Here's where I get off

There's an election coming up, and the world's holding its breath for the outcome. For it's the fate of the world that hangs in the balance.

And I don't really care. Why? You might ask. Well, I know you won't, because like me, you don't care. In the last eight years, I've watched all of our right, all of our freedoms, all of the good things we enjoy in life, stripped away and sent to the fire pits, the first in a long list of sacrifices to some arcane god of power.

I live in a city steeped in pragmatism which has spread like a plague throughout this region. The act of doing anything is meticulously pressed into a matter of returns. Even sex, the great Objective for now three generations running, has been broken down into a simple act, a return on an investment of time. Love is a clause on a contract signed for marriage, a sharing of estates and nothing more. Everything's a business, and nothing is emotional anymore. In fact, the very state of being emotional is exclusively shunned. You know it. You look at somebody grasping at their ribs, trying desperately to rip their heart out of their chest, and you don't feel compassion. You don't feel sadness.

You feel nothing. Nothing save disgust.

It's that same disgust I now feel, looking out at the most deluded mass since the ancient Roman Empire met its demise at the hands of its own ineptness and shortsightedness. I really don't care about the future of this culture, as it's dug its own grave. And even though it yawns before us, half the population lays blame, while the other half tries futility to backpedal. I have no stake in witch hunts, nor in maintaining the status quo. If into the pit is where we must go, then that is where I look, and where I dwell.

It's the product of a culture that's seeking to ascend past their own humanity. We've already convinced ourselves that we're better than the rest of the world's several billion people. In doing so, we're now trying so very hard to leave our humanity behind in the search of a pragmatist's Nirvana, where we rule everything with absolute control, and money flows freely into ruthless pockets.

Pride, it's said, erodes the soul. But are we a proud people? Are we proud of the fact that we celebrate the fact that we're surrounded by things we don't understand, nor want to? Are we proud of the fact that we wield awesome technology that we have no idea how to use?
Are we a nation of egotists and sycophants, or are we all just poor victims that are misunderstood?