We live in a digital version of the 1930s & so corrupt govts appease fascism.

Lately, when I take an evening walk, I brush up against the Ghosts of Christmas Future. It comes first as an apparition of sound in the distance- a rattle of shopping carts on cold pavement. It's a mournful noise similar to Marley shaking his chains before Scrooge at the bedtime of Christmas Eve.

Photo by AR on Unsplash

The din is made by the unhoused, who, beneath the glare of street lights, are silhouettes pushing the contents of their lives to a warming centre near my apartment. At the end of each cold day, the plod there way to a building that offers a bit of grub and a place to warm a body wearied from life on the street during an age of political indifference to human suffering- unless it is the death of a Health Insurance CEO, down in the USA.

It's not prophesy, but there is a probability my tomorrow- is to live in a circle of hell Dante missed- the realm of the unhoused. But the odds are the same for many of you, who like me don't own property.

Getting older in the 21st century is as precarious as growing old before 1945 if you don't belong to the asset class. Much of what made society civilised was scrapped because neoliberalism decided to monetise all aspects of existence.

Human beings, in the 21st century, became inventory owned by, the 1%. We aren't outright serfs yet. But we are data to be bought & sold or units of labour that make, sell and consume nonessential goods that earn profit for those who live in the better parts of our cities and towns. We are livestock that the entitled can extort high-yield rent from until we can't pay for our lodgings and then are pushed into the barren pastures of homelessness.

It's no wonder in a time when affordable housing is a thing of the past, seniors on the skids are a growing demographic of pavement dwellers. According to statistics comprised by NPR in the USA, the ever-increasing cohort of homeless seniors are childless younger baby boomers who experienced the recessions of the 1970s, the 1980s, and the Great Recession of 2008 and because of those events- never got onto the property ladder or lost their footing due to poor health which diminished their employment opportunities.

They became- as it were waste on capitalism’s factory floors after they no longer had any utility for the profits of the entitled. And, so were flushed onto the streets like the contents of chamber pots from the windows of the well-to-do inhabitants of the 16th century.

Despite the fascist propaganda of Elon Musk and other Oligarchs who portray homelessness as the price of fecklessness, moral weakness, criminality or drug addiction, many of the unhoused still work.

This crisis was made by the 1%- not from their incompetence or ignorance, but from their greed and contempt for life that lacks wealth. According to the Interagency Council of Homelessness, 40-60% of those who live on American streets are employed. The problem is their wages are too low to maintain a roof over their heads.

Many workers in the USA, Canada, and the UK are underpaid and must work two or three jobs to keep their heads above the rising cost of living. It's something gated community liberals conveniently forgot when they banged on about how good the economy was doing during the US Presidential Election.

Today's homeless are like steerage passengers on the Titanic because they aren't lifeboat-worthy for neoliberal society. With politicians and the news media normalising forcible confinement in "rehabilitation centres" for street people with mental illness or drug addiction, the possibility of mass euthanasia for the homeless or concentration camps where the unhoused are killed through hard labour isn't dystopian science fiction anymore.

Any politician who claims- "We will build affordable housing for all who need it”, is bullshitting you. They have no intention to radically reset capitalism. None of them, who are within reach of the levers of power, want to alter the wealth of the 1%. Why would they? Their incomes depend on satisfying the desires of the entitled and making it seem that it's in the best interest of society,

What is coming in 2025 will be far worse than what we have encountered up until now. Corporate journalism has prepared society to accept a perpetually increasing underclass. We live in a digital version of the 1930s where we not only appease fascism, we emulate it and champion it. Society isn't at a crossroads it's gone through the looking glass. What comes next will be unspeakably brutal because the 1% robbed us of our humanity and ability to empathise with the downtrodden. The only solution is political, economic and social militancy- done as it was done, during any era of Tyranny, in the past.

Your subscriptions are so important to my personal survival because like so many others who struggle to keep afloat, my survival is a precarious daily undertaking. The fight to keep going was made worse- thanks to getting cancer along with lung disease and other co-morbidities which makes life more difficult to combat in these cost-of-living crisis times. So you can join with a paid subscription, which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. But if you can’t it's all good too because I appreciate we are in the same boat. Take Care, John