Now We Wait...

The avalanche of consequence poised above us

On March 31^st, 1982, a mammoth avalanche buried the Alpine Meadows ski resort after days of intense snowfall, killing seven people and reducing to splinters a wide swath of the ski area.

On May 10^th, 1940, the Germans invaded the Netherlands, Belgium and France, ending the lull called the Sitzkrieg, or phony war, that was a kind of collective holding of the breath by the entire world after the invasion of Poland on September 1^st, 1939. The whole planet waited for the next aggressive Nazi move, crouching behind frail dikes as a tidal wave of toxic horror bore down.

Some of us are holding our breaths now as we wait for the certain comeuppance that will bury us like an avalanche as a result of Trump’s and MAGA’s massively unwise moves. Calculated idiocy that will come cascading down on us without pity or remorse. But very few sense how grave the danger is, or how certain. We are facing a tidal wave of white death poised to crush everything in its path, sitting at the base of Alpine Meadows complacently standing in line for a ride up the mountain.

We sit here in innocent satisfaction thinking we are so safe, so secure. But unlike the whole wide world dreading what Hitler would do next, we think in terms of higher inflation, or what will happen to our portfolios. We need to start worrying about the really disastrous consequences being wreaked in the name of God only knows what idiotic delusions.

Don’t be fooled by the fact that the consequences are not immediately unfolding and our lives seemingly go on as they always have. Don’t think that because the Dow is up and the legacy of Trump’s lunacy is not yet visible that all is okay and always will be. Don’t feel comfortable when you look up toward the top of the ski resort of our fragile national structure and don’t feel even a tremble of danger at this point in time.

It took days and days of immense amounts of snowfall to trigger that avalanche. It took months and months of relative quiet for the Germans to gird their loins and attack. It took years of financial excess to lead to the Crash of ’29, or the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

This latest idiocy of the One Big Beautiful Bill act that is about to pass, along with all the other lunacy that Trump has inflicted, will induce catastrophe just as surely as all of that snow just poised and waiting for some small trigger to set it off. It’s as inevitable as gravity, as certain as the menace of Hitler and the Nazis.

The only question is what we are going to do about it as we stagger around in the wreckage, dazed and confused, waiting for someone, anyone, to bring in the search and rescue equipment and try to rescue who and what can be rescued. We had better get ready as best we can, because it is going to be a horror, and we will need fine, fine leadership to pull us up and out of the ruins.