Featured image by W.carter. Follow the link for more work.
Today’s post is going to be a rant. It will meander over a number of topics, and will likely have little theme, but I think it is important that I at least put a couple of things out there to clear out the backlog of subjects that I’ve been wanting to post about, but haven’t found enough time, drive, or focus to make a whole post from.
We are in for a new dark ages. Society as we know it has collapsed, and we are in the death throes from this gilded age that we were living in. Our ability to think, to laugh, to ignore, and to be left alone are all under near daily assault from people who want us “under control,” supported by people who think that they are morally superior. Science has evolved into a religion with practiced dogma, catechisms, and clergy, and it is either used to justify a political point of view, or ignored when it disagrees with a narrative. All of the world’s problems are an unceasing series of crises, and the only solution to these never-ending series of emergencies is to increase the scope of government, to give up liberty, to stay trapped inside, pay more in taxes, and let the state dictate to you how it will live your life for you. We pay more attention to the race of the individual than the actions of the individual, and have disregarded intent and context in nearly every matter, often putting in its place the idea that this or that happened because of some underlying “ism” or “phobia.” We have lost our ability to communicate with anyone with whom we disagree, because more and more it looks like those we disagree with aren’t wrong or misguided, but evil. Everything has become political, and every disagreement is an attack on someone’s “right to exist.” We are constantly trying to push narratives in media, all the while claiming that we are being objective, and any disagreement with the popular narrative’s perception of facts is now grounds for social exile. We are supposed to believe all women, except when they accuse the preferred political candidate of the media. We are supposed to blindly accept what the media tells us without doing any research on our own. And those who actually corroborate the reporting with any sort of research are considered conspiracy theorists for failing to accept what the media tells us. The media is no longer free, it has become deformed from its incestuous relationship with the government as the two swap memberships like Jamie and Cersei Lannister swapped spit. We have a chaotic vortex of people all claiming to be victims of everyone else, with no structure or semblance of organization aside from them all agreeing that the White Man is the Devil. We have society tearing itself apart with politicians speaking about unity all the while telling those who didn’t vote for them that they shouldn’t show their faces in society again. And all the while we treat each other like crabs in a pot while the corporations leech money out of us and flee to cheaper places to do business, feeding money to politicians through speaking engagements, campaign contributions, and subtle manipulations of their algorithms in order to shape the narrative. We are told that we must see the world in terms of race, gender, sex, ethnicity, creed, color, and nearly every immutable characteristic, and that somehow judging people solely upon their intersectional identity will lead to a brighter more harmonious future. We’re printing money like there’s no tomorrow, and inflating the currency like they did in pre-WWII Germany or Venezuela. We’ve been sold the lie that an education will open doors and make us more money, regardless of the degree achieved. And now Congress can only pass legislation in multiple thousand page chunks, and only under the threat of government shutdown. We’re creating laws that are voted on, but left to be discovered like landmines. We are a broken people who have abandoned any semblance of ethics, morals, and decency. And frankly, considering everything that I’ve ranted about so far, we deserve it. We deserve the darkness ahead, because we, like Icarus, flew too close to the sun. We, like Lucifer, thought ourselves greater that God, and are being cast out of heaven. We, like the Romans, are rotting from within, and our great civilization will collapse under its own weight.
I don’t know how it ends. Maybe we become an Empire, and Liberty dies like it did in Revenge of the Sith, with thunderous applause. All I know is that we’re in for hard times ahead.
A Place 4Politics 