I predict that some/most/all of what we fear will come to pass. I also predict that a hundred years from now we (or more likely, for most of us, our spiritual descendants) will still be smoking, complaining about the government with good cause, and whining about the loss of the "good old days". If you have read my past posts you know that I can do all three. If you know my wife she's told you that I go overboard, getting way too passionate about all three, but what does she know? Would I rather the government keep their filthy hands off my stuff and go after someone else? "You betchum, Red Rider!" and so would you, Oh, get real, you know there's something. Just look what "they" did to my beloved B&M shops. I mourned for years the passing from our shores of the Dunhill blends. Then they were back, sort of. In the face of the apocalyptic arms race of my youth I never learned to "Stop worrying and love the bomb." But I have observed countless "Apocalyptic" events come and go. Every few months someone, somewhere predicts another crisis of apocalyptic proportions yet again. If "X" happens then the world we know and all we value most will end. All these crisis's pass, then fade into the inner recesses of our memory. We march on, having adapted. That has been the fate of every apocalyptic prediction for thousands of years. When the actual apocalypse arrives (if you roll that way) it will be as a thief in the night. No one will predict it, no one will see it coming. Everything less is just a speed bump on history's roadway. We'll get by. It generally won't be easy, it most likely will hurt like hell, but that just means we are still alive and struggling to stay that way as we stake our rightful claim on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (always as we understand it-wherein lies the rub). Yes, I'll argue, get passionate, I always vote and will take to the streets with the best of them to defend what I believe in. But I try to maintain a sense of what is realistic and pragmatic. Some (although it feels like most) things won't go the way I think they should, but it isn't the end of the world. Probably, in the long haul, it isn't even that big of a deal.
Please note that I neither offer, nor will I defend any political or religious opinion on this subject. I simply observe, with H.G. Wells that "The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow." Maybe I wouldn't go quite that far, but maybe I would. In the end we'll sit down, have a nice smoke and enjoy what we have. Probably at the same time we'll be complaining that it isn't like the "good old days" but neither is it as bad as it's about to get. I predict that we'll be right.
