The End

I can't stop watching documentaries on the 2008 financial meltdown. I guess I just keep hoping to understand how such a stupid thing could have ever happened. This, in itself, is a stupid hope. Yet, when I think of all the people who knowingly promoted, invested, and benefited from the shockingly fraudulent and self-destructive financial voodoo that led to this downfall, I cannot conceive of how it could have ever happened. These CEOs, CFOs, and multitude of upper management assholes who made millions upon millions of dollars in salaries and bonuses based on a Flat Out Lie seemed to never even blink. They were rich, protected, and above it all.

For some reason...I don't know WHY...this made me think of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The end of civilization begins with titanic booms in the distance. And we've always believed that it would be something physically violent that would end our civilization. Not "humanity," not that, but civilization.

If we were to be realistic, doesn't it seem more likely that society would end not with white hot nuclear blasts, or meteors plummeting from space, but our own greedy idiocy...when we refused to learn from the the most obvious financial missteps and instead allowed it to continue because we permitted our petty political differences to bring us to our collective knees. I could envision a nation of scattered, starving people walking the roads in search of some comfort. Not a home. Not even a safe haven. Just survival.

One guess as to who would own the homes with people imprisoned in the basement, missing limbs already consumed by these All-American homeowners? Your investment banker. Your CEO. After all, he already lacks common human decency. How much further would he have to go to cut off your leg and serve it to his upper-management posse?