We’re sitting quietly, Cecil and I, our breakfast long since finished. The usual, give or take, leaning more standard fare today, I’d say. Eggs, bacon, the home fries, toast, whole wheat in a vain nod to our health. 
Comfort food in these our uncomfortable times.
Our coffee cups are empty, but occasionally, we will still absent-mindedly raise them to our mouths for fruitless sips as the diner’s din not exactly swirls around us, the morning rush over now. Rather, it clicks and clacks. Clicks and clacks with the drone of conversations from our fellow patrons who haven’t yet been drained of the energy necessary to converse.
We two, Cecil and I, are in a stupor, I’d call it, current events having had their way with us over the course of our morning repast. Where to start? Where does it end? How does it end? How exactly did we live long enough to be witness to such calamities and mindless disorder?
“And two people died from the measles in Pennsylvania the other day,” Cecil intones with the dry emotion of someone simply citing some everyday observation. Looks like rain. Evenings seem to be getting cooler. Think I might need a haircut. Just a trim maybe.
“And that mountain top shearing off in Nepal?” Cecil continues. “A glacial lake may’ve burst, they’re saying now. Couldn’t bring myself to watch the videos.”
He sighs a big exhale.
I lift my empty coffee cup toward my mouth. Again. Set it back onto the table in front of me. Again. I could use a refill but don’t really need one.
“Unbelievable,” Cecil says out of our somnolent silence.
Ahh, yes.
In this, our Age of the Unbelievable.
A list of unthinkable occurrences and events unimaginable less than two short years ago.
Measles outbreaks. Natural disasters. Manmade disasters. Out of control wildfires. Monsoons and floods. Droughts. Roving bands of secret police, filling up their concentration camps. Unchecked genocide and ethnic cleansing. Mindless, unprovoked wars, both martial and trade, conducted by a superpower fueled by incompetence and corruption, unchecked by neither legislative nor judicial branches. An explosion of food born diarrhea, funny if it didn’t represent yet another front of incompetence and corruption with a mixture of bold-faced malice. Malice. Hate. Gleeful ignorance. A tech-driven attack on the foundations of democracy itself.
Am I missing anything?
Of course, I am.
It’s only Thursday.
An onslaught on a daily basis. Impossible to keep track of, intentionally so. A firehouse of bullshit. Isn’t that how one of the architects of the current chaos put it?
Everything. Everywhere. All at once.
Leaving us breathless and confounded. Constantly on our back foot. Equal parts dumbfounded and demoralized.
“The dumbass now wants to rename Lake Ontario Lake America! Did you hear that one? How’d it so go off the rails, Barnaby?” Cecil ponders more than inquires.
We got complacent.
Is the short answer.
We thought this kind of misrule could only happen over there, in other places, backwards tinpot places, in authoritarian-leaning, strongman sticks presiding over unruly hotspots. Our democratic underpinnings were sound, rock-solid and enduring. A couple hundred years of checks and balances, weather-proofed against any and all storms and tempests. Upheavals merely temporary. Political sanity always restored.
We fucked around and found out, as the kids say. Found wanting. Found abjectly delusional.
“We were asleep at the switch, my friend,” I say to Cecil.
The myth of forever progress. The arc of the universe bending toward justice. The good guys always win. The bad guys lose. It’s written in the script.
“We were pampered into submission, Cecil. Branded ourselves consumers not citizens. Believed that we were living at the end of history. Nothing good could come from politics, so why bother.”
“Well, we were right about that one, wouldn’t you say?” Cecil replies. “Nothing good has come from it, if you ask me. Just take a look at the morning headlines!”
Cecil too lifts his empty coffee cup to his lips before realizing it’s been empty for a bit. He obviously wrestles with the idea of another refill but thinks better of it. Old men shouldn’t be overly caffeinated. We’ll spend a good part of the day at the urinal.
“I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, though,” he reconsiders, leaning back in his chair. “Had a pretty good run, don’t you think? In the scheme of things. No major wars for us. Prosperous as all get out. How long did we expect the good times to last?”
I looked at my friend across the table, not fully grasping the tone of his words, his intent behind them.
Cecil wasn’t normally one of those I-got-mine-Jack, that’s how the cookie crumbles types. He’d always struck me as empathetic. Not unaware of his privileged position in this particular dot on the historical records, if inconsistently so. Perhaps this was just one of those inconsistent situations.
“We had it too soft for too long and we didn’t see it coming,” he says, sounding more like my Cecil.
“We saw it coming,” I suggest. “We just didn’t want to admit what it was. We left other people to fight our battle.”
“And now look at us,” he says. “Old and feeble, needing our afternoon naps. What the hell do we do, Barnaby?”
“Well, first thing, my dear Cecil, we don’t get sad. We get mad.”
“I can do that,” he assures me. “At the drop of a hat!”
Funny.
I don’t see Cecil possessing a quick to ire personality, but we’ve really only been acquainted as elderly versions of ourselves. Perhaps he’s mellowed with age. Grown placid with wear.
“Mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Cecil Howard Beales, drawing some attention from the rest of crowd still malingering in the waning morning hours.
“See, Barnaby? Old Cecil can still get his dander up if the need arises.”
That’s something, I guess. Better than retreating into our respective protective shells, hoping the storm passes without too much damage done.
“But first,” he strategizes, “we’ll need another round of coffee, wouldn’t you say? To get the blood a-boiling.”
Cecil motions to our waitress for a refill.
There goes his naptime. Getting cranky, hopefully, being the first step to getting angry.
