Post-apocalyptic cultures are supposed to be the products of fiction. Failed states. Failed people. Failed economic structures. Failed religions. Failed institutions. Failed individuals. Failed public policy. Or all of the above at the same time.

It is the mystical belief that our species is impervious to failure that is a rhetorical dead-loss of defeat. The real problem isn’t failure. It’s the inability to adapt. We can’t absorb the fact that we even are a species. Animals are species after species. Humans are with god. We can’t absorb that one pandemic is going to be multiple pandemics. All of the above at the same time.

Global warming is just one example of our species floundering on the brink of collapse. It doesn’t matter that science is correct. Global warming is happening whether our species can adapt or remain intransigent within the context of our denial, and as ephemeral as a graveyard.

The poor will tell you that the apocalypse is here. The rich think it can be held in abeyance. The middle is evaporating. Choose. One side or the other. The problems are not the divisions among us. We have poisoned the planet, we cannot adapt. One hurricane can contain as much energy as 10,000 atomic bombs.

What have we done. All of the above.

Is it too late.

Yes.

Every person not wearing a mask is a failure. It is our failure. We own it even when we deny ownership.

We defy defeat. The rich have won. They have inherited the earth.

Or all of the above at the same time.

We rape our own children. Elephants have a deeper sense of connection and empathy. Human culture is indifferent to human culture. The sexual abuse we wage against our children is the equivalent of the rape we have committed against the planet. We shit where we eat.

I didn’t know what was happening.

This was violence.

“What are you doing.”

I bled for months. Ashamed. It was my fault. I was in the fourth grade. The difference between the Cub Scouts and the Boy Scouts was lost on me. They were the Scouts.

My parents had to know about the bloody underpants. But they never mentioned it. They never mentioned any interest as to why I left scouting. They never questioned what went on at his house.

They were the ones who insisted I was going over there because being with such a manly man would be good for me.

This manly man had just returned to the United States after serving in Vietnam. He was wildly abusive. I had never seen a woman being beaten up before. His slammed his Vietnamese wife against the wall, and slapped her around. Hard. He wanted me to see this.

I hated my parents for making me endure this. I was shocked. I became deeply depressed. I shot myself with a gun. But I survived. All of this was a complete mystery to my parents. I was a complete mystery, too.

I don’t know if the Boy Scouts could have filtered him out from being our scoutmaster. The term master has always been ominous. I grew up with those other boys. If the scoutmaster’s name ever got mentioned, we all just looked at the ground.

He vanished. His wife vanished. I went back to his house and spied in the windows. I wanted a reckoning. Even if I was scared. Everything was gone. No furniture. No life. I never wore that uniform again. After all these years, I kept it in an old trunk. Just before writing this I went and looked at the stain between the legs.