It didn't have to be that way. A simple acknowledgment that a vast majority of humanity is now living in better conditions than the pashas and potentates of the past might help to put a perspective on the whole thing. It isn't the grabbers and redistributors, the sellers of envy and violence, that brought this about. Instead there is a grim, determined focus on oppression that has dwindled to the point where its opponents must find their enemies in the past or simply make them up out of whole cloth. Can anyone serious possibly look at an African woman walking two miles for firewood and her American counterpart driving her car two miles to work and pretend that the commonality is systemic racism?
The truth of the matter is that people gulled into believing that they are oppressed may be safely plundered, soothed by the assurance that they are now destined for the role of avenging top dog. How that got to be named "progress" is one of the greatest con jobs in modern history.
We’ll have our global warming,
it’s gonna be the rage.
The benefits are forming
to stall the next ice age.
But, hark, what muffled grousing
the transom overflows,
as climate change arouses
funky festooned foes.
It’s a cascade of excresence
to make mankind regress
to living like a peasant
while using less and less.
Crank up the moth-balled factories
and turn the A/C down.
Build nuclear reactors
to light your life and town.