This is an email I wrote to a colleague that was inspired by a gradual, nagging essential injury, one that doesn’t keep you out of the starting lineup but progresses to limit one’s effectiveness. This morning was the bra that stroked the camel’s back and it just poured out of me like a beer chugged out of a pitcher at a fraternity party. That crappy analogy has been the extent of my typical sarca-cynicism on this topic. This is important and I’m angry.

I have copied the entire email here. There’s a bit of personal and a little profane, but I feel it’s germane.

Dear XXXXX,

Dad is hanging in there but shows negative change nearly every day. I am beginning to lose the spiritual strength to help him. I am quite sure the fact that he watches cable news 24/7 has fatally poisoned me.

My weariness also stems from the fact that I get about 75 emails a day asking for money. They explain, in many different carefully vetted and crafted ways, how that money will defeat the trolls and goblins of the “other” party. They tell us if we don’t give and give all we have our brains will explode and the moon will slam into Philadelphia. They call us out by name and ridicule and demean us for not giving. They never meet their quotas.

I told XXX X. and XXXXXX yesterday that we should stop having elections and have each candidate, on a specific date, just show an appointed panel of jurists their campaign bank accounts and then choose our elected officials that way, by who is richest. And we know it’s inhuman for nearly all candidates to be so intentionally cruel and duplicitous in their campaign ads. What have we become anyway? We prevaricate and slander each other without batting an eye.

I would prefer an open, honest and clear authoritarian government made up from the real oligocrats (my word) instead of the shadow, hidden government we now have. We should be fully aware of how f**ked we really are and how none of us will ever get anywhere without their approval. We should be made aware of our true state and true fate so we can work on accepting it.

The result of this ruse is that we spend obscene amounts of money getting these puppets elected then are unable to spend adequate money on the people’s welfare. We cut, cut, cut our bureaus’ budgets drastically and then scream bloody murder when we are incapable of doing our bureaucratic jobs, especially those that most affect our welfare, which are numerous. We politicize everything, especially things that should never ever be politicized, which are legion. We have no respect for nor confidence in any of the three branches of government. In our foreign policy our actions are damned when we do and damned when we don’t. A majority of our citizens have become sheeple, easily frightened and even easier to manipulate.

It is getting harder and harder for me to be active in electoral politics. I feel it may be more important to prepare young people to be able to attempt surviving the coming collapse of the economy and accompanying panic, chaos, and uncontrollable barbarism. I need to do this especially for my daughter, who deserves better and to whom I am ashamed to bequeath such a f^^ked up world.

People who think ISIS and Ebola are serious existential threats to our way of life are delusional. We actually have the resources and possibly the will to reduce their ability to harm us to an acceptable number of fatalities, similar to the Vietnam war. The coming crises will be much worse, so bad that the media will be unable to make them appear worse. They will be forced to actually report them honestly, for as long as they are able to report them. We will be so arrogant and ignorant and f##king stupid that we will have no chance to oppose the real “Outbreaks” and “Epidemics” and “Acts of God” and “Terrorism” and “Collapses” and “Perpetual War” and “Renegades” and “Slaughter” and “Hunger” and “Famine” etc. that will overwhelm the media and petrify the nation. The government will be sequestered in underground bunkers, neutered and emasculated, but modestly civilized. The people will not have that luxury.

I’d almost rather be in a real life Zombie film, where at least I would be able to have an impact on the world, even after I am dead. We are a strange species, so productive while at the same time so destructive. Frankly, we no longer deserve to be at the top of the food chain. We have both abdicated hope, abrogated our legislative responsibilities, arrogated our planet’s resources and the fruits of our labor and given over the legal structure that maintains civil society to partisanship. We worship and gather massive wealth yet are bankrupt in wisdom.

Can you tell I woke up in a bad mood?

Me