A few thoughts… On being worried and enraged in 2024

By Sandy Compton
Reader Columnist

It’s time to write something clever about the new year. Or at least something. We get an extra day in 2024, and we get to go through an election season. Oh, boy! Mudslinging, prevaricating, science-denying, character-assassinating and false-promising will be colossal and maybe the most disgusting ever. I can hardly wait. 

For that and other reasons, I’m grateful not to have a television. It saves me time being enraged that I can spend on more important things, like trying to get something done on my house without some small disaster. Very recent case in point: clearing a jammed stapler, I stuck a screwdriver into the web between my thumb and index finger, causing a medium-sized hole that will heal slowly, considering the web is required in most activities requiring the use of hands. 

Now, that is something to get enraged about, don’t you think? 

At least, I can still type. Plus, I’m in just the right mood for writing a column: recovering from having a good old-fashioned temper tantrum and still half-pissed. So, even though I don’t have a TV, and even though David Letterman hasn’t been doing this for a while, I put together a Letterman-like “Top Ten List Of Stuff To Worry Or Be Enraged About In 2024.” 

To start, I just began writing down top-of-the-brain random thoughts. Some led to dead ends, but some were saved and led to the following list:

10. Will Keith and Mick survive the 2024 Rolling Stones tour?

Author Sandy Compton. Courtesy photo.

9. Will Taylor and Travis stay together longer than Brad and whoever’s next? 

8. The preponderance of paedomorphism (look it up) in celebrities and certain drivers.

7. Inflation.

6. COVID variations. 

5. The radical “Christian Right,” which ain’t (right, that is).

4. The unwillingness of legislators ranging from county seats to Congress to agree on or do anything that doesn’t directly benefit themselves. 

3. War in the Gaza Strip and Ukraine.

2. Global warming and the lack of action to mitigate it by almost everyone.

And, (drum roll, please) the number 1 reason to be worried and/or enraged in 2024 is: Will Donald Trump be elected dictator… I mean, president? 

I wish I could make the list more fun, or at least less frightening, but reality is not fun all the time.

So, let’s take a look at the reality:

10. No worries. At over $100 a cheap seat, the Stones have plenty of motivation to live, even if they don’t need the money. Maybe they’re just doing it for the satisfaction.

9. Kelce and Swift could grow old together and raise a bevy of tight ends and pop stars, but I suspect they suffer from paedomorphism (have you looked it up yet?).

8. Celebrities make their living via paedomorphism. Some drivers just act that way. 

7. Part of the cause of inflation (currently about 3.5%) is the willingness to use money we don’t have to buy stuff we don’t need.

6. Trust the medical world to stay ahead of COVID. In reality (there’s that word again), they’ve done a fine job of fighting it. Some died for the cause. Get vaccinated. It only hurts a little. It helps a lot. 

5. At close look, the radical Christian right isn’t all that Christian. If they are singing “Jesus loves the little children,” it’s their own they are referring to, not the other “red and yellow, black and white” urchins of the world. 

4. This could be number 1. Plenty to be worried and enraged about, both. Our only chance is to be informed voters. Too bad we may have to choose the lesser of two evils. 

3. In Ukraine and Gaza, the fight continues over religion and real estate. In both cases, and others, innocents are dying by the thousands, and U.S. aid is being used as a weapon. I have no solution, dang it. 

2. The simplest start to containing global warming is for “First World” countries and their corporations to accept that it’s real and do small and large things to slow it. As individuals, we can drive less. Buy carefully. Quit cutting trees for no good reason. Think of alternative energy. Plan ahead about three generations. Leave as much carbon in the ground as possible.

1. Those who believe Trump and his helpers will lead us out of our mess might remember that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Mao, Stalin and Hitler “neutralized” anyone even suspected of not agreeing with them. None were safe from their megalomania. Thousands of psychiatrists assert that Trump is a megalomaniac and narcissist. He is also possibly suffering from paedomorphism. 

My wound will heal, if I take care of it. Our country and the world can heal as well, if we get together and take care of it — a thought that may be both radical and right. 

Sandy Compton is always looking for new words. If you haven’t got out the dictionary yet, “paedomorphism” is defined as, “retention in adults of infantile or juvenile characteristics.”