Can our democracy survive the lowest common denominator?

 Are we reaching a milestone or a threshold? It's between the politics, the pandemic, and the scammers. I see all three of these things converging as a growing threat to our democracy. That, and what I see as the cognitive limits of a large part of the electorate. The gullible who believe nearly everything. So long as it comports with their ideology. 

We have proven to be intelligent enough to create the technologies we all use. We have figured out that when a star collapses into a black hole, it creates a gravity wave that travels throughout the universe. On top of that, we have built devices that can measure these waves down to the resolution of the diameter of a proton.

And yet, we have a population of people in our country who gather by the thousands in Dallas Texas awaiting the arrival of a politician who has been dead for decades. So that he can reinstate Trump and hold mass executions of the lizard people in our government who eat babies. The same people who believe if they cover themselves with or eat magic dirt, they can purge their bodies of the harmful effects of a vaccine and cure themselves of the Covid virus. After being pressured to receive the very vaccine that would help not only protect those people but the rest of society with whom they interact.

These are the people who are choosing our political leaders and making the decisions that will affect not only this generation, but generations to come. It is that part of our population who would rather believe in what they want, instead of the actual reality in which they are living. 

I see this happening and I feel a growing doubt in my mind as to the long-term viability of our species. As an individual, I can only influence a limited number of people. I can only encourage a limited number of individuals to challenge what they choose to believe in the face of actual reality. 

So, I do what I can to escape the nonsense I see closing in around me. Sometimes I just get on my bike and ride. Sometimes I lose myself in photography of the macro world or more globally the world as I see things. 

Here are a few of those images. In no particular order. Because sometimes that is how life happens. Not in the way we thought we had planned. Merely in the way life comes to us.