Once upon a time I was an officer in USAF,
I had been a surprising number of places in what turned out to be my four years and three months of service.
San Antonio was first.
That was OTS - Officer Training School.
I was too obtuse to realize that "Training" was a way better deal than "Candidate".
I won't elaborate.
So I became a Second Lieutenant.
On graduation day I was actually thrilled.
A whole bunch of enlisted men were all on the parade grounds to salute me.
And get a dollar.
For that salute.
Nice custom.
I thought at the time.
I still do.
Think that.
That was the old days: VietnamLand.
That was GulfofTonkinLand.
That was "you better not argue, boy", land.
That was "run, run, run, the dominoes are falling land".
So I chugged on.
I went to San Angelo TX, Denver CO, Clovis NM, Saigon, Omaha NB, Itazuke.
That was a lot of places to absorb and a short time to absorb them.
But I flowed through.
That was "forget your hopes, dreams and aspirations land".
And during all of that and subsequent to that we had an emerging and not noticed phenomenon.
We had had forty years of concentration and accumulation of ridiculous wealth.
We had a few of us being gated in communities.
We had a few of us receding from most of us.
That few are the ridiculously rich.
When a place where prosperity had been the norm, and equality had been a way of life wakes up one day and finds itself to be mostly serfs, or in an obvious and imminent state of serfdom, an explosion happens.
What is expected from a people when everything is bleak or worse?
When people expect to be obliterated by nuclear missiles that we are assured are aimed at us but that don't really exist?
From places that don't have nuclear missiles?
When people finally have to figure out how to pay their accumulated credit card debt, or at least its minimum required: only 22 or so percent compounded daily on the total outstanding?
Aided and abetted by buy now pay later?
Terms and conditions opaque?
For large individual grocery tabs?
That are imbedded among all the other unavoidable tabs: shoes, underwear, water bill, electric bill, insurance bill and things like that; things that have to be engaged or acquired; things that become things that have to be paid; so they get "paid" (become sub, individually amortizing, transactions in the ever-increasing aggregate of the current balance)?
That go on those credit cards?
Because the "flow" in the people's "cashflow" is way short of the requisite aggregate monthly?
That they can't elude, because their family keeps wanting food?
And the rent takes most of that inadequacy?
And they really believe that Jesus is coming back?
For some purpose?
Jesus, who was merely a crucified teacher until the Council of Nicaea declared him to be god?
In 325?
292 years after he had been dead?
Or risen?
That risen thing always being a good story in the local pub?
("And the angel rolled back the stone ...")
When never ending, utterly stupid wars, are "what we do"?
And when a multiply convicted criminal is our president?
And when vast convocations of our fellows cheer that state of affairs?
They cheer and love the criminal?
Why worry about Artificial Intelligence?
At least it's artificial.
Not fucking stupid.
No wonder we are worried about it.
Stark, cold reality screams one of these to be the best course of action in the face of the plight:
Suicide
Vengeance
Invest in OpenAI
Oh, what's the use?
It was a good run.
For some of us.
Not for most of us.
But Don Jr had a good wedding.
Paid for by some Russian.
Thug.
Just like the dildo's cabinet.
Which is a confederacy of thugs, sadists, brigands and perverts.
As George Gobel used to say: "So there you are".
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