Day 3822

It seems like you can't do anything these days without being asked to take a survey. You go to the doctor. The next day you get an e-mail asking you to take a survey. You take your car in for an oil change. You are asked to take a survey. You stay in a hotel or rent a car. Yep. More surveys. You can't even call someone on the phone without being asked to take a short survey at the end of the call. It seems like employees are being evaluated based on survey results. Sometime they will practically beg you to give them a ten because an upcoming raise or promotion depends on good results. When did this start happening? I've had plenty of performance reviews during my career, but my fate never depended on a survey. I used to fill out some of these surveys but I try to ignore them now. There are always lots of questions about how well you like the company's service. There never seems to be any questions about how irritating you found the survey.

So many things about modern life are irritating. The future didn't end up being like the Jetsons after all. I certainly didn't expect a double header of plagues and riots in 2020. I didn't expect a concerted effort to erase history either. There is something troubling about pulling down statues and condemning classic films like Gone with the Wind. It seems a little too much like Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution to me. You realize quickly that popular favorites like All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Married with Children, and even Sienfeld would never survive in a world where a children's cartoon like Paw Patrol is being castigated.

Isn't anyone familiar with history anymore? History repeats itself over and over again. The Weather Underground led directly to the Law and Order years of the Nixon administration. Do you want that again? The pendulum always swings one way and then the tide turns and it swings the other way. It's a shame that people in both political parties seem willing to let a city like Seattle self destruct because they think it will help them politically. Republicans are eager to use footage of the chaos on Capitol Hill in campaign ads to depict a world controlled by Democrats. Democrats are just as eager for Trump to bring in the tanks so they can do their own campaign ads depicting him as a ruthless dictator.

It's a shame that Americans seem to need an enemy. We were at our best during World War II. The country prospered and the middle class grew during the Cold War when most people seemed to agree that The Soviet Union must be defeated. Little wars in Vietnam and the Middle East never seemed to do the trick. Without an external enemy, we just fight with each other. I think the Chinese are laughing at us now. They probably look at what's going on over here and think "Game over. We've got this."

I just wish that things would stay peaceful for another twenty years. After I'm gone, you guys can do whatever you want. I kind of liked it when everything was locked down. The roads were quiet and people just concentrated on staying alive. I heard birds when I woke up instead of airplanes. Now that things are slowly rumbling back to life, you realize that we humans have learned nothing. We are just as determined to make a mess of things as we ever were.

Willa is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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