Outside the bubble; ominous hoof beats

Life is pretty good in the bubble I inhabit. The air and water are tops, not a hint of a coming environmental disaster. Heath care is wonderful…Medicare and a supplement cover every health care need at little cost to moi. Money? Only question every day is did the stock market make me a tad more affluent, and most days it does. Pandemic? Tho I wear a mask when required, I didn’t know a single one of the 186,392 that lay dead from covid-19. Don’t even know any of the 6,117,367 who became infected. Racial strife? I can look long and hard and not see any here under the bubble of the bucolic burbs.

But in the distance, ominous hoof beats. California is on fire, Iowa’s battling 140 MPH winds and the Gulf Coast has been deluged. Tens of millions still don’t have health insurance and millions more on the brink or in process of losing theirs. Over 30 million have lost their jobs and face economic catastrophe. Pandemic takes a thousand of the most vulnerable to an early grave every day. Racial strife erupts in disorder throughout the land with every senseless police or citizen minority killing.

And riding this quintet of steeds spelling societal unraveling is a strange, disconnected narcissist, exploiting and expanding the damage they inflict. Worse, over 60,000,000 of my fellow citizens are poised to unleash the master of this carnage for another four years.

The many millions of us in the bubble of the American Good Life should enjoy it while we can. The hoof beats are getting nearer and louder.We either rise together or splinter apart and fall.