This is the end, my friend, the end

David Sherman

When is it enough? When is it too difficult to breathe, when does the blood not boil but evaporate, the brain exhausted, the will buried under the weight?

Maybe when we long for the vacuousness of Ozzie and Harriet, the innocence of the twin beds of Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, when sports was about sports not investment banking. And grok was not an exploitative tool pitched by a man without a soul but the sound we made choking on a peach pit. 

Maybe when we bathe in the simple nostalgia for when one could live on employment insurance or a pension and news was at 7 and 11 and life continued before and after. Save for a referendum or two. But we talked about that. The good ol’ days when working families could afford rent or a mortgage, a new Pontiac, a vacation in New York or Seattle or even Buffalo. To each their own.

Yes, American hegemony was always a topic, a tragedy for most and a financial bonanza for a few, an obsession for those who made it their profession or hobby. A hot-stove league for news junkies or strategists on staying alive.

When did it become routine to dismiss the latest news with, “Let’s not go there,” or “Don’t want to talk about him anymore?”

When did reality exceed the bounds of the most fertile imaginations?

“Really? He said/did that? I don’t want to talk about it.”

It’s not about the proliferation and addiction to the technology and minute-by-minute delivery systems behind gorilla glass, the pocket-size elephant in the room that spews what we avoid discussing.

Years ago, it was called compassion fatigue, a term sociologists used to explain our shift from the front porch to the fenced in backyards. Neighbours were neither seen nor heard. Our front gates or doors locked. Cameras mounted to hide behind. A feeble attempt, along with tall “Feel-good gates,” to keep the invasive world out.

Tired of caring for others was once limited to those in healthcare, with arms immersed in blood up to their elbows trying to save the sick and aged, victims of car crashes, gang shootings, war wounded.

Covid seemed to expand the term. Here was death walking down every street, the perfect feed for news channels and streaming services that depend on fresh blood for the all-important advertising dollars.

Now, for sadist and masochist, atrocities are like wood blocks stacked onto nervous systems, not unlike a quivering tower of Jenga pieces. Until it topples, pushed by a determined media.

Yes, our compassion suffered death by a few billion bytes offered through billions of clicks, sold for billions of dollars, the life blood of whatever medium’s breast you’re at.

Goosed by the omnipresent cameras. On our doors, in our hands, our houses, cars, cops’ chests, lampposts and highways are producers of whatever visuals the media didn’t point a camera at. The U.S. military has gone Hollywood, providing images of bombs disintegrating supposed drug smugglers, with an innocuous-sounding “double tap,” children’s schools, oil tankers.

It’s irrelevant as long as it explodes, preferably in colour.

Our compassion is not only fatigued. It’s buried under the rubble of sanity like Iranians subjected to the beauty of America weapons.

Have we forgotten our history? Have we ignored what our parents, or grandparents or their parents went through in the 1930s? Then, too, it was “This too’ll pass,” “He’s a harmless little fool,” “A comic-book villain.”

But the ‘30s was before click bait, news in your hand 24-hours-a-day, calamity as cheap and vacuous as Kraft Dinner.

Yes, we have a choice. Ignore the barbarians at the gate. Close our eyes to the Niagara Falls of cruelty, stupidity, avarice. Look away at those sleeping in streets, doorways, on heating vents and under roofs of cardboard. We can put a pinkie finger in one of the incalculable holes in the dikes of humanity and feel better about ourselves a charitable looney or e-transfer at a time.

Or we can laugh at the clown who learned grift, graft and greed at his father’s knee, who has made sucking every cent from the hungry and hapless and filling his coffers and those of his cronies and acolytes, spineless creatures without scruples or morals normal. Or pretend musk is a benign odour rather than he who would be king, with his hand on the guillotine.

We can turn to the widescreen and live there, sucked in by Prime’s and Netflix’s endless diversions and your sport(s) of choice or watch and listen to music polished by machines.

We can all agree to, “Let’s not go there,” or “Let’s not talk about that. Did the Canadiens find that second line centre yet?”

We can kill the news feeds, the 24-hour news networks and their 20 hours of commercials and agree we’re tired of caring, our compassion has melted away like cotton candy and shop for the latest air fryer.

We can forget we’re human and ignore war, poverty, concentration camps, indignities and greed without limit.

Or, we can rope in some of our exhausted compassion, breathe new life into it and … write letters:

“Dear Mr. Carney;

I’m mad as hell and do something about it.

Yours truly;”

Naomi Klein’s latest book and AI cognoscenti predict the world is at the finish line. Our globe as oven is pre-heated and the human race is prepping for roasting, one way or another. We’ve reached the The End on doom’s scroll.

So, I’m washing my sheep’s-wool blanket, putting fresh batteries in the four remote controls the TV demands, discarding the magical 10,000 steps a day to survival and waiting for hockey season.

As a friend in the States wrote:

“I’m TOFTS.”

Which translates to: I’m Too Old For This Shit!