Trust Issues

Reality.

Trust Issues

I was in a quandary. A place I’d never quite come to before. I don’t know if I was early getting there, or late.

You know how it is, surely. You get busy, and distracted. Do I have enough pet food for the week, do I need bread, that sort of thing. Have to be ready for work in, oh, seven hours. That’ll be time to leave. Did George the elderly cat get his pain killer, and how is Rhea?

I tap the ash off of the first cigarette (okay, it was the second) that I’ve had in many months. There’s a dried moisture ring on the bar in front of me, nobody cares ‘bout that. The air is blue although I’m one of only three people in here, excluding the bartender. Oddly, the stale beer smell is being pre-empted by the odor of roasting peanuts. This place doesn’t roast peanuts, so that’s a mystery. I take a deep drink of the draft in front of me, making half a glass into a quarter.

The real reason that AI will never be like a sentient being, is life. Being alive is truly different. You could fuck with an AI’s programming and maybe make it act like a crazy person, but the crazy person doesn’t need that to be crazy. And you know what? The whole fucking world is crazy.

I really mean that.

Not to crowd out or complicate that issue, but a whole lot of people mix that with obnoxiousness. I stupidly allowed myself to get into an argument with a buyer over an item I was selling for cheap. The vintage snow sleds I was selling, I’ve seen sell for eighty dollars. I was only asking ten. That was cheap enough. The woman I was messaging with offered me five dollars. I should have just declined, but I had to add, “ridiculous.”

Well, being called “ridiculous” was just too much for her. Now my seller reviews are poisoned with this obnoxious person’s lies. I got mad, I threw things, blah blah blah. I was only amused, not even annoyed, and I’ve never met her. If I’d known she was gonna make stuff up I’d have just given her the damn sleds, to be rid of her and done.

The real issue here is that what every individual does affects every other living individual. I mean, no wonder people drop out of society and go off the grid and become hermits. Of course, to do that right, you can’t shop anymore, which means that embracing the hermit lifestyle is sort of a long-term, labor-intensive commitment. That doesn’t really mix well with getting old. Yeah I know, I know. I know. What does?

So out there in the big blue sky today, warplanes are crossing from northwest to southeast. I’ve counted six so far. The engines are bigger and no effort has been made to quiet them. I don’t know what they’re up to and I’m half-scared to check the news. Joe Biden is still President, legitimate or not, but I really doubt he’s even aware. It wouldn’t necessarily make it any worse if he was. Thing is, somebody knows why, and the only thing I know about that person or those persons is, I don’t trust ‘em. After all, who can you actually trust? And, these are government employees, who answer to other government employees. Youch.

Government. Pahh. The worm in the apple.

I don’t want to get off on that topic, it would take over, and isn’t that, all that government does??

I didn’t come to this little bar to ruminate, to write or to theorize. I went out on a limb and spent for a pack of cigarettes, and decided a cold beer was also in order. It happens. This was a rare “me” moment, done for myself. I was supposed to enjoy a cold beer, not get depressed over it.

So, why did I just order a second one?

The door to the bar swings, admitting daylight in smoky shafts. The interloper who stepped through it I’ll call Horace. Horace has the whole world figured out, and a cocksure smile to go with it. Actually I suspect Horace is too dim-witted to grasp the issue I’m having, at this very moment. Or maybe I’m just too dim-witted not to share.

Horace responds to my plainly-stated issue with one of his Elvis smiles, the self-satisfied sonuvabitch. The half-his-mouth-gets-involved kind of smile, open on one side only. But then, the unexpected strikes, and he closes his mouth and actually looks serious.

“You know,” he says, “I worry about that.”

Then he gets up and walks to the bathroom. Maybe taking a piss is his answer. I should try that.

Meanwhile, idiots all over the planet are pushing nuclear power as if there was no risk to it, and no leftover radioactive waste. Those same people think we need the power for electric vehicles, which have a much larger carbon footprint than my v6, powered by gasoline. What the fuck? You can’t even reason with these people. Taiwan, which was a part of China before Chiang kai-Shek fled there in what was it, 1949, wants the world (specifically, the U.S.) to fight for its autonomy. Why? Because multi-national corporations want us to? To protect their investments?

Yep.

I never know from one day to the next what to expect. Will I wake up to four inches of fallout on my cornflakes? Will the groceries all close, starving my cats? Will federal IDs and digital currency end my country’s involvement with capitalism, and stuff my few remaining freedoms? How long will I be able to pay property taxes on the home I presently own? It’s rent, you know, courtesy of government. Nobody actually owns their property.

Honestly I just don’t know what to think, or what to expect. When both parties openly lie about the other candidate, if I was completely uninformed I would have no idea who to vote for.

That leads me to the biggest question of all. I know who to vote for, and of course, I will. But folks, no matter what, it’s still the lesser of two evils. So I asked myself, as I paid for my brews and got up to leave;

If Donald Trump prevails in this election and becomes President, will I suddenly trust government?

Ohh. Hell, no.

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