Time Out Already! Hold It Right THERE. -OR- You Are What You Bleat.

When the David Copperfield wings of power politics consolidated, bringing the best of the smoke and mirrors illusionist together with the family values of Dickens, for fun and profit, I didn't jump on the wagon. When hoards of herds boarded the "road and bridges to nowhere" ride, I skipped the onramp and stayed on my path. When they left me "behind" in a cloud of dust hurling doppler invectives as they passed, I didn't really miss them much, knowing they'd be back around. I didn't get on the ride. I saw the design. I remember the previous incarnations of this cyclotron that promised thrills, chills and a shot at the brass ring. Over time, I've ridden the Snowball ride at Santa's Village, the Tilt-a-whirl at Kiddieland, The Scrambler at the Bangor Air Show, and various wooden and steel coasters at dozens of venues and learned that when the ride was over, you were always back where you started. These detours and distractions were laid out along a sophisticated methodical money trick at the end of which you might even have an armload of stuffed animals and tacky trinkets, but nothing particularly lasting or of value. I didn't need to ride them all to know the beginning was the end and vice versa.

What mattered was not the diversions and distractions. What mattered was the people,
the trusting, mindless, easily led and twice as easily distracted people marching to the drumbeat. I believed that when the ride was over and the whirlies had subsided, people would get back to BUSINESS. I hadn't counted on the ride being a series of rides within rides that would span generations or the potential that at the end, "Business" would not have the necessary relevance and the illusions would have replaced reality.

It truly is an illusion that we are broke, drowning in debt, powerless to affect change and shackled aboard a sinking ship. There is only a thin veneer of reality slathered over the accumulated trash from our trip to opposite world. Any lingering
euphoria and wooziness is only temporary.

The vacation is over. Get back to work bringing meaning and relevance back into focus. While you were away, the place went to seed. Lots of mess and mucky accumulation must be cleansed. Hey, you were gone a long time. What did you expect?
Look at the bright side, in the digital age you don't have to wait to have the pictures developed.