I must have got to a certain age where the world appears to be ending. I’m in my mid fifties now. Historically older writers often see the end of the world coming as their own mortality marches steadily toward them, mistaking their own end for the end of everything, or to be more charitable, they have the subconscious (or conscious) realization that the world of their youth truly is dead, has passed into history and is gone. That world has ended, the hand of time smoothing those sands into ripples at best, just some songs to get nostalgic about, hairstyles to laugh at.

The 1980s are gone. That world no longer exists. It has been erased by time and technological advancements, by social changes that were in motion then, and have continued to evolve and mutate. The internet has changed everything. Social media has changed everything with its dopamine hits and outsourced thinking. Hand held computers with screens and real time tracking has changed everything.

Money has always ruled the world. But it no longer hides its hand. Politicians obviously bought, legislation written by corporations becomes law, the tail of business wagging the dog of society. And business is short sighted. One quarter is as far as it can see ahead. Mammon is a devourer: a bloated god always gorging itself on the wealth of others, always starving and crying out for more, never, ever satisfied. Extreme wealth is a sickness, a profound distorter of personality, and of reality perception. The super wealthy mistake themselves for gods, when most are just nepo-babies.

The 1980s brought us greed is good. As a slogan: the reality is far older. East India company. Crassus and his gold, who thought he could buy Rome and looked for a military adventure abroad to burnish his reputation, an easy victory to play well back home. He ended up swallowing his wealth when reality broke through his delusion and killed him. He is a warning.

The world has always been in crisis. Is this one really worse? I ate Chicken Kiev at school the day we learned of the meltdown at Chernobyl. Always thought that was ironic, not tragic. Being a “cool” teenager, unaware of my own ignorance. Wars have followed, financial crashes and a pandemic. Why does this feel different, to me?

Because we are led by worshippers of Mammon. Money rules them, in all its short-sighted glory. They don’t care where it comes from, what favors are asked in return. They just want more, like their god. They think money will insulate them from disaster, a disaster so large it could starve the human planet. Finally they shall learn that you cannot eat gold. Only Mammon can do that, and it does not satisfy him either.

We are led by the compromised, the conflicted, the stupid. Starting a war and being surprised by the consequences. Surprised that people who are attacked will fight back. Zealots of all types hold too much sway, and they care little for consequences, for in their mind their utopias are inevitable until reality crashes through their delusion and forces them to realize that the 12^th army is not about to relieve Berlin, that the war, already lost many times over, is finished.

We are living in our time’s Cuban Missile Crisis, but in our time the adults have all been fired, and the missiles are being landed on the island by people too stupid or compromised or unblinkingly committed to see the negative consequences coming. Or they have been paid to ignore those consequences, promised they will be looked after, that they will survive. The rest of us are just numbers on a spreadsheet. Acceptable losses. They think their broken markets have factored it all in. I do not share their optimism.

This is the Armageddon Tango, a dance between the fanatic, the bought, and the unyielding. A dance we watch, but seem powerless to stop. And the dancers switch roles, bought, unyielding, fanatical, the whole performance stupid beyond belief, the dancers thinking they can somehow come out ahead, get what they want. It seems so complex this dance, but it is simple: pride drives it. Greed drives it. Misguided ideas about imagined futures are assumed as facts to be avoided or embraced. We’ve gone this far, let’s dance to the end of the pier, to the edge of the cliff. If we escalate, maybe they’ll retreat. They escalated too? How dare they! Two can play that game! The problem is that the dance itself may make the pier collapse under the weight of insane escalation, the cliff disintegrate beneath the dancer’s feet, and then, well the dancers may stop their tango, but the damage is done, to everyone.

All this is easy to watch through our screens that monitor us, hope someone else does something. Hope that they really aren’t crazy enough to take the next fatal step, even after so many have already been taken against all logic and reason. Hope someone swallows their pride and stops. Hope it just ends at $10 a gallon gas, even though that means the deaths of millions across the world. Starvation is on the table. But the dancers no longer seem to care, they are certain they will be rewarded, that they can win, that the ends will justify their inhumane means. And so it stops being a dance and becomes a maddening death march where all that is important is that each side loudly claims they are not responsible for what happens, even as they take the next step, point the next finger.

Are we better than this, as a people? Can we stop it? I pray we can.

So yeah, I’m getting older. This is probably just a phase I’m going through, morbid and dramatic. It two years this will be ancient history, a forgotten blip I got all excited over, a molehill not a mountain. For all our sakes, I hope it is.