When another Welfare State is forged from the miasma of this fascist time, tumbrils will be all the rage.
It will be sooner rather than later, but the jig is up for us. All that we don't know is whether it's a bang or a whimper, that will be heard when Western Civilisation meets its last moment?
The curtain call has already begun and its Swan song tunes up in the key of fascism fit for a digital age. Everything has a War of the World feel to it. Israel's military forces track with satellites, phone intercepts Palestinian journalists, artists, poets and intellectuals in Gaza and eliminate them with a drone or an airstrike. The proportion of ammunition is so great that after these attacks nothing remains alive within a block radius, except unquenchable rage and resentment.
The 21st century is playing out not as something foretold and immutable but as something forewarned that we refused to alter. We already know from the 1940s that taking the path of Mussolini and Hitler ends up with darkness at noon that ushers in the annihilation of empathy, law and decency. But here we are again- old home week for fascism is upon us in Europe, the UK, the USA and Canada.
It's Agamemnon's end for us, a stab in the back by prophecy more than a reckoning at Golgotha that promised death but redemption for all confessed sinners.
Democracy is defenestrated when it needs to be robust, hopeful and determined. The cost of living crisis created by the 1% saw to that. Even if Biden were to beat Trump in the 2024 Presidential Election, fascism wouldn't be defeated or even weakened. The Democrats are as jingoistic and intolerant as the Republicans on the things that matter like making Refugees Welcome. They won't change the descent of the planet's environmental Armageddon because they believe in the virtue of extreme wealth to be the wisest attribute a human can possess.
There is something funny and sad about the people who put their faith in Joe Biden a politician who has spent over 5 decades of his political life maintaining a status quo that puts the profits of the entitled before the needs of ordinary folk. It's delusion to believe Biden's second term will be the time he will knock one out of the park for the people or that it will be used to build protections against a future authoritarian government. The dystopia to come won't need to be born because it is coming premade from Rehoboth.
In the long-ago time when our ancestors grubbed their way through existence, society was governed by an entitled class permanently entrenched by emperors, kings, Popes or since the 19th-century captains of industry. There was a permanent underclass of workers who toiled at the coalface, the steel mills or operated the mechanical looms.
And then after 1945, lives that were considered chattel to the entitled were returned to their working class owners through the creation of the Welfare State. Capitalism through fair and proportionate taxation was harnessed to construct public healthcare, affordable housing, and affordable education for all citizens and everyone had the right to a fair day's wage for a fair day's work.
Forget about the Russian Revolution being 10 days that shook the world, or the French Revolution being earth-shattering. The notion that a person has the right to the best healthcare based on need rather than financial resources is the bedrock of modern democracy. The Welfare State was a cataclysmic social and economic revolution ever undertaken in recorded history and it was done without guillotines or firing squads. For a few brief decades, hope was tangible, because democracy was for everyone, not just those with wealth. And then neoliberalism came to take it all away and give back what was hard won by the working class to the 1%.
My childhood was basked in the warmth of a functioning Welfare State. It was an optimistic age where the present and future had the expectation no one would be left behind- like many were in the Great Depression.
Now- at the age of sixty, I am witnessing the return of a permanent underclass that will be more immutable than anything my parents, grandparents or great-parents experienced during the excesses of capitalism in the previous Gilded Ages. I won't see it in my lifetime, but when another Welfare State is forged from the miasma of this fascist time, tumbrils will be all the rage.
As always, thank you for reading my sub stack posts because I really need your help because I am not going to lie to you, it’s been a shit 12 months. But many of you have also had your knockdowns during Covid and the cost of living crisis, Your subscriptions to Harry’s Last Stand keep the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith alive and me housed. The Green & Pleasant land is coming along. I will have another 30k words to drop for you on Boxing Day. It will be done and ready for publication by spring 2024. So if 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. Take Care, John