Godsong of the Pale Blue Women, 11th Day of Spring, 525 M.E. (Helios): So, cool, I never thought I'd have a ringside seat to The End of a small-d democratic United Snakes. 

I grew up in the 60s and am of the generation that had to do duck-and-cover drills under our desks in case of nuclear war (as if). For the first 35 years of my life, I was fairly convinced that if something else didn't get me first, I would burn to death, along with most of the rest of humanity, in a global thermonuclear war. It wasn't a question of if, but of when. There were too many nukes pointed at too many people with too many generals and politicians stoking fear and hatred and barking warnings for it not to happen, and all we needed was for one madman to launch one missile to get everyone else's arsenal flying all over the globe. It seemed inevitable. Why stay in college, why go to night school?, the Talking Heads asked, and I couldn't answer, even if I was in college when the song was recorded.

But then in 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. I watched it live on CNN - young Berliners with sledge hammers tearing down big slabs of concrete while the crowd around them cheered and the police looked away. For the first time in my life, I felt hope. Maybe our species will survive after all. Maybe, for all our faults, we really are the good guys and maybe sometimes the good guys win. Democracy spread across Eastern Europe and elsewhere in the world, the Soviet Union collapsed a few years after,  and I felt a newfound optimism for the future of our planet. Sure, we still had problems, lots of them, but things were moving in the right direction and it seemed like everyone saw the worldwide benefits of peace and freedom over war and authoritarianism.

I never would have guessed back then that a mere 25 years later we would see Nazi-style fascism take hold in the Snakes. I never imagined that the amerikan people would clamor for an authoritarian leader to take away rights and basic freedoms from immigrants, foreigners, racial and gender minorities, and those who disagreed with them politically. Extraordinary rendition of Latin Americans to be shipped off to brutal El Salvador prisons, with the president threatening to do the same to anyone who protests their treatment. Or protests genocide of Palestinians. Or steps out of line at all. 

Even though the rest of the world woke up from history, the United Snakes couldn't overcome the karma of its own history. Nothing good can grow from soil planted with African slavery and the genocide of indigenous people and fertilized with capitalist imperialism and runaway materialism. Nothing good can grow out of that soil and even though I understood that, I didn't think I'd actually live to see the karmic consequences actually come to pass. 

My only solace is that I won't live long enough to suffer the effects of climate change finally washing this continent clean again through floods, hurricanes, droughts, and wildfire. A hard rain falling and washing the scum off the Earth once and for all as the karmic cycle finally completes its full 360° revolution. Good luck with that one, kids. Sorry it had to happen to you.