What kind of heartless bastard just leaves a person in their time of need? Where does such a person get off? What gives them the right to be so callous, so heartless, so unkind? It could be arrogance. It could be ignorance. It could be that they are just a complete dick. But that is beside the point. This episode is not about the people who do the abandoning. They get enough attention. They all have fancy jobs. Let them have their cake and choke on it too. This episode is concerned with those who have been abandoned. You know them. You may choose not to see them, but you know they are out there. Perhaps it gives you pleasure, knowing that you made it and they did not. Perhaps it pains you to know that there are those out there less fortunate than you. But they are still out there. I am one of them. My words are not meant for your entertainment alone. They are meant to warn you of the dangers to come, to protect you from the monster that I once was, to shield you from the rise of many more monsters, far more terrifying than I ever could have been. You may think I am a spoil sport, raining on your champagne parade, but you are wrong, dead wrong. Soon, a time will come when you will wish you had taken my advice about increases in welfare, about universal basic income, about prison reform, about police reform, about kindness, about decency. But when that hour comes, I will no longer be able to protect you from the horror that is to come. It is interesting to note that the Spanish Flu pandemic did not end until 1920, three years after its outbreak in 1918. And I know you do not want to hear that; I know that you are tired of hearing warnings. We all grow tired of those with wisdom. They begin to sound like dictators to us. And who am I to tell you how to live your life anyway? After all, if I had anything important to say, I would be rich. Right? Is that right? Is that really right? Or is that just another coping mechanism you have developed to protect you from impending doom? Have you truly bested those who are beneath you? Or are you depending on those beneath you to hold you above water, just a little longer? A sewer is filled with excrement and disease, but without a sewer, you are nothing. Without a sewer the stench of your bodily fluids would fester in your nose, driving you mad until you eventually died from bacterial infections, from viruses, from black mold. Everything in life has a structure, a way it is supposed to work, and in that structure there are support systems. The poor support the rich just as much as the rich support the poor. That is the way of things. You cannot change that. Sure, you can replace a worker with robots, but you cannot keep your business open without patrons. They system now has no structure. The balance is off. And the all that is keeping this sinking ship afloat is malfunctioning, decaying, eroding, dying...slowly. How will you survive the fall? Will you be around to survive it? Only time will tell. And when that time comes you will wonder, why was I so selfish, so careless, so shallow? But I can give you the answer now. You are not meant to live forever. You are designed to destroy yourself, to self-destruct. That is the real system. The real structure is meant to decay. It is natural. It keeps us safe from the would be dictators, the psychopaths, the intellectuals. This everlasting decay weakens the evil of the human and sends them crushing down to earth like a fallen angel or like Nimrod, whichever you prefer. Yes, the fall is coming, and oh what a glorious sight it will be, to see you there with me, to hear you cry in the cold of night as I once did, wondering if you have any value as once did. And, as I once did, you will gaze into darkness and be greeted by your own child like laughter. Then we will finally understand each other, and together, we will gaze upon the earth and say, "this is the wretched fate that we have made; what a glorious horror it is."