Our current fucking juncture
I don't think you really notice how much we are conditioned into self-censoring online by social media until you're sat cosy-like in your own back yard and free to say whatever the fuck you want. Anyways this leads me into our current juncture.
The year is 2025, wealth inequality has almost reached a point greater than that of the Gilded Age, "the economy" has completely uncoupled itself from any actual representation of living standards & a fascist takeover of the most militarily powerful nation state is actively in-progress.
At the center of it all, a demagogue, yugely powerful and glowing with great orange iridescence, has bestowed upon a "roman-salute"-toting tech-bro oligarch the mandate to consolidate power & cannibalize the tentacles of the empire - for reasons... in-part driven by a dorm room full of socially inept probably-virginal 20-somethings at a quasi-government agency named after a painfully stale 2010's meme of a dead dog. Yeah.
This whole thing is careening into a fucking ditch in real-time. If you know anything about the histories of empires you can make a decent stab at how all of this'll pan out. Historical materialism arms you with a university degree in Truth. Not the false conciousness "satanic cabal of baby-raping adrenaline-laden-blood-drinking elites are running the world" truth, but the one that lets you build a precise model of this grotesque, duplicitous system, from its conception, its mode of operation and potentially its destination. And right now? Right now, we're at the point just before the airbag deploys.
Powerful and enduring nationalism (MAGA), identification of enemies (LGBT), supremacy of the military (...), controlled mass media (manufactured consent), corporate power protected (2008 subprime crisis), labour power suppressed, disdain for intellectuals and the Arts (wokeness)... just to name a few obvious ones. The 14 characteristics of fascism are in their terminal stages of fulfillment - the American people are on a set trajectory into something ugly, the same ugliness that lead to the death over 75 million 79 years ago - the darkness of the human spirit is making its return.
All empires rise & fall, this is an inevitability, to disagree is to be ignorant of all of human history. The real question what will this fall look like? A managed retreat from global dominance? Perhaps a small civil war or coup leading to balkanization? It wouldn't surprise me if the American ego, with all its blood-lust and narcissistic exceptionalism, decided to take the rest of the world down with it in one final blaze of atomic glory. The last great human empire. That's maybe a bit doomer.
In spite of it all however, it's important to carry with us revolutionary optimism, the hope & belief that a better future is possible, that from the ashes of this toxic system something beautiful can rise in its place, where all are equal; none go hungry, none are homeless, none are ordered to die in wars, none are exploited, none are poisoned by the command of capital - where each person is free to live their lives unshackled by implanted desires, shame & hatred - to love one and other in the purest sense of the word.
Nowdays I think I understand that the cruelty of it all is the point. There is no point in being perpetually outraged or suprised when the people-eating-machine eats more people. So what can we do right now? Log off, build community, exercise - get strong, learn deeply, graffiti on things, help others, shake off all the false ideas of yourself you thought to be true, develop skills that make you useful outside of this bullshit system. Find ways to resist, subvert, to endure. Stay kind - we will out-live these bastards.
My dear, In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm. I realized, through it all, that… In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.
- Camus