Death Takes No Holiday, Epilogue

The Uncertainty Principle

At some point in this book-length series of diatribes, I’m probably going to fail to stop myself from ranting unhelpfully about the current state of things on the planet and what, if anything, can be done about it. As my mind of late has, thanks to a spate of real-time, intense communion with my mortality, been cleared of much of its day-to-day distractibility, it has occurred to me that the time for that sort of rant might be now. Even though I will doubtless have more chapters to stuff in between the recently logged Chapter 13 (I Had a Dream Last Night …) and whatever I manage to do here, I’m predicting that this passage may end up serving as the final leg of “Death Takes No Holiday”. I’ll get back to you on that in the final version, if anything changes.

At any rate, allow me to begin this premature epilogue with an insincere apology: If anyone is reading these puerile leavings in the hope of gaining some sort of guidance, I’m sorry to disappoint. Actually, I’m not that sorry, as disabusing people of crippling “certainties” has been a feature of my modus operandi since I first realized my dad was a charlatan and an asshole, way back when I was five years old. My misanthropic behavior is, as my beautiful and far more genetically advanced wife often has the opportunity to tell me, “not a very nice way to be.” And for that, again, I respectfully decline to apologize.

The reason being, I didn’t embark upon this unlikely and unsolicited slice of existence aiming to become a disgruntled iconoclast, carping sporadically and uselessly into the ether as the humanity into which I was born steers itself inexorably toward a dystopian hellhole. I still don’t.

But what has become disturbingly more obvious to me in the intervening years between 1952 and now, thanks mostly to the strategically serendipitous placement of my undeservedly long lifespan at or near the black heart of a global criminal empire during a particularly dangerous transformative era in human history, is that we are edging perilously close to some sort of hyper-technological inflection point. And that beyond that point may lie a steaming pile of shit, for most if not all of humanity.

And that just pisses me the fuck off.

It hardly matters which large-scale human-made disaster strikes first, or whether or not you think any panic-inducing black swan event is a hoax or a false flag, or terrifyingly real. The fact that any of these things even can happen is enough to shitcan the human project. A more virulent and hard-to-survive lab-enhanced pestilence; a few more badly timed once-in-a-millennium floods and continent-wide wildfires; some sudden desertification of a vast rain forest or grassland; a mass poison gas killing incident; a world war involving sporadic use of tactical nuclear weapons; a major multi-city terrorist attack offing tens of millions; the takedown of a nation’s or an entire continent’s electrical or communications grid … any one of these or dozens of other events — real or perceived — could tip the planet-wide human cohort over the brink and into a steep nosedive. It’s also reasonable based on recent observations that the global security network has not been wasting any excess effort trying to avoid any such eventualities, but seems instead hell-bent only on building a systemic totalitarian response to capitalize on every possible disastrous outcome, herding the unfortunate survivors into ever more restrictive economic, cultural and physical prison colonies.

What the alleged master planners’ calculations seem to be missing is that, beyond the aforementioned inflection point, we’ll either all slide quickly into the abyss together …or some small, extremely privileged sliver of us will get a temporary reprieve while the vast majority gets to either die off horribly or live in a totalitarian dystopia, wishing we were dead. This last eventuality is where my current suspicions lie.

This is also where lie the sentiments of the few marginally likeminded individuals who pay any attention to my drivel and/or add their own mewlings to the din, so I guess this might just be my own pitiful attempt at “audience capture.” We’ll see, I guess, or we won’t.

Either way, it’s logical to imagine that things are not going to be pretty. And by “we,” I don’t just mean Americans, or “Western Civilization.” I mean the whole fucking dead-end human project … which will truly sadden and anger me, if it indeed comes to pass.

But I tend to keep it all in, thinking “wait and see” and “maybe it’s all in my head,” as do most of you. So at the very least, consider this a short peek inside my contrary, anti-authoritarian psyche, while I’m still around and able to formulate an opinion.

I periodically conclude that it didn’t really have to be this way, no matter what the determinists and crackpot end-times theologians think. The thought gnaws at me, as I prepare to fade into history a mere heartbeat too early to witness the human saga’s final denouement, that there must have been a much more rational, less blatantly suicidal way to run a criminal empire. Sadly though, after long and careful and ultimately fruitless observation and occasional deep investigation, I’ve devolved into just another dumb, helpless old doomer, who’s going to spend what’s left of his short, futile existence lobbing into the void brutal indictments and I-told-you-sos, dressed up as stories, satire, songs and maybe a little angry poetry. And, by the way, NOT throwing himself and his family, friends and progeny into the maw of this voracious, evil and ultimately suicidal death cult empire by taking up arms or plotting any useless “resistance.”

As Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry kept reminding us through his characters “the Borg,” in the middle of the willfully naive countercultural 1960s: “Resistance is futile.”

Resistance may indeed be futile.

It certainly seems so, as the actual future unfolds. Just look at the exponentially expanding rate these poor misbegotten Gazans, Ukrainians, Burmese, Burkinabé, Malians, Pakistanis, Indians, Uyghurs, Russians, Amsazigh, Syrians, Druze, Nigeriens, Chadians, Yemenis, Sudanese, Ethiopians, Colombians, Venezuelans, Afghanis, Somalis, Nigerians, Congolese, Kurds, Mexicans, Camaroonians, Biafrans, Haitians, Jamaicans, Kashmiris, Philippines, New Guineans, Bangladeshis, Iraqis, Libyans, Central Africans, Hondurans, Peruvians, Salvadorans, Jews, Muslims (including but not limited to Sunnis and Shia), Hindus, etc., etc. are currently being mowed down, with the perpetrators and victims on all sides being egged on, manipulated and armed by the war pigs of the dominant empire. What do you really think will happen when this vast, semi-automated death machine actually notices you and your tattooed cronies enough to get annoyed with your weak-assed bullshit insurrection? Even before they get to universally deploying all these spiffy new killer drones; AI-powered, sweat-sniffing, weaponized robot dogs and space-based lasers?

But I digress.

Judging by all the unchecked, balls-to-the-wall deal-making and asset-stripping going on, it looks like the current batch of unhinged overlords self-selected to strangle the globe for themselves have decided to take off the mask and let the final, final solution roll and leave the mopping up to the machines.

Meanwhile the remaining dregs of the sad, quixotic Marxist dream, cowering in their ivory towers as the heartless Randians strip them of government funding and any credit for being the geniuses behind the New World Order, always knew they never had a chance to make a real difference, having been reduced for years to nonprofit-seeking whoredom on the edges of the vast, steamrolling criminal capitalist empire, never realizing that their fatally flawed paradigm never would have worked either.

Seriously. Trying to convince a species of unruly, greedy and bloodthirsty killer/adventurers that they could remotely be able to reconstitute themselves as obedient, sharing, community-minded “workers” has always been a nonstarter.

(Author’s Note: I wouldn’t have gone for that either, not having been born a fucking ant.)

Even where humans have opted to throw the bums out and try to implement top-to-bottom, cradle-to-grave sharing and caring, the effort has either been thwarted or perverted into something unrecognizable to Karl Marx. Every venue on earth in which socialism has gotten a foothold: Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, Viet Nam, etc., has been subverted from within and without, usually with considerable help from the agents, financiers and armed legions of the British/American-led global empire. For the empire’s media arm to convince the international libertarian grinch-osphere that such an easily compromise-able pack of losers could ever manage to implement a one-world totalitarian regime has to be one of the most successful scams pulled in human history.

Regardless, “resistance” of all sorts has continued to pop up, but it’s impossible to avoid noticing that this “imaginary” empire has over the past century become ever more adept and capable of turning each uprising against itself and leaving the resistant nations in tatters, economically and/or physically bombed nearly back to the Stone Age. The largest potential threats … primarily Russia and China … have, despite their continued efforts to differentiate themselves and build counterweight centers of power, been transformed by the empire’s financial arm into bizarro versions of the American economic experiment, just as cleverly leveraged to their necks into the complex web of international monetary feudalism. They can rattle their sabers all they want, but the economic faction of the empire still has them by the balls.

Globalism is here to stay, and the world’s new clown car of tinpot “populist” patsies, including our own Mr. Trump, are merely playing their parts in its final act, paving the way for some real, Borg-style totalitarianism.

By the way, I lied earlier in this downer of a final (?) episode. I do have a tidbit of parting “guidance” to offer, not so much for us losers, but more for you assholes at the top, whomever you really are. As much as I think Elon Musk and his ilk are a big part of the problem, I’m unfortunately also pretty suspicious that they may hold the only remaining keys to the solution, and you shouldn’t try to fuck to hard with the dude until he has a chance to at least help get us onto another rock. Humanity unfortunately needs to expand and dominate its shitty attitude into the cosmos or die. And I would advise the globe’s growing posse of hairplugged alpha dogs to try and be a little more fucking kind and compassionate to us poor dumb sheeple while doing that. I’m no spiritualist, but it does seem that bad JuJu does tend to come back and bite you in the ass, one way or another. Just because you’re a fucking Borg doesn’t mean you have to kill the source of your economic, intellectual, social, moral and philosophical power, even if you don’t really need us any more to toil at dumb jobs now that you’ve got all these fancy machines to do your dirty work.

Trust me, you still need some suffering hordes around to live our lives and die colorfully and tell you our thrilling stories to keep you entertained and occupied, and not get so fucking bored that you kill yourselves.

Feel free to come to the conclusion that I’m full of shit. But for fuck’s sake, please do take a few seconds out of your busy asset-counting day to actually think about these things. For the time being, you’re human too. Take care.

And now for a word from our musical guest: