Maintaining Our Sacred Dumbocracy

Commend a contempt for any literacy

Cultivate their urge to violence

Enhance the foreign boogeymen

Promote the artificial spectacle

Distract with empty franchised sport

Bury cryptic legalese within fine print

Foster distrust of long-term planning

Dumb down their grades and tests

Play soothing background music

Show peaceful family pictures

Leave journalism to the advertisers

Stay focused on short-term costs

Control science thru political debate

Finance their spot in a fuzzy heaven

Concoct hot-button litmus tests

Pit your enemies against our families

Seed the media with paid spokesmen

Stick to short hyperbolized sound bites

Read canned speeches with great passion

Relentlessly remain on simple, concocted messages

Paint all the issues in black or white

Celebrate with colorful, noisy waste

Always portray them as His Chosen People

Pretend to own the higher moral ground

Belittle those who go in-depth

Substitute tweets for editorials

Forgo plot for special effects

Help them to be dependent on illegal labor

Reward them richly for gutting industr

Label air, water and soil as ignorable externalities

Equate blind greed with patriotism

Cite tradition but ignore real history

Anoint Social Darwinism as god’s will

Call bankers ourA Best and Brightest

Keep fast food and cold beer cheap

Promise them that their kids shall lead the world

Holistic Conservative Economic Initiatives

Forgotten quick-fixes from that Great Recession

If we can just get the banks to start lending again surely everything will bounce right back

With a few less job losses our futures will all seem just as dazzlingly bright as they always used to

When the stock market gets turned around, everything will be just peachy once again

We’ll get the housing sector moving and then we’ll be back once more on our merry way

When we unfreeze the credit markets that oh-so vital consumer spending will rebound

If we can just keep mortgage rates down good old real estate can regain its momentum

We’ll see upticks in the RV, ATV, snowmobile and boat industries when confidence returns

Families can drive to Disneyland in new Cash For Clunkers cars while paying record low gas prices

We’ve got to hold the line on utility costs so homes can be kept at 65º all summer long

Subsidizing without any strings attached the institutions we deem too big to fail should get us moving

If we can just reduce lender uncertainty over possible regulations, credit will flow freely again

We can get back to mid-morning lattes and eating out 3 times a week under such bold initiatives

Stopping well shy of any real reform will help keep the sainted investment banks afloat

We cannot threaten a fragile recovery with the ominous shadow of intrusive government regulation

Printing scads of new money should jumpstart our sacred and all-important economy, once again

If we can just get retail sales moving our cycle of consumer borrowing on Asian imports can resume

If we can just get the economy back on track, we may even be able to take up some other issues

Granting federal money at 0% interest will surely convince the big banks to lend once again

We’ll also go ahead and guarantee the loans they make with the money that we give them

Right now we just need to remain totally fixed upon increasing GDP for this current quarter

Retaining focus on core economic issues must remain our single most important priority

If we can just boost consumer confidence they’ll save us by charging more imported big-screens

We’d like to see the tweenie mall spending rate start bumping upwards once again

Jittery markets just might stabilize with massive infusions of new cash, so we’ll try it

After all the bailout have been distributed, we might even discuss gaining control of the deficit

With a little more time, surely the free market will develop a profitable healthcare solution

If we can just remove their debt, dealer and pension obligations, car builders will flourish

Postponing expensive emissions actions for just a little while will give us some breathing room

We simply need to calmly stroke those jittery markets with gentle and reassuring financial voices

Those flighty hairdressers and decorators who control stock prices just hate all this uncertainty

Providing the merest bit of economic light should quash this unproductive consumer saving trend

If we can just get back to spending more than we earn, surely we can go on living happily ever after

Please Help The Bankers

‘To date, no executives have faced prosecution for the widespread mortgage fraud that fueled the bubble’ - billmoyers.com

We’ve got to help the bankers for they’ve always been here for us during our times of need

Stood right there fighting by our sides with us, whenever the financial seas got rough

Weren’t afraid to go to bat for us even if it meant going out on a limb in terms of their own risk

Had our best interests right next to their hearts as they wisely greased the economic skids

Helped ensure sure we stayed on track with the savings we needed for our retirement

Looked beyond their personal gain to the good of our families and our blessed land

Did not scan us merely for short-term profit potential but rather helped us as neighbors and friends

Most probably they often let deals go untaken if they did not help further community interests

Greeted us by name when we walked in and kept our home loans safely guarded, right here in town

Lived just like the other honest folks and had the same dreams as us normal families

They surely did not let computer models back at corporate HQ make their lending decisions

Now it’s our turn to help them out a bit so together we can all get back on track again

Weren’t blinded by greed for the outlandish bonuses given for ruining all of our futures

Didn’t wrap No-Income, No-Job, No-Asset loans in fake TripleA tranches to sell to insurance trusts

Wouldn’t pay clueless 20 something, so-called, financial engineers millions for CDO con schemes

Never avoided all regulation by saying it stifled their creative innovation in free financial markets

Never crowned themselves as the best and the brightest, too-big-to-fail, masters of the universe

They certainly wouldn’t use gov’t bailout money for mergers while foreclosing upon their friends

Come on everybody let’s pull together: Banks are the circulation system of a healthy economy

Anyway, we all have some problems every now and then, so please, no finger-pointing

Neighbors at your local bank actually aren’t simply puppets of greedy New York financiers

They didn’t give themselves billions in bonuses for gambling on dicey hedges and derivatives

Wouldn’t help themselves to bailout money bonuses while tightening up on your loan standards

We must help them or, as they say, it will get so much worse than you could ever imagine

Weren’t so foolish as to leverage all of us into bankruptcy based on a voodoo finance risk model

But you really can’t blame them for taking some advantage of artificially low interest rates

After all, their own loans didn’t ratchet up out of sight even before the ink was printed on the paper

Oh, no, it wasn’t them that hid old car debt in new and already underwater auto leases

They never masked home equity loans covering credit card debt as profitable re-financing plays

It wasn’t them who drove the market for penthouses and luxury goods sky high with their bonuses

They didn’t immediately dump un-scrutinized loans for a fat profit and then totally disown them

They would never have made billions hedging heavily on the failure of their very own investment funds

Our town bankers wouldn’t grant loans without credit checks and income verification

Their CEOs didn’t hide trillions in unregulated CDOs and under-audited derivatives

They didn’t collectively freeze up in fear that their peers’ secret assets were also worthless

We must help the bankers now because it’s certainly obvious that they would do the same for us

God Granted Me This Fairytale Serenity

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change”

I note, freed of that dark anxiety, the global mass extinction our over-existence nurtures every day

Calmly I accept the reality of a hotter, drier, dustier and dirtier world, where we all must live

No more do I trouble my mind over CO2 levels to which I must contribute but cannot control

I pursue zenlike tranquility, emptying my mind by flipping channels thru potentially anxious nights

Unregulated exotic chemicals in our drinking water can no longer disturb my meditative state

I placidly accept the degradation, poisoning and erosion of our precious soil by industrial agriculture

Loss of habitat does not threaten me, as I twitter safe and warm here in my techno-burrow

I gaze into that hazy and starless urban night with what I can construe to be a quiet satisfaction

There is a blind equanimity to be found in simply ignoring the poverty and suffering of others

Deep media immersion smothers and deafens any anxiety which might falsely overcome me

In a benignly-induced trance, I emptily partake of our grisly and unsustainable food chain

Verily does my true spirit rise above the ever-knottier cluster constituting our irreversible advance

God granted me the serenity to shut the hell up, bend over and take all that which I cannot change

I sagely accept that selfish vanity, greed and insecurity are key traits of modern day leaders

Endlessly repeating the simple mantra of You Cant Stop Progress properly spins my spiritual journey

I quietly condone piling debt on their futures while we waste the resources they need to pay them

I have learned that worry over our huge number of self-inflicted crises is but a false shibboleth

I can rightly get on with the future and leave our guilty past behind in a jumbled, half-forgotten blur

It is with a certain calm that I adapt the insensate gouging of good croplands into cheap stripmalls

My health and happiness have been enhanced by letting go my fuzzy and unrealistic youthful idealism

Trust in the wisdom of His inscrutable way has banished the awful uncertainty which beset me

I am able to drive right on past our decaying infrastructure without even a second thought

A vision of the seas as stripmined, unregulated dumps can no longer perturb my cauterized emotions

No more must I futilely obsess over our sacred, morbidly-bloated, utterly-wasteful military budget

I lost fear of bearing personal-responsibility for my own uninsured health and scam-complex finances

I simply cast aside the burden of wasted anger over our people’s ignorance, illiteracy and attitude

That I must work until at least 70 but will be laid off for good at 50 no longer fills me with dread

With the sublime detachment granted me by my meds I disassociate myself from humanity’s future

I have made a lasting peace with all the eternal, random, angry and empty noise we produce

Internalizing the temporal nature of our vast wastefulness allows me to see far without seeing it

Accepting our unique possession of eternal souls has revealed the wisdom of our divine dominion

Now I can embrace my tenured dull manager who remains willfully ignorant and bristles with venality

I can blandly cope with their artificially-induced stress over arbitrary deadlines on useless projects

I have been imparted the ability to disagree with a silence that they act upon as my tacit acceptance

It has come as a relief to see how easily I place ever more on that big pile of things I cannot change

God has granted me the wisdom to overlook, ignore, compartmentalize or be far too busy for

Their Phony Ecological Concern

So we buy a couple pockets of old-growth big tree forest and turn them into monuments

We’ll clean up one or two token rivers and plant a few fish and take many pictures

We can do a couple of clean coal projects and print a hopeful pamphlet on recycled paper

Maybe we could subsidize a model green suburb with garages back behind, in the alleys

A proof of concept community school or two should keep their expectations in check

We can publish voluntary standards on protecting croplands and leave agribusiness to self-regulation

We’ll study the decline and mutation of the frogs and make toothless scientific recommendations

Maybe publicize power plant mercury emissions so that industry voices a cleanup commitment

We’ll force cars to be 90% more clean and efficient, then put twice as many on the road

We’ll save threatened wonders by opening them to the miracle of corporate tourism

We’ll make cleaner snowmachines and ATVs and ask them to please stay on the trails

We’ll strive to recycle more paper to China to make our import packaging even cheaper

Some stamps with pictures of endangered songbirds will demonstrate our great concern

It’ll be far cheaper to say we are raising people’s awareness rather than taking any real action

We can pass more landmark legislation and then quietly fail to deliver on the funding, once again

We’ll slowly adapt our children to dirty water, fouled air and a squalid, littered over-population

We’ll call for comprehensive reform, created by lobbyists, and then poison it with unrelated pork

We’ll un-muzzle our scientists but let our corpro-media out them as wackos with clever soundbites

We can shout above the noise pollution that it is not an issue even worthy of any discussion

A greenish packaging change and an All-Natural slogan ought to keep our numbers up

Concoct phony market-based solutions to problems no free economy was ever meant to solve

Label it expensive and intrusive gov’t regulation and play it off against families, jobs and money

Showcase opportunities for a few starving children but don’t ever even mention slashing population

Talk of reducing emissions to 1990s levels like that would restore some kind of half-assed equilibrium

Promote a couple show species to star status even as our global mass extinction gathers speed

Propose a bulky, readily-subverted cap and trade scam instead of a simple carbon tax

Institutionalize calls for further study as a means for simply continuing on with business as usual

Contract out pre-determined research results and trumpet it loudly towards our own sales ends

Advertising our warm commitment to future, family and environment should gin up wide good will

We’ll trumpet a little renewable energy research while permitting more new coal-fired plants

We’ll say we’re good stewards but depend on higher property and sales taxes for our existence

Just ignore military recommendations and keep the bloated cash cow bases in our own states open

We’ll pay off liberatarian ranchers if a wolf takes a cow grazing for next to nothing on federal lands

Sportsmen will soon adjust to expensive, trucked-in, hatchery trout in dirty, drying reservoirs

We might restructure capitalism to factor in phony environmental costs to avoid socialist regulation

The MulltiNats will cure societal inequity by simply reducing all workers to a bare subsistence level

We’re Living Funny Lies

Being coptered to my safe compound, I actually believe I’m worth my millions in salary and bonuses

We assure our Offshored they need only wait for the better new jobs coming Real Soon Now

Driving my hybrid 90 miles a day feeling like, you know what, I’m really making a difference here

We fill cute green cotton bags with water-wasting, slave-produced food shipped thousands of miles

Violently rejecting taxation while remaining purposely silent on reducing costs or cutting benefits

Fleecing the faithful for money, power and sex, as sales reps for wornout and fictional gods

Pushing FeelGood sustainable solutions but never mentioning necessary drastic population reductions

Glorifying the infallibility of unregulated markets while whining for subsidies and import tariffs

Assiduously recycling all my paper for shipment to china, merely to package more plastic imports

Demanding a faith-based administration but shouting that the same government stay out of our lives

Hypnotizing the lower class with clever hate speech while on the payroll of the corporate elite

Knowing our God is love as we heed His jealous demand that we smite His heathen enemies

Plastisizing my car with earth-friendly slogans made in toxic sweatshops by exploited illegales

Feeding the world with a patented seed, genetically modified to require our costly pesticides

Abandoning old suburbs for that newly-bulldozed but carbon-neutral and greener tomorrow

Hard-selling funds we purposely stuffed with crap, even as we ourselves hedge big against them

Calling for an end to greedy development threatening the gorgeous viewshed from my own new home

Gouging the bourgeois with pricey lifestyle drugs as we ignore the global disease scourges of the poor

Hanging a cute puppy calendar right by the table where I lay out our tasty but tortured family veal

Deliberately warping all their proposed legislation while damning the deceptions of the other side

Howling for freedom from government even as we condemn its lack of quick emergency response

Rebranding an unchanged, business as usual as some new, patriotic clean-coal energy independence

Paying huge premiums for USDA organics uninspectedly coming from, of all places, china

Posing as independent cowboy heroes, trampling predator-freed public lands with our welfare cattle

Posturing obesely in a loud and ugly pickup that I certainly don’t need and really can’t afford

Trumpeting the virtues of a foot-dragging negativism to whip up an ignorant anger in the alt-right

Holding guilt-free to the decision made with my personal savior to smite religious fundamentalism

Praising our sacred Human Resources even as we plot to outsource them and renege on their pensions

Ever proclaiming our holocaust suffering while we wall the Palestinians into a hot, desert ghetto

Parroting your donor propaganda to reframe science into an empty and politicized media debate

Subsidizing Wall Street Cons to pimp phony carbon offsets and Ponzi cap and trade scams

Demanding soil conservation as I endlessly fertilize, pesticide, cut and water my fakely-green lawn

Rapping out that yes-yes, we can-can change: and backdoor dealing just like we always have-have

Grazing swinishly at the rich troth of absolutely unquestionable and ever-increasing arms outlays

Nurturing a fat, ignorant pride on Doritos, Twinkies, beer, generic cigarettes and cheap hamburg

Living the lie that it’ll all somehow make sense in the end, during some, real fuzzy, happy-ever-after

Turns Out

Turns out there really were some reasons why we needed them silly bugs and birds and frogs

Now we see we should have been a little bit more careful with our once rich farming soils

It’s hard to believe that overfishing a few species brought on such a broad collapse

Who could have ever imagined that we weren’t actually our only one true god’s chosen people?

Guess we really should have paid just a little bit more attention to our crashing literacy rate

Turns out it was foolish to always spend so much building costly weapons and ginning up wars

Unexpectedly, it’s revealed that mergers and acquisitions were only for creating lavish bonuses

Despite everyone’s firm beliefs, that fabulous real estate bubble burst, just like all the others

Whoever would’ve thought the free market wouldn’t provide affordable universal healthcare?

Somehow we never noticed at all as we so rapidly tainted our vast stores of clean, fresh water

Turns out that our sheer numbers created problems too expensive and complex for us to fix

Wow, so those constantly rising temperatures really did mean something, in the end

Didn’t realize that sterile, bio-engineered moncrops would all succumb at once to identical pests

So surprised that filling the oceans with plastic particulates would collapse the marine food chain

Struck dumb by finally noticing that, when all the oil was gone, we hadn’t sought real alternatives

Turns out the bankers got it all so very wrong, even without burdensome government regulation

Turns out we shouldn’t have rolled empty credit card debt into our homes as often as possible

Why look at this, it really was stupid to pay $200/mo for phones and $150/mo for cable

Huh, so, snowmobiling, jetskiing and OHVing are actually destructive and not just family recreation?

Well, goddamn, those outsourced jobs don’t actually make way for the new and better ones for us

Maybe letting the greedy, vain and sociopathic be self-appointed Masters of the universe was wrong

Turns out that conglomerates could find it legal and moral to profitably adulterate their products

We never dreamed they’d lay us off forever at 50, in debt, with no savings, pensions or insurance

Cutting costs by blindly trusting outsourced, foreign ingredients wound up poisoning customers

Looks like giant, shoddily-built, energy-wasting McMansions might not be the way going forward

Stunningly, doctors and Pharma realized they made much more money on treatment than prevention

Turns out stalling safety regulations for more research always saved firms money in the short run

Later on, their own bloated estimates indisputably proved the problems were far too expensive to fix

Come to find out all our thousand tiny household sources did add up to a major pollution issue

How surprised we were to learn that double meat bacon cheeseburgers were not actually healthy

It seems silly that dutiful paper recycling was sent all the way to china just to wrap up more imports

Turns out the big banks were actually blackmailing the market with demands for a no-strings bailout

Turns out their imaginary only one true god was on their side just as much as our own was with us

Nobody guessed our kid’s future would not be brighter than our own was, once we were done here

Oddly, the all-important economy collapsed once it destroyed the very ecosystems that supported it

Turns out not even a trace of our messy presence remained after the passing of but one geologic era

The Immorality of Abusing Technicalities

Trump to Clinton on not paying taxes: “That makes me smart.” Afterwards on CNN: “No, I didn’t say that at all” – snopes.com

Deskbound health adjusters on commission denying lifesaving claims on pure technicalities

Tax lawyers growing rich and respected for purposely circumventing legislative intent

Pocketing fat fees and great honor finding loopholes to exploit with impunity and pride

Managers feeling quite upstanding doing anything counsel says that they can currently get away with

Introducing any new product chemical without testing, if it is simply not yet expressly forbidden

Approving uninspected imported food ingredients for fat bonuses without moral or legal responsibility

Cannily offshoring production simply to evade costly and intrusive environmental restrictions

Control freaks deliberately maintaining an insistence on ignorance to avoid charges of actually lying

Buying canned research studies published only if the results can be shown as favorable to our drugs

Earning huge salaries shystering complexities to cunningly subvert the spirit of the law

Righteously claiming ethical high ground with schemes morally equivalent to the absolutely outlawed

Minimally compliant with current regulations although knowing they are outdated and insufficient

Waltzing off to a secure bankruptcy from their superfund sites now surrounded by cancer hotspots

Sleeping well at night as your outsourcers work peasants 14 hrs a day with 20 to a bedroom

Lawyering by amoral procedural technicality, having nothing to do with charges, evidence or guilt

Paying whorish lobbyists obscene amounts to pervert the democratic process to greedy ends

Burying unrelated pork and hiding far-reaching provisions in all or nothing 10000 page legislation

Defensively bristling ‘We meet all government requirements’ after buying off any new regulation

Not counting the given up, underemployed or forced to part-time among the normal Unemployed

Replacing Tax and Spend with Borrow and Spend while calling for citizen Personal Responsibility

Confining mandated warnings to large words in small print, knowing they have no real effect

Paying them handsomely for stalling regulation by calling research into question via soundbites

Reducing requirements and inflating grades so that no child knows where they are left

Charging usurious interest and fees to credit card users as well as 3% to all the merchants

Reporting artificial News that attracts a target audience that satisfies big money advertisers

Convolutedly redrawing voting districts along party lines only to ensure future election results

Guaranteeing insider legislative influence simply by donating heavily to candidates of both sides

Maintaining a cozy political duopoly by jointly co-opting all 3^rd party movements into wackos

Gaining yearend bonuses by artificially boosting profits by merely postponing expense recognition

Lavishly rewarding conniving legal parasites who enable you to successfully evade taxes

Profitably re-imaging foolish consumer overspending into equity-financed negative savings rates

Swaddling arms marketing in gentle music and pleasant images of children and puppies

Being subsidized for defaulting on debts and benefits in the holy ruse of competitiveness

Glowingly praising the Human Resource while striving to cut labor costs in any way possible

Proudly rebranding corporate evasion, circumvention, subversion and delay as Doing the Right Thing

Totally comfortable mouthing Perfectly Legal to get richer via rule twisting and regulator buying

Disentangling Our White Noise

A constant background noise; especially: One that drowns out other sounds

The void left by the forgotten songbirds is seamlessly filled by smarmy advertising messages

The roaring diesel fumes wafting softly into her crib do not stir this safely sleeping urban infant

News reports of inept, corrupt and wasteful governance no longer provoke any real response

Endless sad studies are smothered behind the deafening background noise we continuously create

Wild fish are not startled by gently falling acid rain from distant hissing coal stacks

The awkward silence of a clear-cut is unnoticeable atop growling wreckreational vehicles

Nobody leaps to the rescue of croaking frogs replaced by giant, rumbling bulldozers, once again

Dirty waters and climate change now lie safely outside our self-circumscribed hearing range

Screams from the refugee camps are muffled by our shopping, work and entertainment activities

Constant identical reports of even more extinctions aren’t going to motivate anyone again

The ever-dirtier business of politics no longer galvanizes the jaded multitude even a bit

People docilely accept that in good times or bad, the rich will profiteer at their expense

Blathering leaders are not expected to solve real problems correctly, cheaply or on time

Our loud and illiterate offspring are simply part of a vast and privatizing, comforting white noise

The unfortunate are blown off behind our sunglasses, earbuds and cynically-texting smirks

Even Scot-free bailouts of unregulated legal swindlers who are ruining our lives doesn’t move us

Ever more wasteful borrow-and-spend programs cannot provoke some mighty voter wrath

Continuous broadcast of morally repugnant crimes have worn out our emotional responses

Distress cries that might otherwise slow our progress are safely obscured by a soothing traffic roar

The wise voices of our ancestors have been attenuated into the meaningless background noise

That invisible, anonymous CEOs are naturally worth their guaranteed millions is taken at face value

It is accepted that gutting our futures thru offshoring should earn them more whopping bonuses

That they merged and downsized us forever for quick profits will not set us upon them

We tacitly accept the morality of efforts to evade the spirit of our laws via compulsive loopholeing

Un-inspected, adulterated foreign food ingredients will not rouse us up off our beloved couches

Omnipresent evidence of over-population is obscured by the simple crush of so many bodies

The voice of reason is smothered by our hoarse attempt to curse over their many tangled jingles

That our own thoughts must now be produced as shouts is not perceptible to us within the din

There’s really nothing between the inaudible lines blurring advertising, news and entertainment

Our crumbling infrastructure does not decay nearly loudly enough to claim even a little attention

Endless strident sound bite repetition completely deadens the occasional quiet and reasoned debate

The deafening sound of devastating warfare drowns out those faint, weak-kneed cries for peace

Relentless repetition of myriad, simple but cleverly-coded messages digitally layers our angry brains

A world of screams and shouts and tears are melded into a featureless but high-decibel abstraction

Ungodly special effects are launched which cannot gain attention for more than a few seconds

Loud, un-syncopated random outbursts occur so fast as to blend into a surrounding roar

This deafening white noise creates our privacy and thereby we think, preserves our sanity

But the vast silence of the void that surrounds us still terrifies as it makes its now rare appearance

We’ll Never Quite Reach Nothing

Human influence asymptotically approaches nothing as time approaches infinity

Even the effects of our own tiniest efforts cannot ever shrink to absolutely nothing

They can’t ever become smaller than say, the background radiation from the Big Bang

Their gracefully infinite approach to nothing is an enduring tribute to our wanton fervor

Still, even our greatest fall as far, and just as quickly, as those we deem to be the least among us

For, after all, there’s always another half the distance towards emptiness to which to decay

It doesn’t matter if the remainder is but infinitesimally larger than nothing

The ripples of our actions can be divided forever and still retain all their information

Concurrently, the amplitude of their influence infinitely approaches an unreachable zero

But the dilution of our acts is further complicated by their mixing with those of all others

For though they still exist independently, like choppy waves, they can never be separated

So well are they homogenized that they could not be re-distilled

So thoroughly are they mixed that they are effectively perfectly encrypted

Still, the reaction of our great deeds and shameful acts cannot ever amount to nothing

The time frame or the distance that they might have traveled quit simply makes no difference

Even the ever-decreasing density of expanding space cannot quite erase us totally

Verily, none of us can ever be reduced to nothing in the lifetime of this one universe

Our venal gossip passes unchanged through the eons and is still different to each listener

Drunken shouts will echo hoarsely thru time, each retaining every slurred and cursing syllable

Catchy advert jingles tinkle merrily on, unheard and unheeded across the march of time

The empty promises of our leaders cannot totally dissipate despite their utter lack of substance

The far-reaching after-effects of our numbing sports extravaganzas will carry on forever

The wondrous results of our faith-based initiatives will withstand the test of all time

The benefits of our wars of liberation will live on long after these noble efforts are completed

Just so, the marvelous dragon flies crushed flat on you car cannot ever really fully disappear

Even our everlasting beauty and truth persists despite infinite attenuation

Our context-free morals defy the test of time, simply awaiting their own re-discovery

The beliefs we held in some eternal heaven shall carry on, even though they are simply fairytales

And so we see, it’s really not for a cosmic nothing that we eat, sleep, shit, fight, shout and fuck

Namaste, Butthead

    नमस्ते

Namaste, oh, venerated Master of the Universe, the divine in me recognizes the divine in you

Surely you are the Best and the Brightest as evidenced by your truly transformational greed

Greetings, oh beloved next generation whom we have so carefully brought forth and protected

Soon you must ignore us as but irrelevant and doddering, purposeless and lost, old fools

I recognize in your greasy and sweating obesity the effort to attend to that internal eternal

Layers of fat distancing you from the illusory clamor of the too material and very temporal world

Namaste, oh wise and beneficent CorproExecs, meditating inside safely locked compounds

Your lack of morals reflective of the Great Void that you will so soon rejoin once again, forever

Namaste, to our eternally patient and long-suffering domesticated, vegetarian cousins

Our industrially-efficient, franchised holocaust surely earns each of you so much good karma

Salutations oh lawyers, your gifts wasted on forms of deliberate and unnecessary over-complication

Now that you hate yourself and your once-honored profession, I would almost share your pain

I bow to you - Fat and loudly cursing, proudly illiterate, drunken, redneck fellow pilgrims

May your ATVs and pickups, jetskis, snowmobiles, dirtbikes and speedboats always loudly bray

Namaste, rich and well-connected son whose only real job has been as a political sock puppet

Greatest success on your new career as elder statesman, we await your fairytale memoirs

Namaste, my criminal brother, clinging to your brutal lifestyle like a wet rat in a dirty flood

I respect your cruel focus like the looming empty eternity into which we are both certainly slipping

Yaar, I feel that overwhelming force which drives your greedy and so short-term ambitions

I honor your selfish centering amid this turbulent confusion that leaves us with but a hazy blur

I nod in admiration, holy snake oil salesman cloaked in odd vestments and stale traditions

Making an honored, tax-free living pimping worthless divine life insurance on fictional eternal souls

Namaste to my 1 billion brothers shackled to unspeakable poverty and inescapable filth

We could each share about 1/5 of a cent and exhaust the $2M they say I need for my retirement

Namaste revered arms-producing protectors, for holding phony bogeymen away from our shores

We dare not speak against fat annual budget increases lest we be labeled Soft On Defense

I watch in awe there, my target market brother, as you manage to ignore so many issues

Your Zenlike focus upon consumerism blocking out the squishes foolish socialist squeaking

I salute your botox and cosmetic surgeries, your hair dyes, implants and your miracle fat melters

For surely these all help you down that great Middle Way towards a wider cosmic understanding

Namaste young peasants working 14 hour days, sleeping 20 to a room who earn $100 a month

I support your struggle for a better life by charging the cheap goods you make but cannot afford

Namaste, all my fundamentalist brothers of every ignorant, uncompromising and angry stripe

I recognize your merciless, amoral righteousness as a but a short, violent prelude to eternal paradise

May your devotion to the mindless pleasure of explosively-empty corpro-entertainment be exalted

For just how far can it be from the enlightenment gained by daily repeating Om Mani Padme Hum?

It’s Technical-You Pay

The service contract said that we had to pay again even though they made it worse trying to fix it

No, your contract is subject to a binding arbitration with a judge whom we alone get to choose

Technically, we owe you nothing but we have decided to cut your charges by 20%, for one month

Why, we never dreamed our house payment could triple just one year into our new ARM mortgage

Our investment instruments are so complicated that only a no-strings bailout can save your world

Experts blame a computer error for today’s lengthy and widespread technical problems

We can get you a new phone overnite but you must pay for the old one for another month as well

Regrettably, our computerized credit model has determined that we cannot modify your bad loan

All these other power adapters are incompatible but we can offer you this whole new unit, at retail

Per contract, we are not responsible for our technical difficulties resulting in your service outages

I did not understand our trading instruments so I OK’d them based solely on their profit potential

You won’t actually know the exact charge until you get your first bill, Oh, and it will vary monthly

Sir, the bottom line is that you must re-install everything and all your work and settings are lost

This hot new gizmo is perfect except for this one little piece that breaks every time on all of them

They said that it all looks fine from their end so you really shouldn't be seeing a problem on your side

It's not supposed to do that unless you change something else but nobody ever touched a thing here

His said he was Bill but I couldn’t understand him so he put me on hold and hung up after 15 minutes

Their agreement says they are not responsible if it doesn’t work or if anything else bad happens

No, I didn’t read that 12 pages of 4 point font fine print legalese, I only listened to the nice salesman

Come to find out, that expensive warranty doesn’t cover anything that ever could actually break

Never understood why the media ran exposés on the same scams that they sold commercials for

His worth to the firm was incalculable so they guaranteed him millions - even if he failed or was fired

His lawyer said he relished a chance to clear his name but yet he would make no public statements

Their peasant’s 14 hour slave wage days making things they couldn’t afford was hailed as progress

Though their HQ was in Bermuda and their factories in china, their ads were all so very American

Their stock price rose upon the announcement of further cost-cutting led by even more layoffs

He said that their unintelligible legalese was not their scam but was required by the government

It seems the recyclers are losing money since it still costs too much to reuse their free raw materials

She never considered what happened when she flipped a switch so it really was no miracle to her

Though we won’t go into the details here, if you run the numbers you can quite easily see…

This agreement states you must train your offshore replacement to qualify for any severance at all

Even if our own experts disagree on what the tax code actually states, we can fine you in any case

This undiagnosed pre-existing condition disqualifies your claim and also, we are canceling your policy

Initialing here means we cannot be held liable for any risks we downplay, ignore or don’t understand

This says you cannot sue us but it’s really just so you might not even try if something bad happens

It actually states that we can cancel your contract anytime but you have no way to ever get out of it

How Real Conservatives Sacrifice

‘Let us sacrifice our today so that our children can have a better tomorrow.’  A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

To feed divinely-mandated population growth, we seek more intensive farming on increased acreage

We must abandon this foolish carbon tax idea that threatens an ever-fragile economic recovery

Sadly, we will not even be able to debate funding the cleanup of our surface waters right now

The savings of the thrifty must be sacrificed to no-strings-attached bailouts for the moneychangers

The Pygmies and the Inuit must help pay our dues, right along with the Orangs and the Bonobos

We ask that desert species permanently accept this new hotter, drier and windier order

Microscopic ocean life forms will simply have to adapt to consuming our rain of plastic particulates

Migrating elephants must stop feeding upon the crops we now must grow on their ancient pathways

We propose massive cuts to biodiversity to be offset by large increases in human numbers

Many un-cataloged rain forest species must be replaced by new bioengineered monocrops

To meet our taste for fish we must foster their extinction by driving up their prices

Corporate farms will be forced to degrade the soils to meet the nutritional needs of good families

Consumers must accept ecologically devastating imports which don’t work, then simply break

Trees need to begin migrating to survive this absolutely unpreventable, unproven change in climate

The frogs had best be making some kind of peace with their inevitable and imminent extinction

We are drafting a plan to pack ever more of our people into sprawling unmanaged ghettos

Healthcare spending must be slashed as it threatens such truly important items as defense

We must enforce the tacit global agreement to collectively bury our heads in the sand

Please grant your old jobs to foreigners and believe that the better ones come to you tomorrow

We ask that polar bears and musk oxen take Personal Responsibility for their adaptation

Nearly all of us must accept a uniformly low living standard in the name of globalization

It is not without some regret that we unveil our new energy independence through coal initiative

During these times of real crisis, noise and light pollution are simply not on our agenda

We must secretly violate your privacy to prevent more awful attacks we cannot mention

We ask mothers to carry PCBs, metals and hormones in their milk for the sake of our progress

Our people must bravely sacrifice their children’s futures to fulfill their own implanted desires

The songbirds shall be called upon to disappear from their shredded habitats everywhere

Our rivers will have to carry the burden of our billion points of unconscious toxic runoff

The last old growth forests will be asked to provide us with a few bad, but temporary logging jobs

Sales reps of all one true gods must demand blinder faith for empty promises of eternal salvation

Bankers will be asked to endure symbolic wrist-slappings as they grasp at more unaudited handouts

Oil companies must accept record profits on a declining supply yet subvert all energy alternatives

For the sake of leaving not one child behind, we seek a general dumbing down of all of society

We petition coal extractors to patriotically hold down costs thru non-remediated strip-mining

Regrettably, as His chosen people we must pursue a cowboy exceptionist foreign policy, in His name

In this time of shared sacrifice we ask for a continued suspension of our collective common sense

Traditional Family Values, Copyright© USA

The right to morbid obesity is one thing I know we fought for way back during the Big One

Our forefathers most certainly would stretch their unemployment checks farther, down to Wal*Mart

We’ve sent our pre-diabetic and amoral children to simply be warehoused at schools for generations

The holy bible has always fostered a willful ignorance resulting in our ongoing righteous intolerance

Guzzling cheap beer from automated factories is a time-honored tradition we intend to honor forever

The founding fathers too, waltzed away from pointless credit card, ARM and HELOC debts

American families have been perpetually alert against big government healthcare takeovers

We’ve always relied on cheap imports built by slaves to artificially raise our offshored living standard

It is a time-honored tradition to graze on sugar, salt and fat before littering its plastic packaging

And daddy still brings home the ritual Double-meat-bacon-cheeseburgers for his nuclear family

Really, we’ve always only wanted giant, inefficient, over-priced road hogs, built to wear out quickly

Physical inactivity is another one of freedom’s rewards we all enjoy, but too often take for granted

The right to randomly produce loud noise during witless wreckreation shall not be taken from us

Like those who came before us, we can carry concealed weapons to church for self-protection

Good families have passed down obesity, heart disease and high blood pressure thru the ages

Our traditional family values truly are not some new ad campaign spouted by rightwing media heroes

A scornful pride in their illiteracy runs deep among those who have always answered freedom’s call

Yankee ingenuity lives on in our innovative outsourcing of design, production and support

Laying stuporous for hours, bathed in vapid electronic images, is a time-honored practice

Abusing successive waves of immigrants goes all the way back to our revered colonial times

Twisting literal scripture has encased us in a thought-relieving faith since time immemorial

Our native practicality and common sense have always protected us against that junk science

Pointless Spartan thrift was replaced by go-go, negative savings rate consumerism centuries ago

Unregulated, leveraged development progress shows the vitality of our hallowed personal freedoms

Factory institutionalization of their parents has long been a rite of passage for those of middle age

We have forever parroted as revealed truth the soundbites of smarmy, overpaid talking heads

Consumer spending and financial services have always been the true engines of our great economy

Long have we ignored the source of the food we graze upon and the energy we thoughtlessly waste

We hold as self-evident that every child should get shiny medals and not be left behind

The longstanding right to finance electronic gizzies shall not be abridged by socialist thrifties

Self-responsibility has ever been required when cast aside at 50 by the faceless multinationals

Preemptively-defensive wars of liberation have been our hallowed right, throughout our history

We’ve always had to decipher deliberately smallprint legalese to wager upon our retirements

We, too, are prepared to tithe 40% of all of our life savings to healthcare during our last year

A/C, heat, light, media, malls, cars and phones remain, as ever, part of our enduring heritage

Mindlessly chanting flavored slogans shall forever remain the way we cope with unnerving complexity

The Promised Good New Jobs Of Tomorrow Are Here!

Outsourcing clears the way for our workers to enjoy the better jobs of tomorrow

Smile behind the register, Put on this checkered shirt, ID on all tobacco and beer sales

Put some more gas in the mower, Scrape the paint off that window frame, Break is over

Shovel that gravel over here, Get off your ass, Put out that cigarette, Go stand over there

Vacuum that hall, Pile up them bean cans, Roll that patient over, Clean out these bedpans

Carry that ladder over there, Empty all them trash cans, Bring the rest of those plates in

Mop the floor when nobody’s here, Re-stock the candy bars, Check on the Mountain Dew

Don’t gossip with the delivery men, Don’t insult the drunks, We don’t give vacations

Go sweep up those potato chips, Pick up all them cigarette butts, Put back these tampons

Sort out the rotten vegetables, Get rid of that spoiled chicken, Clean out those cages

Now bring in the sleeper couch, Put that chest over there, Go and wash out the dumpster

Say Hello to all the customers, Count out what they give and their change, Always say Thank You

Unroll that sod over there, Shovel that sidewalk, That sink is not clean, Fumigate the hall

Tear out this old carpet, Don’t waste any paint, Pick up all those branches, No sunglasses

Don’t waste those rags, Clean that 3^rd story window, Get the snow off that overhang

Pick up the trash on the gas island, Put more hot dogs in the roaster, Don’t be so loud

Bundle up this cardboard, Get off your cell, You pay for them tools, First buy a uniform

Keep the coffee pot half full, Clean the bathroom every 2 hours, Don’t let them kids steal

Act like you’re busy, Don’t be late again, There’s no work today, Wait and wash up later

Don’t waste paper towels, Trim that bush over there, You keep off their carpet,

Park down the street, Take down your pictures, No  personal calls, Your wife isn’t covered

No internet access, Say your boss isn’t available, Just tell them you don’t make the rules

It’s company policy, Jokes are for your own time, Show Gupta here how to do your job

There’s no benefits for you contractors, Your future isn’t my problem, Grind off this rust

Stop looking bored, Take out those earbuds, Keep filling their water glasses, Be quiet now

Crawl down there and clean it out, Climb up there and get that branch, You missed a spot

Go caulk that window, Sand this some more, Take off your hat, Lose the gum

Spread this glue in the closet, scrape off this old floor, Shut up or you’re fired right now

Clean up the spill on 7, This food ain’t for you, Put on your name tag, Hide that tattoo

Don’t slap the gropers, Get your kid out of here, Go fix your hair, You need this job?

Clean them with this solvent, Break down them cartons, Brush out the pool

No radios here, Go outside to eat, Unclog that urinal, You wanna get deported?

Cut those chickens faster, Wade out and get that, Pick up the scraps, Seal this tile

Scrub under the fryer mat, Do them pots again, Go move your car, Clean these brushes

Reach down in there, Hold this for me, Get me the new one, Keep that light still

Don’t get surly with me, Spray this stuff on the weeds, Stay outside, Bring in my tools

Gonna have to let you go, Don’t come back tomorrow, Call me in a week or so

Ignoring Harmful Economic Externalities

Externality -A consequence of an economic activity that is experienced by unrelated third parties

Silt-filled rivers are no concern of those whose livelihoods depend on the timber harvest

Heavy metals leaching after the mine closed is not part of their successful business plan

Product and packaging disposal or reclamation has no place in an accurate profit model

Emission restrictions are useless job-killing taxes, not production expenses or investments

Reneging on pension and bond obligations permits us to be competitive going forward

We need not consider public services in our housing and commercial development plans

Requiring the cleanup of acid-laced lakes is an unfair competitive burden on coal power plants

We must remain free to emit all our new compounds with no responsibility for unknown effects

Air and water are inexhaustible free goods available to all producers and consumers

Industrial diseases are basically unintended, but necessary, by-products of our good progress

Business production planning naturally seeks to avoid the extra expense of waste disposal

Any mandated expenses distort the free market, but our government subsidies are a necessity

Prevention may be important, but our profit model only requires treatment and drugs

Social programs are horribly inefficient yet insurers cannot compete with government healthcare

We rightfully mine fossil water royalty-free to maintain our short-term agricultural profits

Agribusiness firms do not bear responsibility for the runoff that taints our mother’s milk

Ignoring externalities lowers consumer prices and gives producers competitive advantage

Your typically misguided regulation costs too much money and sacrifices too many jobs

Waste disposal firms derive no revenue from proper separation and safe storage practices

Mountain top removal justifiably focuses solely on the efficient extraction of the valuable coal

Rational consumers purchase based on benefits to themselves, not on some hazy future

A sustainable ocean harvest means fewer profits and smaller dividends this quarter

Soil degradation boosts short-term bottom line and earns CorproAg managers fat bonuses

Our responsibility for the fertilizers and weed killers we produce ends at their point of sale

We are, indeed, stewards of this earth but our profit-bound businesses certainly are not

There is no recourse for the regrettable respiratory effects of diesel-powered transport

The loss of songbirds is sad yet inevitable collateral damage of a healthy consumerism

Disposal of cheap, unskilled, young labor has no reportable downsides for globalization

Deplorably, salmon fishing ends because desert farmers need all of the polluted river water

That the rainbow-hued jungle birds take up mercury from the gold mines is merely a real shame

Real estate developers bear no financial burdens for smog, traffic and loss of watersheds

Should your statutes become too burdensome, our production will move where rules are lax

Dead zones at our river mouths are too complicated to stop and too expensive to restore

We need not book any ill-effects of our canned developments on non-renewable tourist areas

Deposits on recyclables are foolish socialist meddling in lawfully completed transactions

Neither government nor business bears the responsibility for the environment that sustains both

Our Outdated Fantasy Of Always More And Ever Bigger

no forest must expand every year to be considered a success

yet, if a company is not growing it is, by definition, going out of business

the seas need not strive to merge to achieve some so-called economies of scale

but we believe formulaic merge and slash somehow creates economic growth

the sunrise faces no pressure to either last longer or to perish

however, free economies must at least increase on average by 3% year after year, forever

sunsets cannot grow more and more beautiful each and every day

nonetheless, for safe long-term growth you can bet all your retirement money on the stock market

each generation is not handsomer, taller and more intelligent than the last

but the military can indefinitely continue its non-discretionary annual budget increases

no species numbers can exceed its environmental carrying capacities over time

but, extinction does not apply to man, created in god’s image, given dominion and a soul

when populations grow too large, biology teaches that they abruptly crash

the infallible and blind marketplace can sustain eternal compound growth

the catch of fish per year did not increase forever despite market demand

yet we can act like non-renewables can always be consumed at faster rates

even fast-food-fattened americans cannot perpetually grow more and more obese

faux luxury and inefficient noisy power can be combined with fuel economy and clean air

family income will not grow larger each and every quarter

yet consumer spending is the driving force behind our wondrously-booming economy

our student’s reading scores must eventually find some pathetic minimum

however, we will always put our people first, even as we continue offshoring efforts

it will not always be cheaper to destroy open land than to bulldoze shoddy junk

our faith in god will see us through the manifest development of our entire great land

evolution does not constantly produce an increasing number of new species

hurry, the biggest sales event ever is going on right now but ends tomorrow

ever larger conglomerates will not finally congeal to form a single global entity

nevertheless, let’s merge and cut staff by 20%, get our bonuses then retire, guilt-free

the future must hold less prosperity for each of us given our increasing numbers

but I’ve almost got enough held back to sign up for another new big-screen TV

plague deaths will grow in total but not as a percentage of population

population planning is a genocidal contradiction to the laws of god and the liberty of man

guess what, our children will not always have a brighter future than their parents

anyway, high-tech innovation and our military will always be there to see us through

unconstrained oil consumption will grow steadily and then must fall off quite sharply

this is no mass extinction and climate change is just as wack as any New Age nonsense

garbage per person will actually decrease with our increasing numbers

capitalism lets the entire world get rich and consume blindly like good Westerners

government cannot plan on permanent growth to hide ever higher outlays

still, now that I’m 55, I think I’ll start putting aside a bit for retirement

listen, in point of fact, the heat and drought will not last forever

our sales look good, possibly even beyond the end of the next quarterly reporting period

even our people can only swallow so many stupid lies and foolish fantasies

this new nighttime fat-burning pill really makes me feel like a million bucks

all our complex, unplanned actions yield unexpected emergent side effects

but you really cannot worry much about the future since it is beyond your control

every mass excess leads to some tipping point of no return

home mortgage funds are an obvious and absolutely safe, high-yield investment

air and water pollution will decrease at some point, in step with our decline

we will keep on praying just like we drink our beer, in both good times and bad

someday there will be no earthbound human souls striving to earn their way to heaven

my personal savior and I discuss matters of great concern to me each and every day

greenhouse gases will subside quite shortly in geologic time

efficiency and recycling are small, personal virtues of dubious social value

our ongoing progress cannot ever approach the destruction of all life on earth

combining topheavy, uncooperative bureaus into super agencies will solve many problems

the human stain will begin to fade even before its spread has ended

we envision better days stretching on forever into the happily-ever-after

we can continue piling all kinds of obvious as well as hidden public debt on the future -

though we continue to destroy their ability to pay through our thoughtless daily consumption

systems requiring compound growth are simply Ponzi perpetual motion machines

let it be known that it shall remain, fellow citizens, as always, Morning In America!

Our Comic Cosmic Rationalizations

They see that it must all be good, for it all amounts to the same in the fullness of cosmic time

We can waste, pollute and destroy since we’re merely a single atom in one infinite universe

Our puny ruins cannot be distinguished from the greater entropy that’s proceeding on, all around us

Doomed as we most surely are, we need not have a care for our actions or our attitudes

We can freely pursue any selfish interest, for it will really make no difference in any possible end

It’s safe to assure them they’re god’s chosen people knowing divine retribution is just a myth

Given the Void, any and all political spin or cover-up is justified if it advances our own greedy cause

For the earth is doomed to be swallowed by the sun in the not too distant cosmic future

Practicing Social Darwinism on future generations might actually help make them stronger

We need not burden ourselves with concerns over some future beyond our own event horizon

Given our brief emergence from emptiness, we can, and should, act just to please ourselves

There is good reason to nurture and take advantage of their foolish need to blind faith

The effects of our short population bloom will be so quickly diluted as to be of no concern

Earth has witnessed other mass extinctions and all life on this planet is doomed, in any case

We can blithely finance fictional eternal souls for them, if it gains us riches and control

We may as well call the suffering and death of war inevitable if it helps fulfill our need to power

In the end, conservation and preservation amount to as much as exploitation and depredation

We might as well profit from these random yet happy circumstances that support us right now

We can languish in cruel poverty or struggle to vast riches, and it winds up all the same

There’s no point in saving if some fool will offer us free credit during these short lives

We’re going the way of the dinosaurs, only faster, so it’s best to quickly grab all we can

There’ll be no way to tell and nobody to notice even if you could save just a few trees

The good and the bad are indistinguishable in the ash and the dust to which we return

Our greatest efforts cannot even slightly impair the life force that spreads with the universe

Saving the planet is as fanciful a notion as the potential reward of an everlasting paradise

Our small choices lie within the mindless, yet absolute certitude, that guides flowing water

Sensibly, we adjust our ethics with the situation, time, place and our current selfish needs

Let them listen to the sound of one hand clapping, even as our other empties their pockets

The unknowable silently rationalizes any action for which we choose to invoke it

Incomprehensible infinity dilutes the effects of all of our acts to an immaterial immeasurability

Our imminent and permanent return to the void best frames all of our plans for the future

Thus, may shortsighted and self-centered concerns cosmically guide our pursuit of happiness

Fireflies Faltered Beneath Our Progress

The tiny flickering glows of those little fireflies are winking out all over, without a sound

Their demise was briefly noted somewhere after the real news of Sports and Entertainment

Still, some ask, without the fireflies, can the fairies really be so very far behind?

Your children will not miss them but, as for us, we saw them and we actually let them go

Their merely wondrous blinking, wafting in tall meadows apparently was not enough to save them

For the spread of civilization brought our ordained progress to bear with blunt force, against them

Their bobbing in the grasses proved ineffectual against our blindly-mechanical spread

At least their demise can be euphemized as simply a sad, but unintended, collateral destruction

However, that magical fragility which had once made us skip lightly and gently sing, is gone forever

The fireflies are faltering and we lack the time or money to save them, or even to say goodbye

Yet, all those who saw them doubtlessly retained the memory for their entire lives

Unlike all the forgotten entertainment and the randomizing blur of this, our day-to-day existence

Without any time for triage their fate was quickly sealed, somewhere well off of, our social radar

Cool green lights winking out unnoticed during commercials amidst corporate sports extravaganzas

Still, their extinction may have indirectly contributed some tiny fraction to a rise in quarterly GDP

Yet all of us have been reduced by this, only marginally beneficial, god-granted taking of dominion

The faltering of the fireflies does not prove us to be simply a ruthless and destructive lot

Their small vacancy surely does not unzip the very fabric of the summer night

Certainly their tiny niches must indeed be quickly claimed by other life forms

After all, every creature comes and goes from the loving breast of this sustaining earth

Their humbly entertaining forays paled in comparison to our far weightier concerns

Like the flowers that we bulldozed, they did not produce or consume, much less reap or sow

And, as His good stewards of this entire blue-green world, we cannot be lessened by their absence

They formed, after all, but a single stitch in the densely-woven tapestry of life on earth

The unnecessary beauty and grace of the fireflies conferred them no survival advantage

Their phosphorescence really wasn’t such a magical mystery, viewed thru our earthy wisdom

We could always build robot firefly drones with LEDs and artificial swarm intelligence

Their demise then but a minor chord in the squishy symphony of fine things being crushed underfoot