It’s not so easy being OK these days

'Everything OK?' someone asked me last week after I had tumbled into one of my many annoying and protracted e-mail silence periods. I said it was, but really, I wanted to scream, 'How can everything possibly be OK what with Kim Jong-un tossing nucleartipped ballistic missiles around southeast Asia like they're Lawn Jarts, Vladimir Putin putting hundreds of thousands of lives at risk just so he can expand his backyard for more space for oligarch cornhole parties (first one to 21 gets a Get-out-of-Gulag-Free card), and illegal immigrants piling over the southern border like ants to a soda pop tanker spill? On that last one, I say, why not just give 'em Texas? All we'd stand to lose is a few oil wells, Ted Cruz, and the Dallas Cowboys. I for one can live with that.

Seriously, though, how can anyone who tunes into the nightly news or reads an internet news feed feel good about anything? Maybe it's no worse than at other times in history (just ask the folks of Pompeii what 79 A.D. was like for them), but it just seems like the entire planet is in such disarray that our Supreme Maker has gotta be shakin' his head and thinkin, 'Geez, I turn away for one minute to watch the Oprah interview with Harry and Kate and everything falls apart.'

Just the news of the impact of climate change alone is enough to keep a normal guy awake at night (or between noon and 3 p.m., which I personally consider the ideal time for a day's second nap). If you believe all that stuff -- and I know many of you are thoughtfully skeptical -- the polar ice caps are melting so quickly we're all going to be Googling Noah's ark schematics shortly, and the next hurricane may be so powerful it breaks Florida off the southeast corner of the country and plants it in Nova Scotia (just as long as it takes Mar-A-Lago with it). Droughts are growing longer and more intense, equatorial nation weather is growing so hot that chickens are pre-broasting in their coops, and Hawaii may soon become the new Atlantis. Don't worry, though, because Ford has just introduced an all-electric F-150 truck lineup. That outta fix everything, except for the three tons of raw material that will have to be mined to make a battery that will push it from the shed to the house without needing a recharge.

Aren't concerned about the climate? Surely then, the state of American and even world politics is psychotic enough that when someone sends you an 'Everything OK?' text you scream like a girl and run to your underground emergency bunker (which should be stocked generously with enough Kit Kats and Gatorade Frost to last you for three centuries). Just observing the last mid-term election cycle was enough to throw anyone's mental stability out of whack, what with Herschel Walker (anybody still doubt the long-term impacts of football brain trauma?) in Georgia, Joe Biden's approval ratings (and you thought unemployment rates were low), and Donald Trump's kiss-of-death endorsements. If the campaigning had gotten any meaner, it would have made the Wicked Witch of the West's plans for Toto stew look lame, and just think, very shortly, it will all begin again. Well, actually, it already has, with Trump announcing he will run a third time. Just a rumor, but I hear he's rented out campaign headquarter space at Rikers Island.

I've talked to a few old timers who've told me they never recall the political environment being as nasty as it is now, and those are people who lived through the Nixon/Watergate years, Kennedy's Bay of Pigs fiasco, Carter's ineptness, and whatever you call it that happened from 2016-20. Things may have been as bad in the 1860s during the Civil War, I suppose, but without mass media to spread news quickly, widespread foment was avoided. Can you imagine if Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and all the rest of the social media outlets had been around during the Abe Lincoln years? Confederate President Jefferson Davis would probably have Tweeted that Lincoln's ears were too big and he looked silly in that black stovepipe hat, but on the other hand, maybe Abe and Mary Todd would have just livestreamed the play and not gone to Ford's Theatre that night.

In my opinion (almost no statement that starts with those three words is ever worth hearing, but here goes), social media is to blame for much of the chaos that permeates everyday life, especially in this country. In the name of free speech, every rube and recluse with a Web connection can spew hatred, ignorance, evil, lies and the occasional clam chowder recipe without even attaching their name to it, and face no consequences. Trust me, I'm all for allowing anyone to express whatever is on their mind without fear of repression, but I'm also for full accountability and owning up to what one says. I put my name (and my pretty face, as a free bonus) on my words every week, but if I had $10 for every time someone criticized something I've written but crouched cowardly behind anonymity, I'd have enough cash to snap up that Polaris Ranger SP-570 3-seat side-by-side I've been coveting. That's right. With the Rhino Rack.

Fortunately for myself (and my courtappointed psychotherapist), I'm largely able to stay calm despite the storms around me. I know some people who blow their stacks when in any political conversation, and who cannot accept that someone may hold a view other than the one they do. Bring up immigration around certain folks and you'd best stand back, 'cuz they'll be spittin' and sputterin' before long. Oh, yeah, and Packer fans. Sit next to one of the negative ones during a game and you're likely to be thinkin' that Japanese hara-kari might not be as painful as it sounds.

It's a wonder any of us has our mental health anymore, especially fresh off a pandemic that for some is still a hoax while for others it's a dread fear. We can't even agree on that, for goodness sake, not even when health and lives are at risk, when we all ought to come together for a common good. Not these days, I guess, when it's easier to bitch than bless.

So, everything OK with me? Yeah, I'm hangin' in there.

THE

BORN

LESAR