The world's burning here too. Thanks to widespread and unusual drought, there are huge wildfires burning all summer long, all over the West. They start well before the usual beginning of "fire season" and continue well past the end of it, into the late autumn. Fire season is now 3/4 of the year. Pretty soon I suppose it'll be all year long. There's a hot wind and choking smoke everywhere. The sun is blacked-out if you're in the immediate vicinity, or else there's a thick smoke haze for miles. It feels like the goddamned apocalypse. It feels like you're in hell. Or rather, hell feels like this. Because those who came up with the concept of hell, based it on this. It was one of their worst experiences of divine retribution. Along with floods and storms etc., and those are coming fast & furious now too.

On TV here comes another car commercial. The disconnect is amazing. This shit needs to stop TODAY, if there's to be any hope of stopping or even slowing the catastrophe already in motion. But "good people" are not getting it. Certain other people work overtime to make sure they don't get it. And of course cutting them in on the spoils (a.k.a. "issuing them a paycheck") raises their mental barriers against getting it. Insert Upton Sinclair quote here.... "It is difficult to get a man to understand bla bla bla."

The minute good people realize they're screwing over other good people, they might actually find it unpalatable to do the work (or buy the product). Either that or they're not such good people. But they don't always have a choice, right? At least that's what good people say who want to absolve good people. Gotta pay the rent, right? Well that's what my landlord says anyway. Gotta keep driving to work to pay the rent, right? Well that's what 80% of Houstonians and 85% of Detroiters say... but 70% of Portlanders agree too. (Everybody's a liberal as long as it doesn't mean getting off your ass.) Maybe people just naturally exploit and screw each other to profit themselves, and all morality is just an idealistic and optimistic overlay. Maybe people in general just aren't that "good." Maybe it'll be better after a bunch of us die the hell off. I need a drink.