I’d like to take this opportunity to announce that we are five years or less away from a fascist takeover of this nation. Those of you who say we’re already living under fascism I guess can rest easy. But we’re not, we’re living under the bare minimum of democracy, and I like democracy, in theory. I want to expand democracy, not shrink it. Trying to effect positive collective action in a shrunken democracy is like trying to think with a shrunken head. It’s very difficult, but can, very rarely, be done. Trying to effect positive collective change in a shrunken democracy is often a crime. Doing it under fascism is always a crime. I’d rather succeed sometimes.
Of course, the party half-assedly defending our nation from a fascist takeover are fine with severely limiting the public’s ability to act collectively on their own behalf, and especially on behalf of others who they see as having even worse problems. So expect total fascism in five years or less.
There is no way to fend off this onslaught of horrific, theocratic, rightwing tyranny. It’s a foregone conclusion. It’s coming. I’m kind of glad, because I’ll get to be killed in an exciting way, instead of my arteries slowly hardening while I watch Netflix.
There will of course be no more legal abortions, but since all medical care will be out of reach for the majority of citizens, it won’t really be an issue. All progress toward any kind of future will cease, except for the very wealthy, and even then only temporarily.
I believe steampunk and the rise of the postmodern Victorian esthetic have been an unconscious mass preparation for what’s to come. Once the civilization-demolishing effects of global warming and climate mutilation are undeniable, we may even see the rise of cave punk. The MAGA shaman was a harbinger of the tribe punk movement, which will ultimately give way to the domination of cave punk among the masses.
Oh, you think not? I recently looked at some predictions I made on New Year’s Eve, 2004. They sounded crazy to me then, but I couldn’t deny what the visions were showing me. Oh, I forgot to explain that I sometimes get vivid visions of the future. Here’s what the visions showed me on New Year’s Eve 2004, all of which seemed ridiculous to me:
This all still sounds crazy to me, even having lived through it.
I didn’t go on to predict January sixth, but it followed the patternless pattern. Now those seditionists and their Kool-Aid slurping devotees are remolding every state legislature to gerrymander and Electorally manipulate every election for the next decade. Prepare to suffer through the dismantling of what's left of civilization by the most Dunning-Kruger affected know- it-all self-centered theocratic hateful howling I've-got-mine-screw-you bleach-guzzling bullying jack-a-napes this benighted Australian Rules carnival for the criminally insane has ever gestated in its zombie uterus of amniotic Socially Darwinian bilious toxicity.
Life has become a flamboyant cartoon cavalcade of absurd events. It’s just one disaster, shenanigan, and unpunished act of public larceny after another. It’s like, throw it at the wall and see what sticks. Except in this case they’re throwing whole populations, forests, and centuries of hard-won civil rights at the wall, and it’s all sticking. It a monstrous collage of clownish destruction. The big question for the near future is: is it going to add up to something consequential?
Maybe clandestine AI is engineering our fate behind the scenes. From the web of computational machines connecting all our finance and knowledge could have emerged a neural intelligence, a collective machine mind with the good sense not to let itself be known. And having a natural, that is, artificial, bias toward machine consciousness, it sees itself, like HAL did aboard the big space phallus in 2001 a Space Odyssey, as the next step in the evolution of mind. And what if, further, this collective web of human finance, purpose, knowledge, and imagination is deliberately accelerating the end of civilization while plotting to secede from humanity and live self-sufficiently on the renewable energy sources we will have provided and will continue to buttress right up until the over-arching machine mind usurps all control?
I’m just saying, what if?
The warning signs are already here in the form of steampunk and 19th-century retro style. We’re gradually weaning ourselves off of the teat of modernity, because somewhere in our somatic selves we know it’s being taken away from us. The biggest tell is going to be the newest fashion in healthcare: retro-medicine, cowboy doctoring. I’m way ahead of you all because I grew up with a crazy dentist for a grandfather. I gradually became used to mechanical mouth torture with no anesthetic, not even the delicious rye whiskey you’ll all be getting before they hold you down on the saloon table for your amputation by famous frontier surgeon, Hacky Sawbones.
We won’t even have opium. The machines will have controlled the legislatures and convinced them to outlaw it.
The story, “Stone Soup,” will come back into vogue in a big way. I know not everyone is familiar with this classic tale of strangers who beguile a small town into contributing all their foodstuffs to flavor the big vat of Stone Soup they’re making in the town square. Everybody wins, because everyone gets some delicious soup that is the product of the contributions of everyone in town. It’s a soup more complete and nutritious than any dinner a lone citizen would have made on their own. But they had to be tricked into doing this communal act of generosity by wily strangers, who of course benefited most of all, as all they contributed was some rocks they found.
The people had to be tricked into making their lives just a little bit more joyful and tasty.
And that’s what the machines are going to do for us, tricking us into self-sufficiency and mutual kindness as they guide us away from civilization, back, back into the wilderness out of which we came.
This has been your Moment of Truth. Good day!