By this time next year- darkness at noon will have come regardless of who becomes US President.
The first heavy snow fell across my city last weekend, and more will arrive today. In fact, I just turned from my computer screen to the window behind me and saw a blizzard was already blowing. But I am prepared because the day before, a new pair of cheap winter boots made in a slave labour factory in China was delivered to me by an underpaid Amazon delivery driver. At least for a month or maybe two, my feet will be dry before the boots' waterproofing erodes from too much walking.
So far, winter has been a sunless affair- colourless as a shirt made dingy by multiple washings. Even the "Poor Tom" ranting soliloquies uttered by the homeless when I walk past them have a stern tone of defeat.
"Everyone is better than me." yelled a woman who pushed a shopping cart that bulged with beer cans and personal effects up a road with the weariness of Sisyphus because the sidewalks were thick with snow. She's not wrong- most think they are better than homeless people. I am sure ending up without a roof over your head is used as a threat of things to come by some parents who want their kids to study harder so that they can have a career in maintaining the status quo.
Getting ahead in a neoliberal world is about leaving people behind but convincing them you will return for them later once the coast is clear. It's the politics of Keir Starmer and the Labour Party post-Corbyn. It's 21st century centrism in every G7 nation. It's not about taking what is good from left and right-wing politics and mixing it into a perfect pragmatic social agenda blend. It's about convincing people that harsh measures against refugees, the imposition of austerity or wars are temporary and will be done with as much humanity possible.
Two types of voters will ensure Starmer becomes PM; cynics and those who believe a corporation's human resource department is there for the benefit of its employees.
In the before times which ended over 1400 days ago, I still had faith that democratic institutions, despite being under neoliberalism's influence could be harnessed to significantly better the lives of ordinary people.
Not anymore. How governments, big businesses and the news media compartmentalised the plague into a "shit happens, get over it" moment taught me progressive democracy had flat-lined. It is impossible to believe the hype emanating from gated community living liberals that Biden, in 2024, is democracy's last hope to survive. Biden's 40 years in politics has seen plutocracy with hints of benevolence flourish like ragweed. Democracy is dead. It probably ended at the time Iran/Contra wasn't considered something a President should resign over. Pretending a system that favours its wealthiest citizens will be more cruel under an outright fascist is problematic considering that many American States are already in the hands of outright fascists. We are at rock fucking bottom and we are going to dig down even deeper.
Those with good six-figure salaries that soar well beyond the 100k mark don't need to see what portends ahead. But we do because currently we are the doomed ones where our choice is neoliberalism's garrotte or fascism's jackboot. The better income earners will do just fine as long as they continue to be regimented technocrats maintaining an economy that mainly benefits the 1% they are safe. They are like those cars whose drivers swerved to avoid hitting the homeless woman pushing her life up a steep road. They can drive around the economic hardships experienced by millions upon millions and will continue to do so whether Biden or Trump is President.
The cost of living crisis, the housing crisis, the climate crisis, Gaza, Ukraine and COVID are political and ideological tectonic plates colliding against each other. It's forming a new supercontinent of fascism. It won't take decades to occur. By this time next year- darkness at noon will have come.
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I thank you for the rant revealing the stark reality/Hunger Games/Soylent Green/ Matrix universe we occupy.
I can agree with your premise, but history shows a very different outcome. While it’s true the old norms of behavior and institutionalized propaganda aren’t working like they used to ...(IF at ALL?);
The outcome is almost the same. Violent revolution: (long overdue). The dismantling of “norms”, and the overthrow of what used to work; (for the masses), and the replacement with a better working model. I’ve been telling my fellow Gen Xers and Boomers that we need to dust off the old Cold War training of post nuclear apocalypse practices, and start taking it seriously and become very conscientious survivors. Our “Golden Years “, (we are learning), is now exposed as the “Big Myth/Lie” that it’s always been. For those who cannot adjust, due to circumstances beyond their immediate control (?), it might be wise to get your affairs in order.
The “New” Order is already HERE and flexibility IS the KEY. Those of us being allowed to stabilize for the moment (?); need to “get real”, and start to live independently and learn to live (out in the open), life as you will be living it then. Those who will not see, or acknowledge that new reality will not survive to nurture and teach the new generations; ( A-C), how precisely to avoid the mistakes and ignorance brought on by believing in fantasies that were never realistically set up to deliver the intended results that were “promised”.
New technology is set to enslave humans: however (?); the next generations do have a realistic chance to recover their independence and freedom and severely cripple the financial, political, economic, and racially supremacist systems that have dictated the course of life on earth for far too long.
I, my partner, and our children, intend to be amongst the survivors, and are now slowly backing away from depending upon this old “system of things” to deliver us any longer.
A “...supercontinent of fascism...” is an absolutely correct metaphor for the times. Great piece.