Famine and war. Trump and Clinton. The world’s going down the shitter–fast.
I’m not sure where it all started–maybe it was never that great to begin with–but it’s definitely worse.
Take, for instance, apartment life. Over fifteen years ago, I lived in an apartment complex in Huntsville, AL. It wasn’t high-end or anything, but it wasn’t a dump, either. Did I know my neighbors well? Nope, not really. But they were nice enough. If you smiled at them, they smiled back. One day, I was sitting on the “porch” (okay, the narrow walkway to the apartment) and painting, and several neighbors stopped by to take a look and chat with me about it. No one even complained about the music I was playing on the stereo in the open doorway.
Now? In small-town Arizona, where theoretically the community should be tighter? Yeah, there are a few decent people in my apartment complex. I even live in the same complex as my brother. Our neighbors to the left and below them are cool. The staff at the apartment is cool. For the most part, if you smile at someone they smile back.
And then there are the assholes.
For a decent apartment complex, there are a surprisingly high number of assholes living here. And a few of them have for some odd reason decided to target my husband and I for harassment.
What the fuck did we do? We don’t throw parties or play loud music. We don’t leave trash lying around. We don’t do drugs. We just keep to ourselves. Somehow this has made us a target for a select few who happen to be buddies.
We try to take the high ground. We ignore them best as we can, and report them to the office when they directly harass us. But why the fuck should we even have to do that? Why should we have to be worried that this little group is going to fuck with our car or our apartment or even us? We didn’t do anything to provoke them; we should be able to go about our business without a problem.
That seems to be about how the rest of the world is doing. Our little apartment complex is the microcosm of the world at large; a few giant assholes trying to start some shit, ruining things for all the other people who just want to be left alone. As the saying goes, “Can’t we all just get along?”
I hate to think what will happen after November 8, regardless of the outcome. Yeah, I know, they’re just America’s problem, right? Wrong. Us Americans can’t keep to ourselves. We can’t just leave well enough alone. Him. Her. The others. It doesn’t matter. There are going to be some massive assholes in charge of a country that’s not the “superpower” it thinks it is. Somebody somewhere is going to take the opportunity of a “weak” leader to try to prove how much stronger they are than us. The neighbors are going to start harassing us for no reason. Well…okay…maybe the good ol’ U. S. of A. has given a few people a reason or two.
There’s really no point here, I guess. Just a frustrated rant, venting aimlessly into the Web. Complaining to the management when the management can’t do anything about it beyond giving the assholes a good talking-to.
Good luck, everybody. I have a feeling that no matter how nice we try to be, we’re all going to be royally fucked.
AJ Mullican, Author 