The aerial view of the recent train derailment in Palestine, Ohio suggests that there is a Super Fund-level mess to clean up. And it highlights a reality that now stares us squarely in the face: this was likely just one of many trains that are carrying toxic payloads on any given day in any number of locales.

The apparent jump to conclusions on the right won’t help anything, but officials obviously will be expected and hounded to come clean about the level of damage, as well as the toxicity that was released and continues to exist. Not to mention the condition of locomotives and rail cars.

While a rush to judgment is unhelpful, it’s difficult not to wonder just how bad things got, and how bad things may still be today, and tomorrow.

Wait a minute. So, we won’t get even a hint of what was shot down up north? Because they couldn’t find any debris? The weather conditions were too harsh? Sounds like a convenient excuse.

So that’s that?

Doesn’t sound too fishy.

We hear that 50 is the new 40, etc., so is 80 the new 70? From the look of things, in Joe Biden’s case, there is reason to wonder about that, or at least not put too much stock in it.

Biden was a welcome alternative to the walking, blabbing nightmare who occupied the job before him. America knew Joe was getting up in years, but it didn’t matter in 2020. It seems to matter more this time around, regardless of the assurances from current staff and Biden himself, regardless of his current “feistiness,” and regardless of the frequent monitoring and level and quality of healthcare a POTUS receives and has at his disposal.

I occasionally wonder about the role a President plays in affecting the psyche of the nation. Would Biden’s presence through 2028, when he’s 86, continue to sow confidence and relative calm, or would it make us nervous—genuinely concerned about his capacity for handling the workload, the relentless political assaults and gamesmanship, and the stress of pressure-packed decision making?

Maybe he once thrived in that environment. Maybe, when he was 50 or 40 or whatever, he lived to mix things up. But that was a while back now.

“Fuck your thoughts and prayers.” Amen to that.

But let’s see what Michiganders can do about the proliferation of weaponry in the hands of unstable, angry people who are wandering without hope.

One could wonder if things aren’t just getting too big and cumbersome to manage properly anymore. An $80 billion overhaul of the IRS? What is that going to look like, and can we be confident that the people in charge of such a gigantic undertaking actually know what they’re doing, that all that money will be spent in the right ways and in the right places, that some of it won’t illicitly find its way into someone’s pocket?

Fantastic bureaucracy and sums of money, managed by people who may or may not be qualified to take on such responsibility. It has waste and debacle written all over it.

We get what we deserve, or maybe it’s more like we reap what we sow.

We hardly go a day without another shooting and multiple casualties, hardly go a day without a reminder that people are snapping and lashing out, for various reasons. Maybe it’s because they’ve watched one too many violent video games. But I’d put my money on an intense feeling of hopelessness instead. A feeling that no one’s listening, no one cares.

This doesn’t excuse the monstrous behavior, but it should stop us in our tracks and have us asking ourselves if we are actually our brother’s and sister’s keeper, or if we’re here just to achieve and make money and compare ourselves and boast and buy into the god-forsaken American Dream.

Selfishness is built into our national DNA. How else can we be good capitalists and “do our part” as consumers if we’re not living life with blinders on and striving for our piece of the pie? And to hell with those who are left in our wake. Someone else can take care of them.

How shallow are we, really?

The problems and challenges are daunting, and it’s becoming clear that those who want to tackle our many issues are growing tired and disillusioned, and their numbers are retreating. When decent people start saying that they “don’t need this shit” anymore… well, where does that leave us? Who is going to fill those voids?

I tend to avert my gaze when I see a headline referencing Trump’s legal troubles. For me, it’s just the latest dose of non-news that’s gonna lead nowhere except as an attempt to keep us tuned in.

Haven’t we kind of known this all along, though? For all the coverage and verbiage and bluster, Trump is going to walk, like he always has and always will.

He’s always going to be the damned pebble in our shoe, somehow unremoveable.

To dare utter words that ring fairly clearly of threat wouldn’t seem to be the best way to address looming shortfalls in two of the most revered and widely needed benefits programs in the country—Social Security and Medicare.

The Republicans are holding these two programs in a hostage-taking stance, while Democrats want to tax people making more than $400K annually to make up the deficits that apparently are coming. Typical stances for each party, but the fact that these programs are being held as bargaining chips in the first place is a maddening development.

How dare someone contemplate—and then suggest out loud— dissolving these, taking these away?

Backing up for a moment, isn’t it possible that the money held back from millions of paychecks year after year for decades has been reallocated to prop up other projects? Kind of like what individuals and families do when they need funds for something they deem more important—they rob Peter to pay Paul. Isn’t it possible that what has happened on a national scale is, simply, gross mismanagement of a program that should have been self-sustaining? An easy pot to stick grubby fingers into?

How dare Republicans even hint at doing something to these programs? How dare they?! All fiscal-responsibility-economic-speak aside, how dare they?

To paraphrase an old muffler commercial: “These entitlement programs—fix them!”

That’s part of the problem, though, isn’t it? You just can’t stand the word entitlement, can you, Rick, and Ron and all your elephant cronies?

Don’t even kid about taking them away, you heartless bastards. Just because you don’t need them doesn’t mean many others don’t.

What the hell is going on overhead? What are these things that are being shot down? Are they UFOs from another part of the universe, or are they sophisticated pieces of spy equipment from Russia or China or some other hostile player? We need more details.

Is all this destruction going to lead to a pretense for further hostilities?

The Super Bowl is a series of advertisements punctuated by a few minutes here and there of a football game.

Yikes! Six hours of lead-up? Seems a bit excessive.

And what was up with the pre-game loudness, the heavy-handed patriotism and tugs at the heart strings? Are the powers that be grooming us for WWIII, or just WWF? And why a flyover? Why always the military component, all-female crews notwithstanding?

Such melodramatic, calculated, predictable bullshit. America at its most shallow and arrogant, with a healthy dose of Madison Avenue and desperation thrown in. I wonder if the rest of the world was at all moved or impressed, or just annoyed.

I liked the understated version of the national anthem, though. That was a welcome change and quite the contrast to the rest of the noise and spectacle all afternoon and evening.

Still, all this for a football game? The NFL is our national church body, maybe.