Let it rain. Let it rain. Let it rain.
Towards the end, Freeman brings it all back home with the inclusion of "The Psychopaths" by Joy Williams and "In This Phase In The 58th American Presentiad (United States)" by Lawrence Joseph. Williams's story condemns the mindless activities of Big Game hunters, psychopaths who think they're Hemingway, but behave more like the dickheaded hunter (with his trophy wife) in "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" than the thoughtful Gregory Peck-driven hunter, Harry Street, of "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," who falls in and out of reveries as he lays fading, hyenas, vultures, and gangrene closing in. Williams's psychopath could be a one-percenter head-hunting for a trophy corporation. Joseph's poem attempts to tear Trump a new one: "His own hell, he owns it, in his own sh*t, / feet of lackey weasels clamped / onto his pot-bellied stomach, teeth stuck / in his puffed-up jaw." There's a lot of anger out there. Thunberg's not the only one pissed off at the world.
We've had so many warnings for so many years. I can still recall as a teenager ads that came on TV reminding us of our obligation to our environment. Only you can prevent forest fires, Smokey the Bear told us. In 1970, even the diabolical Dick Nixon founded the EPA, perhaps realizing that the environment needed protection from people without empathy and incapable of understanding, or indifferent to, the effects of their money-driven malevolence. In 1971, in a legendary TV ad, Iron Eyes Cody, aka the Crying Indian, wept a single strong man's tear at the white trash epidemic that was polluting the nation (updated, it would include the information highway). No doubt, had someone seriously suggested at the time that we switch our national anthem from the current martial noise, that no one can sing, to "America the Beautiful" (even the Russkies wanted some of that) it would have passed in Congress with not a dry eye in the House.
But in the end, we preferred the artificial over the natural, meddling with Nature rather than letting her be, and when we got around to having the temerity to tell Hippie Mama, to her face, that we were just f*cking with her, she went bonkers, and sent a Republican bouncer to make us pay. We're paying, loan shark-style, with exorbitant interest.
Call it the mafiocratization of the world. Dissidents beware, free-thinkers don't get comfortable.
(Article changed on January 6, 2021 at 18:09)
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