How?

 "Well," to paraphrase David Byrne, "how did we get here?"

Here we are in the early part of the twenty-first century without interstellar travel or affordable eggs. This is not the future that I had hoped for back when I was eleven. Or twenty-one. Or thirty-one.

And so on. 

This past weekend's release of a note from the occupant of the ruins of the White House, addressed to the Prime Minister of Norway, brought the collective us one step closer to no future at all. If you're not familiar by now with the contents, the convicted felon and petulant child wrote: "Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer ‍feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America." 

For the record, the Prime Minister has on several occasions explained to the twice-impeached leader of the Trumpreich that Nobel Prizes are not awarded by his country but rather by an independent committee.

No matter. Full speed ahead. Bombs away. Greenland or bust. 

If all of this chicanery is truly an attempt to distract the rest of the planet from the ugly truth about the adjudicated rapist's conduct with his very close friend Jeffrey Epstein, then I might suggest that our republic wasn't as strong and viable as we might once have imagined. The idea that politicians are crooked is not a new one. Dating back as far as ancient Greece and Rome, we were gifted with the term "kleptocracy," rule by thieves. 

As I have mentioned here before, I lived through the rule of King Richard the Crooked back in the late sixties, and the pinheaded warmongering of the Pinhead George W, but nothing in those regimes prepared me for what confronts us now. Though we are admonished not to do so, the only historical parallels that come abruptly to the fore are those of Germany in the late 1930s. 

And while it seems possible that Hitler's final solution was generated out of a need to cover up some personal embarrassment, but his mania seemed to be based entirely on the insane ideal of a Master Race. The former game show host in the here and now seems to be guided primarily by the need to stay out of jail. 

And in a horrible twist of irony, to earn a Nobel Peace Prize.