Thursday 1/30/2020 – America is in the midst of the Senate Trial of President Donald J. Trumps’ impeachment and pretty much all of the news media is focused on that historic event. That is except for when they are pulled away to fixate on the death of Kobe Bryant and his daughter (there were also 3 other people on that helicopter, but who cares about them).

While you might think my list of the world’s top concerns would be that impeachment, it is not. Here is my actual list, and it should be yours as well.

1. Climate Change – on 3/28/19 at the UN General Assembly speakers said we only had 11 more years to act on Climate change. After that, we are past the tipping point.  Since it is now 1/2020, we essentially have 10 years left. The current crowd in Washington for the last little over 3 years has done everything they possibly could to make things worse, and not better. If nothing changes, that will continue for the next four years. Meaning we are all totally screwed, and so are all are progeny, and their progeny, etc….  Even if there is a political sea change in 11/2020, when the new crowd takes over, we will have only 9 years left.

2. China Quarantine – As of 1/27/2020, China has reportedly mass incarcerated (quarantined) an estimated 56 million people. Let me say that again, a nation on Planet Earth has locked away in a few short days 56 million people and everyone in America seems to be perfectly fine with that.  As every dictator on earth knows, add a little threat of apocalypse, and people will fall all over themselves to give away their civil liberties. Remember 9/11?

3. Global extermination – not directly related to climate change, but on 1/23/2020 the doomsday clock was reset to just 100 seconds before midnight. We are a minute and 40 seconds from doomsday. That is bad, I mean like crap your pants bad.

4. Coronavirus – as of 1/30/2020 “The United States set its advisory at Level 4, which represents the highest safety risk. The World Health Organization said the virus represents a risk outside of China. ” Now whether or not this little virus has the capacity to wipe out humanity remains to be seen, but as noted in number 2 above, it is proving extremely effective in messing up human societies and empowering dictators. My that little virus is powerful, just ask the 56 million people in China, oh you can’t all of their social media is monitored.

5. Artificial intelligence – Whether it’s killer military robots, machines taking over all of our jobs leading to massive unemployment, or AIs messing with our elections and ensuring bots make us all hate each other, AI is a huge risk for the entire human race.  When Elon Musk and other leaders start saying we are going to fast, we most likely are.

6. Behavioral Economics – every day Facebook runs experiments on us to see how we can be manipulated, without us ever knowing about it. They show you and 100,000 people one-word choice or option, and I and another 100,000 people another and learn how to manipulate all of us.  The truth is we all so easily manipulated.  Remember a few weeks ago, when we all got weather alerts on our phones. We all looked, we all thought.  We were all so easily manipulated and so easily controlled.

7. The impeachment – it is not the impeachment that bothers me. It is the fact that America’s most august body and mostly one political party (you can pick either one) is so partisan that it can’t get it’s shit together.  In fact, both parties are each using this as a way to get us even more polarized.  So if both parties can’t get it together to impeach or not impeach a President, how the holy hell will they get it together enough to work on the 6 much bigger dangers above them on this list.

and finally,

8. People are not wearing enough hats.  Ok, this is totally a nod to Monty Python. After the depressing bits above, a bit of satire. Watch it, and see one of my points mentioned in the first paragraph.

© words by Dan DeMarle 1/30/2020