The Great Pipeline Folly: A Testament to Modern Man's Mediocrity

In the vast expanse of the northern realm, where the sleeping masses dream their petty dreams of prosperity, a grand folly unfolds - a tale that speaks volumes of our time's deplorable descent into mediocrity. The Trans Mountain pipeline, that serpentine bearer of black gold, stands as a monument to the modern man's inability to transcend his own limitations.

Behold, O witnesses to this age of declining spirits! How they fumble with their numbers and calculations, these counter-men, these budget-keepers, believing that truth lies in their ledgers! They know the price of everything and the value of nothing!

The Parliamentary Budget Office, that temple of arithmetic worship, hath declared with their sacred calculations that this steel serpent, this Trans Mountain pipeline, bears worth between $29.6 billion and $33.4 billion - a sum that falls short of its creation cost of $34.2 billion. What started as a modest $7.4 billion estimate in 2017 has grown into a behemoth that devours wealth like a ravenous beast.

In this land of the sleepers, where the masses slumber beneath the comfort of governmental assurances, none dare question the fundamental absurdity of this venture. They accept, with sheeplike docility, the transformation of their tax dollars into steel and concrete, all while their shepherds speak of profit and progress.

See how they cower behind their spreadsheets and projections! These last men who blink and say, "We have discovered prudence." Yet what is their prudence but fear dressed in the garments of wisdom?

The government-owned Trans Mountain Corporation stands upon the precipice of financial reality, bearing assets of $35.2 billion and liabilities of $26.9 billion, with shareholder equity of $8.3 billion - numbers that dance like specters in the minds of those who worship at the altar of fiscal responsibility.

Let us speak truth of these modern merchants, these bureaucrats who purchased this steel serpent for $4.5 billion in 2018, now excluded from their calculations as "sunk costs" - a term that perfectly encapsulates the spirit of our age, where failure is merely rebranded as investment.

The marketplace has become their church, profit their god, and loss their devil. Yet they understand neither profit nor loss, for they have forgotten the greater currency of human spirit and will!

The slumbering masses, in their comfortable ignorance, fail to grasp the profound irony of their situation. They celebrate the completion of this monument to mediocrity, this pipeline that bleeds value even as it carries its precious cargo. Their leaders speak of strategic investments and national interests, while the truth lies buried beneath mountains of debt and oceans of bureaucratic justification.

In the halls of power, where the last men gather to count their coins and measure their worth in dollars and cents, none dare speak of the fundamental weakness this project reveals - the inability to transcend the ordinary, to reach beyond the comfortable mediocrity that defines our age.

Look upon your works, ye mighty bean-counters, and despair! For in your pursuit of certainty, you have created only doubt; in your quest for profit, you have reaped loss; in your desire for greatness, you have achieved only the mundane!

As this tale of financial folly unfolds, we witness the perfect manifestation of our time's spiritual poverty. The pipeline, now operational, stands as a testament not to human achievement, but to our collective willingness to accept mediocrity dressed as necessity, to embrace comfort over courage, and to choose the path of least resistance over the mountain road of true greatness.

The verdict of the Parliamentary Budget Office echoes through the empty chambers of our collective consciousness, revealing not just a financial miscalculation, but a spiritual bankruptcy that pervades our entire age. For what is this pipeline but a mirror reflecting our own limitations, our own unwillingness to strive for something truly transformative?

The hour is late, and the sun sets upon this age of the last man. Yet who among you will awaken? Who will cast off the chains of fiscal fetishism and dare to dream of something greater than balance sheets and bottom lines?

Thus stands the Trans Mountain pipeline, a steel monument to our time's greatest failure - not the failure to profit, but the failure to transcend the ordinary, to rise above the mediocre, to become more than mere calculators of cost and keepers of ledgers. In this great accounting, we have lost far more than mere billions - we have lost the very spirit of greatness itself.