw it as a sign that the man’s a fucking nut.

Five people died. One was an Air Force veteran. All vets should know better. A soldier’s oath is not unlike that of the president. “Against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” When one of them becomes a domestic enemy, it is too shameful for me to control my outrage.

They desecrated hallowed ground. They looked right at the cameras. They had no fear, no shame. And that’s what is so scary.

Trump has been trying to destroy our democracy since way before he was elected. He was a red flag that walked and talked and that red flag was ignored.

After tear gas was released in the Rotunda and the crowd chased out by National Guard troops from Maryland and Virginia, there were remnants outside even after a 6 pm curfew. Defiant criminals, domestic terrorists.

It was Vice President Pence who activated the Guard. Trump refused, proving he wanted this to happen. Proving he is an enemy to the United States and a terrorist nut job unfit for the performance of his duties.

There’s talk of another impeachment if Pence doesn’t remove Trump from office.

Pence wants to. He screamed at Trump recently: “I have a duty to the People and the Constitution and I’m sick of your shit!” is an approximation of one retort.

After the smoke had cleared, Pence, Pelosi and McConnell insisted that the ratification would be done. The houses of Congress went back in. Although the day had been harrowing, there were Republicans who still insisted on voting against Biden, even though it didn’t mean jack shit and Biden will be president on the 20th of this month.

I’m not sharing links tonight. I want you to look at the footage. Then look at the senators and congressional representatives who voted to overturn the election. I want you to remember them. I want you to insist that they be held accountable because they were a willing part of what happened earlier and those votes they cast prove it. Not one name on that list surprised me. McConnell had warned his Senate Republicans not to oppose the peaceful transition. He gave a nice little speech before the night session began. He later said that those who had voted for the petition would regret it. I like that. I liked Mitt Romney’s comments. I fell asleep before it was over.

What I see is a cancer. It’s grown. It will not kill. It will be put into remission but to get there we have work to do. Those who work for We The People have to stop ignoring trouble, especially when the signs are as big as they have been with Trump. They must rededicate themselves to the democratic process and never again betray it. Because men like McConnell and Graham helped this happen. Four years. They saw what he did to crowds. Heard his lies. Saw his progressive march toward madness. Knew he had done treasonous things and yet they did nothing.

So yeah, track down the dogs that invaded the Capitol yesterday. Prosecute them. But don’t give me any crap that it was impossible to see coming.

Because that’s the biggest lie of all.

Sometimes I Have The Worst Feeling…

One of the worst things about PTSD is the feeling of impending doom you sometimes get. It’s hard to shake and impossible to ignore. I get it about six times a year, and there’s no telling how long I’ll be a prisoner. I’ve never admitted this in quite these words before. I couldn’t. How do you face such a thing? Because, when it happens, it’s overwhelming. You’re honestly certain that the world is coming to an end.

In 1999, a shitload of people had this. The hysteria was contagious. Many references were made to the “end of the thousand years”. Nostradamus was said to have predicted the battle of Armageddon in December of 1999. There were fears of computer systems crashing, leaving cities without power, and that mayhem would surely reign.

The movies that came out that year didn’t seem to help much. Schwarzenegger was in an underrated film, “End of Days”, Johnny Depp was in the terrifying “Ninth Gate”, which let everyone down with an absolutely dumbass ending to a decent story. But there were plenty of debunkers and unbelievers, too. Watching wrestling, which was better at the time, was fun. Chris Jericho went by the nickname “Y2J” in a thumbing of the nose at the worriers. His Titantron entrance showed chaos erupting.

Plenty of scholars pointed out that Nostradamus was at best a scribbler of fantasy whose writings were completely open to any interpretation a reader wanted to apply.

In November, the superstitious and pseudoscientific population took a truly weird event as an omen. In the eastern Atlantic, Hurricane Lenny was born. He did something that confounded the NOAA, no small feat. He traveled east. He was the first to be observed doing so exclusively, without looping once either north or east. He was born over water and died there, a freak among Atlantic storms which are known to be unpredictable.

The threat we faced was nothing more than fear. On New Year’s Eve I watched the countdown to midnight in Times Square. At 00:00 hours, nothing happened. Nothing blew up. Nothing shut down. Nothing crashed. There was no chaos, no mayhem.

People are often scared of the things that never happen and the things that do happen but defy easy explanation, like Hurricane Lenny. I’ve sure been hit by both. It seems that it’s in our genes.

But what gets me the most is when people should be afraid, but aren’t.

I saw that people reacted to the coronavirus with a mixed response. In some states, people stayed home, but by then the virus was well seeded here. The United States has been the epicenter of COVID-19 for months. Now people have had enough and are reopening businesses. That could have been done with minimal risk and physical distancing. Masks are mostly illusory and provide little protection. But those, combined with distancing and testing, are effective. Quarantine after a positive test result is essential. Some people did it. Some didn’t. Some were contagious way before getting tested, making it worse, so what we had before the protests was a climbing rate of infection. Stories of a decline were false or just wishful thinking and denial. No decline existed. New York may have seen a drop but that’s a different story.

The protesters are in close proximity to each other. Some wear masks, some don’t. But the lack of spacing, the viral load concentration between people as they talk or breathe heavily as they walk distances that elevate heart rate, is a really big problem. I deleted my blog “The Last of the American Dream” because nobody ever read it. To get views, you really need a paid WordPress domain and search engines have to like you. And people have to “like” your posts. I don’t have either advantage and people just don’t come here. My other blog was more political and science based. I followed up news stories on climate change and fact checked, then tried to explain in simple terms what to expect. Believe me, it’s not good. These days nobody wants to read about it. No one wants to put it on the cable news. You can ignore or even disbelieve anything you want. Doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It is there. Every update I read proved a past prediction about the speed of glacial melt in gross error. Sea level rise isn’t the guide, it’s merely an effect. Watching huge wedges of ice shelf fall into the sea is partially a guide, but what so many miss is that the more ice is lost, the more danger we are in, both short term and long. It should scare the shit out of you, because it’s too late to stop it. Seawater is very good at retaining heat. That seawater, perhaps a degree or two warmer than in past decades, eats away at ice. The sun heats the air more, so that blue pools of melt water are clearly seen on top of expanses of glaciers. Melting has been achieved from above and below. The tundra is thawing. Fear among scientists that an inevitable release of methane will happen, will be epic and catastrophic, are true. Yet no one talks about it. Except scientists and teenage girls smarter than any of us can ever be. Nobody reads. Nobody listens.

The pandemic may have shut down a lot of emissions as highways were empty of traffic for a minute. The Los Angeles sky cleared. The earth didn’t constantly tremble from motor vehicles. I know we can make changes. But now it’s forgotten as the fossil fuels burn again. None will remember. The climate change wasn’t slowed. It wasn’t long enough to do that. In truth even if it had been sustained for two years or more, the temperature would still rise because of what’s already in the atmosphere, which isn’t visible, as smog is.

It’s a pity people aren’t terrified of what’s in store. Every prediction is obsolete before it’s made. It’s far, far worse than you can imagine.

Being unable to imagine something is no sin, but knowing that an event or condition will come and doing nothing about it, is.

We are in an existential crisis. As a country. As a species.

Nightmares are here. More will come.

TRUMP’S AMERICAN DESTRUCTION

You can lie to others. Even to yourself. If you truly see Trump as a saviour, you are full of lies. He has set a record for lies told by a sitting president, so don’t be too hard on yourself for being full of shit.

Everything he’s done has caused irreparable damage to this country. Now Joe Biden admits to fears that Trump will as president bring all his powers to bear in order to limit ballots. He’s considered the possibility that even if he loses the election, Trump will play dictator and refuse to leave the White House. Fuck, I predicted that in 2017, then again last year on my blog. You saw the White House surrounded within days of the first signs unrest following George Floyd’s murder. A new fence. New concrete. Mercenaries brought in to show his power, armed to the teeth, as all dictators begin. He was castigated for his threat to use regular military personnel against protesters; be thankful he backed up. Someone finally stood up to him and made a difference.

That difference will vanish into nothingness when he tries it next time. He has a mission. He clearly acts on the whim of Vladimir Putin. The mission is to take this country to a level of weakness that will allow Russia to complete its invasion of Ukraine and take other countries as well. It’s about resources and military targets. While our military focused on the hopeless war against terror, draining money and wasting lives and time, Russia consolidated every resource for home defense. They can’t be prevented from military operations in other countries with the condition he’s put us in. Putin bides his time, awaiting the hour he knows Trump and his family and confederacy of goons will provide for him. We know Trump was professionally groomed without knowing how deep he was in the shit.

Putin isn’t as stupid as his puppet. He’s watched the United States lose face militarily since Vietnam. He knows what Nixon called “peace with honor” was bullshit, a dishonorable defeat in a war we should have known better than to get into following the French colonial forces getting their asses kicked. When we disengaged, everyone seemed happy. But around the globe, it was seen as proof that America didn’t hold up to its commitment to people it had vowed to save. That on the ground, in the air and even at sea, American forces could be beaten and bloodied.

That war did more damage than anyone but a few can ever know. Veterans returned broken, guilt ridden and damaged beyond the possibility of healing. Scholars picked it all apart in thick volumes that should be required reading. Documentaries were made. In the end, what remained was a nightmare Kennedy and Johnson had inflicted on our country. We’ve been mocked ever since, tested, shoved, provoked and battered as a result of incompetent intelligence and leadership. Money taken from intelligence resources and put elsewhere. Resources which would have kept us out of Iraq and prevented needless death and the destabilization of that entire region.

We are so slow to learn. Even slower to stop, take a breath and consider our actions and give proper appraisal of the possible consequences. Vietnam and Nixon changed everything. We rebounded but with his presidency the corporate world had taken hold of the republican party by the balls, and it never let go. It never will. Water rights are taken by corporate interests by the most horrible means, and in return we get chemicals that are added “for taste” but aren’t tasty at all; they simply make one thirstier as well as being a potential threat to fetuses if enough is taken in by an expectant mother. Not that each bottle contains toxic levels, but over time and with enough consumption, it’s possibly a threat. In any event it is a dirty goddamn trick. Microplastic material is found in alarming amounts and a devoted drinker has been said to take in the equivalent of a credit card in a week. But soon you’ll have no choice but to buy your water from these brazen corporations. Or, to be more accurate, illegal conglomerates who make money enough to fight court rulings and fuck us up the ass. And we take it readily, without asking for any lube or some gratuitous foreplay.

Chaos has been the rule of thumb during the Trump administration. Christ what a ride. And it’s a horror now, today, on a level we’ve never seen. We never asked for it. I have no patience for motherfucking morons who say, “He’s your president! He was elected so show respect!”

That’s normal considering they were never respectful to President Obama. They bitched despite never having one dishonorable thing he ever did for them to bitch about. The conspiracy theories never panned out. The accusations were nonsensical bullshit. He worked his ass off for us and saved us from a terrible economic situation that was the result of carelessness and greed. Trump’s been all about tearing apart everything Obama worked so hard for.

THE PANDEMIC

The Trump White House was super slow on the uptake. Someone in there knew something, sure as hell, because the CDC was required to clear statements with the administration first. And more was done to muffle the threat. We have ourselves to blame for sitting still. We got news. It was reported. Nobody wanted to believe it. Since when does something that bad suddenly travel that fast?

I read everything I could. I knew it would be bad, but I thought it would be worse than it is at this point. I talked about chaos theory and why predictions were too limited to be accurate. The NOAA has trouble predicting the paths of hurricanes, which don’t cooperate very well with data input. Programs have limits. As far as coronavirus is concerned, I knew and warned that it was impossible to predict, that this wasn’t an SIV, but a SARS disease, more contagious and more deadly than H1N1 influenza. There are variables, I wrote, which cannot be foreseen, but can and will cause the spread among the population to behave unpredictably. It was going to be worse, in other words, than the programs could calculate.

For example, who could have predicted that travel restrictions imposed by the White House would have so many exemptions? Who could have known that summer weather wouldn’t stop it, that there would be no resurgence in the fall because it never went away? Who knew Arizona or Texas would be hotspots in June?

Chaos theory dictates unpredictability in any closed system, and biology is a closed system. Outside forces may occasionally intrude, as in extinction-event meteoroids, but even that comes from an unpredictable, closed system we can define as the known galaxy. Aside from such rare events, we feel secure without reason to feel secure in any way. Disasters happen suddenly, no warning given, or with short warning. Even hurricanes can be tricky, making devilish moves and making landfall when no one was prepared because watches had been lifted. It is rare but it does happen. Just look up spaghetti models and rummage around. Have a go at it. You’ll see what I mean.

One variable impacting the pandemic is the murder of George Floyd. It outraged, as well it should have, a large part of our country. The protesters did us proud, but there’s the devil to pay. Already spikes are being seen in the infections of coronavirus. It will get much, much worse. And severe heat won’t matter. As we enter summer, Arizona is fucked-up. North Carolina has a governor second-guessing reopening public spaces or businesses. Half of the contiguous United States is seeing a terrifying rise in cases of Covid-19.

Combined, hurricane season, global warming, social and economic upheaval, political corruption and the coronavirus have put dark days in our path. Chaos theory is in full play, showing it’s not just real but that we’re weak, all too mortal, and that we must pay for our habit of not heeding warnings. Our habitual abuse of the environment. And for cowardly failing to stand up to a man with no soul. He should never have made it this far. But he has made it this far, constantly being aided by republican politicians and corporate money and clout. If I wonder whether this is the beginning of events predicted in the Bible, you’ll forgive me, yes?

You can disagree, of course. I’m sure I come off as a madman. But tell me: this time last year, did you see this coming? If someone had told you, what would you have thought?