[I sent this in an email to someone, but thought it nicely summarized some things I've been thinking about for a long time. This is regarding that species of man I've encountered often in my own life -- the prophets of doom and futility who predict economic collapse, an energy cataclysm, chaos, even the end of the world. These are the same ones who argue we should just do nothing -- cause it's all for naught anyway, or only make a symbolic gesture, like vote for a third party presidential candidate.]

I say, whatever the perceived horror is before you... mock it. Joke and laugh like Hawkeye Pierce. Even if the light really is dying, "rage against it." Don't throw up your hands and fool yourself that you're doing everyone a noble service if you tell them to do the same. Take action just for the hell of it. Live in the moment, 'cause it may be the last one you've got (on this Earth,which for me doesn't mean "everything is permitted" or "go for it, bro!" or "grab what you can"). Don't be like the current crop of "hip realists" who are in fact pseudo-tough and pseudo-intellectual. All they're doing is parroting nihilism and despair, that they've read by others, 'cause they can't think of anything original to say. But striking that pose makes them look so cool and attractive, 'cause it's so "in" these days.

I think this fear of the end of the world is really a mask for their fear of their own deaths. They need to face the fact that they are one day gonna die just like the rest of us -- and to quit whining about the end for all of us. But it still makes them look so sexy... which is convenient for the prophets, since they are often skirtchasers. This brings to mind the great line from "Moonstruck," "Why do older men chase women? It's because they are afraid of death." Something's gonna kill you and me eventually. And life on Earth is going to cease to exist, like it was always destined to...and all human history will be erased, even if we'd never industrialized. There's only so much energy in the Sun, after all.

I'd like to see these "tough" self-appointed prophets of doom and futility tell (my friend Linda's 15 yr-old daughter) Amber, who is fighting rampant cancer, that "It's always darkest before it turns pitch black", or one of the other cute phrases they find so pithy and clever. Statements like that really reveal their inexperience, and relative youth in dealing with truly serious, grave situations. Before counseling any more despair for others, they should read Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" about his time in the Nazi death camps, and how he and others would never have survived without hope and faith...of at least some kind of meaning to existence...

But if it comes down to McCain and Obama (or Hillary) I damn well know where my vote is going ... and it sure ain't for the strategically unsound, but "principled stand" of voting third party. Or to not vote at all -- as the prophets of doom and futility would advise. If the parties are really the same, etc, etc, there is still one unimpeachable reason not to vote for McCain. Read it here. Besides, didn't we learn already after Gore vs. Bush what a dumb strategy it is to vote third party in the presidential race? It's logic 101 -- Gore could never have been any worse than Bush -- and he would have in all likelihood been a helluva lot better.

It was like this, behind this door was a known Tiger (Bush). Behind this door, it could be a Lady or it could be a Tiger (Gore). But some decided to open the third door, which still had a passageway for the known Tiger to leap out from (buying Nader's line that it was a choice between "Tweedledee" behind one door and "Tweedledum" behind the other)

Some outright told others to open the third door too, you know solid "true" liberals of "integrity" like Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon. (But those of us back then who knew about the right-wing think tanks and entities like the Project for a New American Century, understood what the hell was definitely in store for us if Bush got in.

Oh, but something would have happened to Gore anyway, these "tough, realistic" prophets of doom say...and we would have got Lieberman and the neocons...or they else cite some other scenario reinforcing the futility of it all. (Not only can they perfectly predict the future... they also know what would have happened in any other of the parallel reality hypotheses. How omniscient! It seems like the real reason why they have "killed" God [in their minds] is so that they could replace Him -- for us to genuflect to their manifest brilliance and hipness. How noble these sages are!). But the bald truth is -- we don't know that something would have happened to Gore. It's still a what-if scenario. Alternatively, my cousin, who is no lover of most Democratic politicians, but who cites Stalin's "wise counsel" to the Left in '30's Germany, thinks 9-11 would never have happened if Bush hadn't got into office. Who knows? But we do know what did happen -- with the benefit of hindsight... But many didn't listen to us back then -- who did our homework and reasoned out the logic of the situation in 2000 (but, in contrast to the prophets of doom and futility -- we never pretended to be soothsayers).