Am I an Extra in an Episode of American Horror Story?
Another day, another dollar in what feels like another episode of an American Horror Story. For real though!
Thus far we’re walking around like the good robots our brains have programmed us to be. You know, eating, shitting, fucking, working, and buying whatever we can afford.
Thankfully, no one is panicking quite yet.
I mean some of us are too ignorant for reality to register. The lowest common denominator merely responds to whichever talking head they’ve latched on to. Unfortunately, we highly underestimate the vast number of ignorant people.
Some of us are in a semi dazed state thanks to either prescription drugs or street drugs, alcohol or weed.
Others are living their best lives in spite of an increasingly poor outlook. These positive thinkers are practicing the new age religion of the totally self absorbed.
I deserve to be happy. I love myself. I will have nice things.
Then there’s the assholes who are wired to be selfish at best or cruel and dangerous at worst. Oh shit! They see opportunity in the demise of others. They run the gamut of greedy oligarchs to streetwise thugs. Same people — different outfits.
That leaves a few thinkers who largely lay low and observe what’s unfolding.
What do we see?
Well, it’s still unfolding but so far it’s not looking good. We see climate catastrophes, pandemics, war, waste, suffering, even a dying empire. We feel helpless and hopeless.
We watch the wheels of daily life turning, held together by the marvels of technology and we immediately spot the weak links.
People pretending to be living the American dream sheerly by carrying lifelong debt. They talk about freedom from one side of their mouths while making promises to their prison guards out of the other side of their mouths.
Yeah, we may not have debtors prisons any longer but the middle class sold their souls to consumerism through credit cards and living in debt until the day they die.
If you think that’s freedom, then I have swampland in Florida I’d like to sell you.
America is number one in the use of natural resources, making trash, using drugs, gaining weight, and carrying guns. We are fat, stupid, and lethally dangerous to one another. We think we’re protecting democracy but the fact of the matter is as each day passes we dig ourselves deeper into the illusion that we’re better, better than any other country in the world, masters of our own fate, deserving of nothing but the best, and smarter than the rest.
Yet anxiety and untreated mental illness is on the rise.
Climate change disasters, one right after the other, continue to devour our precious funds. We are into the fixing of things over and over rather than being proactive and improving our infrastructures, actually updating them to meet the current demands of a new climate.
Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.
Denial is the most common way of dealing with problems in the US. That’s why it’s so easy for conspiracy theories to flourish in America.
We don’t like the simple truth.
We don’t want to accept that our partying days may be over soon. Even when the truth is staring us right in the face, we choose to deny it, boom! There we took care of that, didn’t we? We’ll just say it ain’t so. Then will make up an elaborate, weird, conspiracy theory that baffles the mind and is never able to be proven. But it serves a purpose and so it feels satisfying.
We don’t want to look at the truth because we don’t want to change our behaviors.
We like being gluttons. We hate education. It’s easier to eat than to study. We love wasting things. We love making trash and filling our garages full of junk so that we can’t even park cars inside. We love splurging. We love fighting with each other and brandishing our guns. We love Jesus and the angels because we believe that they have chosen us over any other people in the world.
We flaunt it.
We are Rome at its most perverted phase. We are Tiberius, dying of syphilis and covered with sores. We are Caligula so insane that we believe we are the actual gods.
We are dying and sooner than we realize.
These are the thoughts that run through the minds of those who sit back and observe. We see history repeating itself. We see human societies slowly but surely degrading, decaying, literally falling apart. We see the insane take advantage of our moral ineptitude and rise to fill places of power, to sit in the throne pretending they are gods. We look at our children and know that their futures will not be as good as ours were when we were their age. But then we forget all about it and fight and divorce and remarry and fight and divorce and remarry again while we pile up junk from the dollar store and buy cars we can’t afford and leave trash on the beaches where we go to vacation.
Why? Because we can and until we can’t, that’s what we’re going to keep on doing.
It’s the American way. Everyone else is waiting on us, cleaning our toilets and walking our dogs, making our stuff and growing our food. We’re one step away from the edge and we won’t be able to see it until it’s too late.
Is this for real?
Am I really just an extra in an episode of the American Horror story?
Probably not. I must be the victim of an overactive imagination. That’s entirely possible. Right? Right. I’m just writing my thoughts out loud as a form of therapy, I reckon.
Don’t pay me no mind.
Anywho, back to the business of living. I don’t feel like cooking. Maybe I’ll just go to Macdonald’s drive through today.
Catch you at the reruns.
Teresa Robert is a retired educator, author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
