My favorite way of saying something is futile AF is, it’s like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

You know, because why bother? We all know that shit is going down.

Interestingly, though, and despite familiar dramatizations of the luxury liner disaster, first-hand accounts of that fated night suggest that the passengers were not running about the ship, frantic and panic-stricken. In fact, most weren’t even all that ruffled. They may have, in fact, been rearranging deck chairs. Why would they be overly perturbed? There were plenty of lifeboats, they were told, and did they see that ship on the horizon? It was coming to rescue them! Besides, they were on the Titanic, the Queen of the Ocean, one of the finest steamers in the world. She was massive (at 882 feet long, she was the largest ship afloat at the time); she was luxurious (first class amenities included Turkish baths, a heated saltwater swimming pool, squash courts and a private massage room); and most importantly, she was unsinkable. That pesky midnight iceberg strike might ruin the passengers’ beauty sleep and delay their arrival in New York, but there was no cause for alarm.

“God himself couldn’t sink this ship,” the Titanic’s captain is quoted as boasting.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t exactly right about that. In fact, if we’re being technical, he was dead wrong. The Titanic went down in less than three hours, claiming more than 1,500 lives in the process.

I find the similarities to our current world and the Titanic downright terrifying, TBH.

Not to be dramatic, but society as we know (knew) it is crumbling around us. Our once inalienable freedoms—to breathe clean, unfiltered-by-a-germy-face-rag air, make a living, travel freely, get an education, secure non-discriminatory healthcare, speak openly and without censorship, access unbiased, factual, reliable “news,” make medical decisions for ourselves and our children and enjoy a fucking cheeseburger or glass of wine in New York, LA, San Francisco or any of the Vail Resorts in 15 states—have all been removed or dramatically diminished.

The ship is sinking, guys. And I hate to be the one to break it to you, but there aren’t nearly enough lifeboats. There’s certainly no rescue boat on the horizon. (If there is, FJB is about to start fining it for sitting out there, so it’s probably going to turn around and bolt any second now.)

But this is America! The Land of the Free (Our Constitution—and the national anthem—say so!), the world’s undeniable superpower (We have the planet’s greatest wealth and its strongest military! Well, we did for a while there. Dammit!), home of the American Dream. You know, the one where if we work hard and play nice, no matter where we came from or what color skin we’re in, we’re free to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (albeit not necessarily the realization of it; that part’s on us).

“America is another name for opportunity,” Ralph Waldo Emerson said.

And the definition of opportunity is, “a set of circumstances that make it possible to do something.”

If there’s one thing we’ve got right now, it’s a shit-ton of opportunity.

We have an opportunity to band together, stand up, and tell our tyrannical leaders where they can shove their mandates, their fear-mongering fake news, and their endless barrage of booster shots. We have an opportunity to show our kids that their freedom is worth fighting for, and that if questioning the narrative costs you a few friends, the hard-to-swallow truth-pill is they weren’t actually friends to begin with. We have an opportunity to build an army of resisters so large and so powerful that we’re impossible to contain or control. (Think hundreds of millions of drunken NASCAR fans but, you know, classy.)

If you let the government break the law during an emergency, they will continue to create emergencies to break the law.

Our entire collective existence has been upended for a virus with a 99% survival rate; one that overwhelmingly affects the elderly and the very unwell; one that we can treat in many if not most cases safely, effectively, and inexpensively. We’ve been subjected to a propaganda campaign the likes of which the world hasn’t seen since Nazi Germany. Our “leaders” are pushing to inject millions of children with an experimental toxin proven to have serious, sometimes deadly consequences, even though children are at statistically zero risk of becoming gravely ill or dying from the virus and oh yeah, the experimental toxin doesn’t even work. Whoops.

Let me repeat: The ship is sinking. It’s SOS time, folks. Sink or swim. I’m not going to lie; we’re fresh out of lifeboats, we’re hella far from the shore and the water is bloody fucking freezing. Oh, and sharks. There are lots and lots of sharks.

“He who burns bridges better be a damn good swimmer.” ~Unknown

I’ll bring the goggles and the swim caps.

Meet you in the water.