It’s Over! It’s All Over!

Posted by: Avinash on Saturday, April 21st, 2007

Most people are worrywarts and hopeless pessimists in this area of the Left Coast, but you probably haven’t seen anyone touch the despair of poor Marvin Chachere. It’s hard to not read this guy’s commentary and not break out the liquor (if you’re a minor, Diet Mountain Dew).

In thinking about what I ought to tell you regarding these dark days various clichés come to mind: I see no light at the end of the tunnel. The American dream is a nightmare. The American experiment failed. Pride precedeth the fall. To witness the death of our representative form of government is to feel some of the stages of grief identified by Dr. Kubler-Ross in her landmark study: disbelief, anger, despair… acceptance.

I found it unbelievable that our republic would spill out into the entire globe and, repeating the life-cycle of empires like Rome and Great Britain, our unmatched strength, confidence and conceit would lead to a sense of invincibility from which we stumbled, matured, grew old and collapsed.

I wonder what prescription glasses our friend Marvin has to have the clarity to see 200 years into the future. I gotta get me some of those.

If you want to try and look on the bright side of a bleak situation…well, the collapse hasn’t happened yet. And if Marvin is indeed in his eighth decade on Earth, he probably won’t be here to witness the crumbling. Just like it takes years to build an empire, it takes an inordinate amount of time for it to all come crashing down. Consider these the inflection years (not bad, not great, but missed when they’re gone).

So at least death will take you away from the fall. You’ve got that going!

Commentary: Letter to My Children’s Children’s Children On the End of Republican Government [Berkeley Daily Planet]
(Image from Gaping Void)



Topics: Berkeley, Society

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