It is difficult to remember, to not take clean water for granted: We grew up around it, seems like an automatic birthright, it's always been clean, always been here. Liquid water, a rarity among bodies in space, plenty of it right here: It nurtures and sustains us, grows our food, helps us exist and be.
Clean water's a no-brainer, or always used to be, as most basics of life and living once were. Of course, nations go through pendulum swings and phases, and, by all measures now, we are in an uber-right wing phase, worst ever seen or tracked, in which no aspect of life and living thing is certain, not in this climate of winner-take-all, right-is-wrong, and screw-you-I-got-mine.
So: Heads-up, be braced for impact. Be ready, be expecting that any sane or simple thing will take ten times as much work to accomplish as it used to take or should. Something that used to require no deep thought -- like mandating and ensuring clean water for all -- will now shake the foundations of country to acquire. It could at times look like civilization itself will be pulled down in the doing, crumbled and busted, collapsed and imploded, into a fine, gritty, dusty powder.
On Monday, August 6, 1945, after six months of intense firebombing of 67 other Japanese cities,...
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