The new year is coming

Let's see now: a new President -- check;

A fresh administration -- check;

Democrats in charge -- check;

the religious right marginalized -- ummmmm, maybe check;

science of evolution -- check;

Kyoto Protocol -- check;

intelligence in the White House -- check.



So yeah, things are different now -- for the most part.



The U.S. might regain some of the losses of the past eight years -- we can hope. But there are so many things wrong right now it's going to take a long time to make things right.



Listen everyone, and listen good. Those of you who voted for the chimp should be the ones to apologize to every other person in this country. Shut your damned mouths and hear me: you were fucking wrong. YOU chose him, without listening to one fucking word we said -- twice. And between him, Wall Street and people like Bernie Madoff, you have paralyzed this country good.



And, as the name of my blog indicates, this is the end of the world as we know it.



You know, that's the one thing that has always bugged me and bugged me good. How can anyone, in the face of all that is both good and wise, choose to ignore it all? How can anyone sit idly by, and not contribute more to the healthy stratosphere of life and innovation that is happening around the world? How can anyone, faced with so much significant change, try to deny it? And how can anyone still try to justify the actions of a backward administration with fools as its members?



Global warming; global war; preemptive strikes; a toxic wasteland that is proliferating worldwide; unending war in many regions; daunting misery and poverty everywhere; violence and the violation of human rights; and -- where do I stop? Can I stop, or should I stop? Measure by measure, the idyllic society that some might have envisioned in the 21st century is never going to happen, but we must make do with the way things are, and strive continuously to make things a little better, day by day, to ease the burden of a society in ruins.



Yeah, I know. I know that trying to remain conservative is the idiot's and fool's way of dealing with so much. They are the arrogant or prideful souls who can't deal with change because they are so afraid of being swallowed up by a nameless and faceless entity called society that they rail against anything that doesn't fit into their limited worldview.



They're miserable, so they do one of two things: they try to make everyone fit into their neat little box of life so that there is a curtain between them and reality, or they retreat and become reclusive trying to make the world go away. Imagine being so afraid of reality that you hide in plain sight, insisting that everyone else is completely wrong and that you are the only one that is right. Imagine putting all your faith (pun intended) into a book--one single book out of millions, a book that was written by perhaps hundreds of authors adding a paragraph here and there, a book that has seen more change than thr rest of the world around it, and that can not--ever--be considered anything other than metaphorical.



But that's another argument. The point is, people cling to something, something which keeps them safe, keeps them from trying to catch up to the rest of the world. People for whom these changes are frightening, and must try their damnedest to keep these changes from ever happening.



Yoohoo! It's already done. It's been done now, slowly but surely, over the course of a century and longer. From the single lightbulb of Thomas Edison, to the first TV from Philo Farnsworth, to the first mass production of the automobile from Henry Ford, to the first plane of the Wright Brothers--these inventions, and so many more like them, shaped the world we know today. We went from horses and buggies to the Hummer, from dirigibles to a landing on the moon. I recall a speech from a man who had seen a great deal of it who said that technology is essentially tripling every twenty five years. I say now that it has accelerated beyond that estimate. Who could have ever imagined the platforms we now embrace, such as YouTube, texting, handheld computers with more power than was needed for the moon landing? Everything we could ever desire is just a short distance away--but is also so far away from the majority of people on Planet Earth that its tangibility comes into play.



How can just about a billion people on Earth control 99% of the wealth, the power, the technology, with over 6 billion people without such progression? We have brought this situation to a head, with the greediness and arrogance of many who have betrayed the trust the public has put in them. It seems more and more that the divide between most people has grown to a great chasm--the rich, who are