It’s probably too late
You all can stop doomscrolling now
Good morning, “resistance” warriors of the internet. Who do you “stand with” today, and how is that going?
Never mind, you don’t have to answer that. It’s a rhetorical question.
Good morning also to all of you against whom these myriad resistors are resisting, whatever the nature of your alleged malfeasance. And also to you billions of fence-sitters trying not to get caught in the crossfire … which unfortunately seems to have been increasing of late.
Humanity is a big tent, and when I start opening my yap, which is rare, I tend to want to be inclusive, and not leave anybody out. That means anybody, including stone cold assholes, sociopaths, bloodthirsty dictators, reptilian “influencers” and lawyers.
In uncritically embracing social media, we 21st century humanoids (myself included) who are attempting to remain marginally active and intellectually engaged during our era’s planetary digital information lockdown, have been half-consciously allowing ourselves to be systematically shunted into a growing array of behavioral, philosophical, societal, political and cultural cul de sacs.
And now that we’re trapped good and tight, it looks to me like the global power structures are reshuffling the grid and preparing to whip us into submission, straight into techno-feudalistic servitude.
Which is … contrary to the surprise and astonishment being expressed by many of today’s mal-informed “pundits” … to be expected.
Starting (or, as some of the horde of alternative YouTube historians might opine, re-starting) tens of thousands of years ago with barely legible scratchings on rocks and clay, we humans have done this sort of thing to ourselves throughout “civilized” history, if not at the same global scale. For example, what actually is the Bible, but a blueprint for the mass compliance of otherwise hotheaded, hard-to-control populations? What is mainstream, corporate-owned news and entertainment but blatant propaganda and cultural conditioning? What do you think the internet is really for?
You guessed it, I’d like to assume. But if you didn’t, you might as well stop right here.
Whether this ongoing, metastasizing Spectacle/Panopticon turns out to have been an organic, inevitable phenomenon arising out of the systemic primordial soup, or whether it was designed and manipulated into its current state by a clever multigenerational power technocracy, it doesn’t make much of a difference. The thing exists, in all its pernicious, soul-destroying glory, poised to monitor and control our thoughts and behaviors deep into the dystopian, hyper-tyrannical future, powered by unknowable, uncontrollable totalitarian machinery.
Or so some of us think.
It’s early in the Brave New World, but I already find it reasonable to suspect my iPhone and smart washing machine of conspiring to send me targeted ads and forward my recorded basement laundering epithets to the NSA for analysis. Just a few days ago vast swathes of the Verizon network were shut down, with millions of “customers” instantly spammed by “SOS” dropdown ads on our smart phones enticing us to hook up to some newly operational, pre-loaded satellite grid.
I did not do that.
Like many of you, I’m a genetically surly and ungovernable ape, nonetheless most likely screwing myself more firmly into a prefabricated silo custom-made by the clever architects of this vast control system to keep me and others of my ilk blathering uselessly into the surveillance panopticon. Since the very beginning of the internet, this thing has dutifully been tracking and logging our suspiciously free-spirited activities with any likeminded subversive types. My own preferred cohort tends to consist of scrappy, smart-mouthed leftists, way out on a limb after realizing that the liberal Left has been thoroughly compromised and rendered impotent pawns of the fascist empire.
I’m talking about people like you, Yasha, and your refreshingly anachronistic “Pistachio Wars” documentary, and you, Liz and Brace and Yung Chomsky, and you, “Dick” and “Don,” as you chronicle how and why we’ve effortlessly morphed into the Fourth Reich without even noticing.
There are other, less intellectually and humorously stimulating entities out there doing similar work, in an equally fractured and hopeless quest to foment a sea change in the useless, technologically numbed proletariat. Despite their noble, doomed efforts at rabble-rousing, resistance is becoming increasingly futile. Borg mentality is on the rise, even among formerly populist journalists and disenfranchised Bernie supporters. After test-killing an overmatched lesbian resistor lady in her domestic terrorist Honda Pilot, goon squads numbering in the thousands have been unleashed upon squishy liberal Minneapolis, practicing for even more heavy-handed social engineering to come.
I can say I don’t care, but that’s only because I imagine that I’ve independently and logically determined that “caring” is useless.
Others of you, fellow members in good standing of the worldwide digitally captured cohort, may have imagined that you’ve determined something different. Again, it doesn’t really matter what any of us thinks.
Seriously.
Any time one or more of us amasses enough hubris to think we have a viable solution in hand, any effort to even begin implementing it will be squashed like the carpenter ant I just obliterated into the countertop.
Which is probably just as well. Reactionary thinking can lead to just as slippery a downhill slope into the abyss as the catastrophically wrong thinking one is reacting against.
Still, one can’t just sit around dumbfounded, trying not to notice all the monkey business going on, much of it geopolitical and more than a little of it existentially disturbing.
What I’ve chosen to do about it is not sit in a busy intersection blocking traffic, yelling at the methed-up, heavily armed stooges trying to round up suspiciously nonwhite Africans, Asians and South Americans, or putting on a keffiyeh and yelling at Israel-friendly college administrators.
Instead, using whatever sense of humor I still have as a crutch, I seek only to attempt to catch the ear of one or two of the growing horde of nihilistic lemmings being drawn by entropy into said abyss, and nudge them toward a less suicidal set of behaviors and beliefs. Not being a natural-born “influencer” type, I doubt my efforts will have much impact, but here goes nothing …
The unmanageably Sisyphean task I’ve given myself for today is to identify, categorize and talk shit about some of the more common silos that have, when taken in total, seized the imaginations of nearly everyone on the planet whose noses are pointing at an electronic device for more than five minutes a day. Most victims of Spectacle have taken up residence in more than one of these silos, which have been proliferating wildly since the ARPANET escaped the military/tech university labs in the 1970s to morph into the World Wide Web by the early 1990s.
Any Venn diagram of these overlapping silos would today end up looking like the contents of a bathtub in an old Mr. Bubble commercial, so I won’t bother trying to concoct one.
https://share.google/SdzWNigmYUHcqLVO5
I’ll just stumble on blindly, as usual.
Among the largest artificially contrived silos that my limited intelligence has observed are the “left”, “right” and “centrist” categories. In the industrially accelerating world of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, this foundational trichotomy predated the internet, and the pie was already being trisected with increasing alacrity by means of a massive print industry, augmented and then nearly replaced throughout the 1900s by radio and television broadcasts. Pamphleteering, which eventually was supplanted by news organizations, proliferated madly starting in the 17th century, and it became a real pain in the ass for centralized power nodes in places like London and Amsterdam to keep on top of it all and manage the percolating anarchy.
As oligarchs, governments and corporate entities got more adept at mopping up and controlling news and information media outlets, the reach of these three silos grew to the point that the majority of entire populations could be crammed into one or the other or the other mindset, and gerrymandered into reliably malleable electorates, autocracies and colonies, ultimately resulting in easily manipulated abominations like communism, fascism, jingoism, jihadism and good old British, French or American patriotism, guaranteed to line up against each other in profitable fashion to fill the coffers of the planetary financial overlords.
This flawed yet effective process of global subjugation, dividing, conquering and resource-appropriating rampaged on into the machine age until running into big trouble starting in 1914. By financing the buildup of Germany and the Soviet Union, putting air power and massively powerful explosives into the hands of an opposing pair of titanic industrial regimes in an effort to get them to cancel each other out and leave the British hegemon on top, the banking cabal nearly screwed the pooch. They only survived the game by playing one of their long held aces, unleashing the burgeoning American industrial juggernaut into the tired trenches and tipping the scales to Pyrrhic victory. A valuable lesson remained unlearned, however, when, after securing control of Middle Eastern oil, the empire doubled down again, bankrolling the Nazi and Japanese war machines. By the end of all this geopolitical tinkering, they’d managed to unleash multiple hells on earth, including the development of potentially humanity-ending nuclear and biological weapons. Backing off from the brink for a bit after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they contented themselves with manufacturing a bipolar civilizational “cold” conflict, managing relatively minor chaos between proxy entities as they finished building out the planetary panopticon.
And now it’s here.
Since, say, September 11, 2001, have you stopped to notice the increasing rate and intensity of anomalous events occurring and dominating the almost hourly news cycle? Each of these spasmodic spectacles spawns another splintering of humanity into ever smaller balkanized units, every one of them closely observed and tightly controlled.
September 11 and related events ostensibly promulgated by Islamic jihadist entities served to split the three most prominent existing western electorates into at least six major categories:
Neo-conservatives supporting turning middle eastern deserts to glass, supporting Israel and toppling middle eastern regimes, massively increasing the defense budget, domestic surveillance and security, standing against environmental restrictions and supporting increased fossil fuel production, and promoting Christian nationalist, white supremacist values. Bitterly opposed to civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, trans rights, abortion rights, and the ideas behind DEI and “wokeness.”
Conservatives/libertarians supporting turning middle eastern deserts to glass, not supporting Israel, pulling back on foreign entanglements, and reducing the defense budget, domestic surveillance and security, and disturbingly agnostic regarding Christian nationalist, white supremacist values. Against environmental restrictions and supporting increased fossil fuel production as well as renewables. Tacitly supportive of civil rights and women’s rights, agnostic regarding gay rights and abortion rights, not supportive of trans rights or the ideas behind DEI and “wokeness.”
Neoliberal members of western “Democratic”, “Labor” and “Socialist” parties supporting turning middle eastern deserts to glass, supporting Israel and toppling middle eastern regimes, massively increasing the defense budget, domestic surveillance and security, promoting DEI, “woke” values and decrying Christian nationalist, white supremacist values. Championing environmental restrictions and reliance on renewable energy sources, supporting the reduction and eventual elimination of fossil fuel production. Generally supportive of civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, trans rights and abortion rights.
Socially liberal, politically centrist people staunchly opposed to foreign intervention while supportive of “Israel’s right to exist,” desiring some restrictions on the defense budget, suspicious of increased domestic surveillance and security. Mildly supportive of DEI and “woke” values and mildly critical of Christian nationalist views. Strongly opposed to white supremacist values. Tacitly supportive of environmental restrictions and increased reliance on renewable energy sources, but not the elimination of fossil fuel production. Strongly supportive of civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, trans rights and abortion rights.
Socially radical, politically left-leaning people staunchly opposed to foreign intervention while supportive of “Israel’s right to exist,” desiring sharp reduction of the defense budget, supporting reduction of domestic surveillance and security. Strongly supportive of DEI and “woke” values and extremely critical of Christian nationalist and white supremacist values. Highly supportive of environmental restrictions and increased reliance on renewable energy sources, as well as the eventual elimination of fossil fuel production. Strongly supportive of civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, trans rights and abortion rights.
Strongly left-leaning people staunchly opposed to foreign intervention, anti-fascist, anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist, supporting elimination and defunding of police, sharp reduction of defense budget, elimination of domestic surveillance and security. Strongly supportive of DEI and “woke” values and extremely critical of Christian nationalist and white supremacist values. Highly supportive of environmental restrictions and increased reliance on renewable energy sources, as well as the eventual elimination of fossil fuel production. Strongly supportive of civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, trans rights and abortion rights.
Despite this splitting of the American electorate and the increased rightward radicalization of the “conservative” segment of the population due to the efforts of the likes of Rupert Murdoch, the Sinclair family, the Brothers Koch and a number of very busy think tanks and nonprofit entities, the capital-friendly but socially liberal center seemed to hold fast throughout the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama years. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, annexing Crimea with barely a whimper from the Obama administration, the painstakingly planned liberal globalist agenda began to unravel. Almost under the radar, multiple nations around the globe fell simultaneously under the spell of right-wing “populist” leaders, as if on command.
When a quartet of highly disruptive spectacles hit the United States, Britain and the entire western world between 2016 and 2020, every one of the six previously dominant silos were fractured into smaller, more divisive units. These were the subversion and destruction of the Bernie Sanders democratic socialist movement by the DNC and Hillary Clinton, the meteoric ascendance of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, the onset of the Brexit debacle and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Consequently those on the left, in the center and on the right were moved to split themselves away from otherwise likeminded people and silos based solely on their professed beliefs surrounding immigration, economic and political globalization, trust in institutions and mainstream science, vaccines, masks, social quarantining and shutdowns, and questions of racial and sexual identity, not to mention their views on socialist populism. Some new alliances were made, but the net result was that the six silos were now doubled into 12 and perhaps even 16, with occasional crossovers. In the U.S. the tepid backlash to Trumpism gave the moribund Democratic establishment one more shot at power in 2020, which they dutifully squandered in time to surrender to the next two major spectacles: Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel from Gaza, which predicated the massive retaliatory ethnic cleansing being engaged in by Israel’s fascistic leadership today.
This series of events further balkanized worldwide opinion, particularly on the left, which began eating itself in earnest. Former “allies” morphed into stone-faced enemies over the question of Israel’s “right to exist” versus the inconvenient fact of its and its British/American overlord’s 70-year land grab and extermination program against the former Palestine territory’s Arab population. As if this wasn’t enough, the rising tide of anti-Zionist sentiment gave the green light to millions of previously hibernating full-on Nazis to emerge from their hidey holes and flood the zone with virulent antisemitic horseshit, chasing all the easily offendable liberals off of many “free speech”-friendly platforms and onto hermetically sealed sidetracks like Bluesky where they can influence each other into complete irrelevance.
Meanwhile, if the empire’s narrative-generating geniuses prior to the October 7 debacle seemed to be working overtime, they’ve really kicked things into overdrive since. In the beleaguered United States, disasters and socially disruptive killings, attempted and successful assassinations, fires, floods, mass shootings, industrial accidents and violent crowd disturbances are occurring at least weekly, sometimes right on top of each other. All this has been exacerbated by less than competent government response, unless it’s to flood cities with tattered-looking masked squads of unprofessional, ill-trained rent-a-soldiers going house to house hunting down dark-skinned and tattooed interlopers on the American dream.
Every one of my fellow countrymen, countrywomen and country-others are struggling daily with fractured relationships, families and living situations engendered by the deep divisions that have ripped apart what was already a fragile social structure, and inwardly cowering before the looming specter of true, balls-to-the-wall totalitarianism.
Can you still talk frankly about what you actually believe with your husband, your wife, your father, your mother, your sisters and brothers, your red-pilled and black-pilled former friends? Do you suffer from a permanent sense of foreboding? Have a growing urge to run, to escape? To where, exactly? If you’re rich, are you building an underground bunker and filling it with shit you’ll probably never get to use if things really go south? How many of you are buying guns and bullets? Ordering those dumb water-filtering straws? How many of you are not quite “legal” with all your “papers” up to snuff? Avoiding going to the supermarket, school or church or restaurants or bars, or even outside to take a fucking walk?
If you’re a goddamned Borg, trapped in a defensive mindset hoping to outlast things by presenting yourself as a willing cog in the dominating fascist machine, good luck with that. I’m not offering anything but the opportunity to lighten up and resist your own chickenshit tendencies, and realize that what’s happening has absolutely nothing to do with “freedom.”
Despite all this, I’m not your enemy. Like old Jesus might have actually said, I love you all.
I mean it.
But Here’s a nice song to relax you for a minute or two and make you forget about what I just said:
Fixed
The bit about pamphleteering morphing into the panopticon with increasing alacrity really lands. I watched my own family splinter over COVID/vaccines—people who used to agree on everything suddenly cant even sit at the same table. You're right that each new spectacle fragments us into smaller units, and the scary part is how automatic it feels now. Like we're all just algorithmically sorted into our designated silos without even realizng it.