It was Sh*T was my Yelp Review for 2024.
Today, it rained, like the beginning of April rather than the end of December. It's not nostalgia for the past because I don't have many good things to say about it except that the Seasons stayed in their lane. In the "before times," the last few days of the year were never this consistently mild.
The environment is dying, and a capitalistic system designed to enrich the 1% above all else is the murder weapon. Yet, there is an auto-pilot feel to civilisation's demise as we fly off the radar screen and disappear from history.
Sure, millions are fighting against the coming unravelling of nature and the collapse of society. But, that is not enough to push the needle back into a safe zone. People would rather lose their shit over the homeless or migrants rather than confront humanity's greatest existential crisis in living memory. It is not simply ignorance, stupidity or fear driving ordinary people to their annihilation without much protest. The status quo of neoliberalism has the mighty weight of its inertia, holding back the radical change needed to avert what will soon be our irrevocable demise.
Political power in the hands of the 1% or those who serve their interests was always a recipe for repression, oligarchy and inequality.
Despite never being wealthy, I've been in the confidence of enough rich people to realise self-awareness isn't their strong personality trait. Arrogance, disdain for those below them and a belief in a personal manifest destiny in their DNA is more their bag. So, naturally, they gravitate towards plutocracy, feudalism or harsh autocracy, which keeps them rich and the masses in chains.
No wonder then that this past year was one of unrelenting societal cruelty towards the vulnerable and an acceleration of climate destruction by capitalism that runs amok to enrich the entitled.
It was a year of unprecedented homelessness and record wealth accumulation by the world's 1%. It was a year with no silver linings because the dark clouds of authoritarianism gathering above us were enabled by a corrupt corporate news media and political class.
Journalism is tainted because its mainstream outlets gaslit reality and murdered democracy, which ushered in the second coming of Donald Trump.
There's something pathetic and sinister about people who should know better than to declare Trump is just a 4-year endurance exercise, and then everything returns to normal.
Democracy and the caring society are dead. We are in the nascent stage of oligarchic fascism and it has taken root. During the last 12 months, the Western world has normalised the eradication of the Palestinian people by Israel, the US and its allies. This genocide was live-streamed, and in any sane era, that would have caused an outrage strong enough to stop the bloodshed.
Even Nazi Germany attempted to conceal their genocide from ordinary citizens for fear it would arouse sympathy for the victims and anger at the perpetrators.
2024 was the year of living genocidally, and what comes in 2025 will be more of the same. In our home countries, it won't be safe for those who are homeless or refugees and the Trans community because we live in a time when Neimoller's poem became a reality again. Soon enough, the fascists will have us all on a list of undesirables. People must start preparing today, how to survive with their humanity intact because everything will be on the line in 2025.
My optimism for better days has worn as thin as a bar of soap that has been too long in a bathtub because 2024 was dismal. "It was shit" sums up my Yelp review of the last 365 days.
It's hard to figure out whether we should buckle up before we assume the crash position- or say- to hell with it and hit the ground hard when 2025 arrives. But for now, take care and see you on the other side.
Happy New Year,
Thanks for reading my Substack for the past 3 years. I appreciate everyone of you because you take time out of your day to read my work and my fathers. You have been so helpful to me and maintaining my father’s legacy over these last, lean years. I’d prefer to never have to ask or require paid subscribers for this newsletter. But we don’t live in that type of society. I do really need your help during this end of the year, if you are able. I am rent short and want to remained housed and continuing to sustain and grow the legacy of my dad and his Last Stand Project. I think it is worthwhile and necessary. I am looking for 3 new, yearly subscribers to keep the lights on. It’s 30 quid a year or $50 and I think it has value. Substack and the payment platform take around 20% of that because capitalism is the gift that keeps giving to the wealthy. So if you can thanks and if you can’t it’s all good because you in solidarity with the work and projects ahead. There is also a tip jar for those inclined. Tomorrow will be my last post of the year.
Take care, John
Nice analysis, John and, unfortunately, an accurate prediction of what is to come.
I hear what you say but I get impatient with the refusal to lay the blame where it lies. People do not like facing reality, it seems.