Exactly five years ago, I cobbled together an essay out of the fragmented scraps of my mind
We find ourselves here once again…
I wasn't anticipating on writing a part two, but here we are. During the height of COVID, I looked around myself and had an unending fury about what was going on and needed to scream into the void. Now, in the shadow of genocide, impending war, and the passage of Trump’s wrecking ball of a bill, I am compelled once again to piece together some of my scribbled scraps.
The first “Notes From Inside a Dying Empire” was vaguely artsy, this is just going to be semi-coherent ranting. It’s uh, not going to be as doomy or grim as the first either. What can I say, the antidepressants are working.
I don't derive joy from MAGA being in the "finding out" phase
'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.
—Adrian Bott, @Cavalorn via Twitter
A common type of article/post I see these days that shows no sign of going away any time soon are Trump supporters who have been screwed over by his policies. You've seen them—the ones whose spouses have been kidnapped by ICE, whose businesses have collapsed, whose bills and debt are set to skyrocket.
I wouldn't say I experience no schadenfreude. There is a part of me that just says "fuck around and find out, they got what was coming to them." If Medicaid getting gutted is what it takes for these people to realize how reliant they've been on it, then that's what has to happen.
Unfortunately, my politics and beliefs are rooted in compassion, so whatever nasty joy I derive from MAGA "getting what's coming to them" is ultimately outweighed by the fact that unnecessary suffering affects me on a deep level. I believe that there are rights everyone should have, even if they're godawful people or just ignorant. No one should be thrown into homelessness from having their benefits cut, no one deserves to have their loved ones disappeared by the Gestapo, people's very ability to live shouldn't be at the whims of private equity robber barons.
Everyone is entitled to food, healthcare, and shelter, not just the ones I agree with.
People don't give up on their beliefs so easily
For as many examples you can find of Trump supporters who have fucked around and found out and are experiencing buyer's remorse because of it, there are plenty more where people have been directly harmed by policy and misinformation yet continue to believe. If there's one important lesson about the world that’s been seared deep into the crevices of my brainfolds since COVID, it's that people do not just give up their convictions because they've been shown the error of their ways.
The leopard ate my face and I am thanking it for doing so.
In stories, we are used to seeing people change their minds after much struggle and realization, but that is because characters in stories are meant to be exceptional. Change and growth are key to a fictional narrative. It's not that people never see the light or have a change of heart IRL, but again that is exceptional. If you're waiting around for people like Ben Shapiro or Mitch McConnell or your Q-pilled grandma to have a reckoning with the errors of their ways, you will be perpetually disappointed. Human nature means that we cling to beliefs, even if they don't make sense.
Parents whose unvaccinated kids have died of measles still say they'd make the same choice. During the height of COVID there were stories everywhere about how people would be dying of the disease and deny that's what it was to their last breaths. People whose spouses have been kidnapped by ICE, yet have no regrets about the way they voted. It's a bleak phenomenon. How do you convince people of the truth when no amount of evidence will ever be enough? When mis- and disinformation are so easy to spread?
All that said, the Trump admin engaging in worst cover-up of all time regarding Epstein seems to be the sort of ice bucket to the face these people need. So. We’ll see.
I check comment sections on conservative outlets because I'm a masochist
Whenever something happens these days that really feels like it crosses a line, I find myself going through the comments sections of articles on the National Review website. I think I mostly do this because my urge to self-flagellate will never fully go away, but I also do it because I really really want to be reassured that some conservatives do, in fact, think: "yeah, this is going too far," or express doubt, or have some other come to Jesus moment. Occasionally I'll come across a comment like that, but more often than not they double down on the most appalling aspects of whatever's going on.
Because people don’t give up on their beliefs so easily.
I did this masochistic delve a couple times on Breitbart, but there is no room for reflection there. It is the MAGA line top to bottom, an absolute swamp of despair that I can't subject myself to for long. National Review at least has a reputation for being a "reAsOnaBLe" conservative voice, so finding dissent that isn't obviously just a liberal or leftist troll is still possible.
But most of the time, it's an exercise in disappointment and futility. The cuts to Medicaid are Good Actually because there's so much fraud and waste. Good on ICE for finally doing something about illegal immigration. “bUt WoMeN’s SpOrTs.”
BRB, jumping into the LA River with cinderblock shoes.
The SS of the US
I mean, that's what ICE is, right? It has received gobs of bipartisan funding since its inception and was already an agency barely keeping tethered by its leash, but it's just full blown allowed to run rampant now. The current administration has given the green light to operate with impunity, especially in the wake of its nation-GDP-dwarfing new budget. There's already a problem with people impersonating ICE agents and committing acts of vigilante "justice," now there's so much room to expand personnel they'll likely all be hired.
The professionalization of the brownshirts, you love to see it.
A safety net made of barbed wire
Why, as Americans, are we so against the idea of taking care of each other? It's never made sense to me. You willingly sacrifice a little so society as a whole can benefit. Why wouldn't you want there to be a basic guarantee of wellbeing for everyone?
“bUt SoMe PeOpLe WiLl AbUsE tHe SyStEm.” So that makes it okay a million bureaucratic hoops need to be jumped through to qualify? So that means we shouldn't even bother? Collective punishment is a great idea and doesn't have a whole heap of adverse effects. I don't care if the system gets abused a little if it means on the whole wellbeing can be guaranteed for millions.
Reagan chopped off welfare's limbs in the 80's before Clinton hacked its head off with a machete in the 90's. It’s a cliche, but it really is so much easier to destroy than to build.
It’s not that there’s no social safety net, but the programs are chronically underfunded and stuck in this hyper puritan mindset that only those who prove they are "worthy" get to have relief.
The guardrails keeping people from becoming homeless are made of Styrofoam. And now with the passage of the BBB and plethora of DOGE cuts, America's pathological hatred of the poor has cranked up to levels of contempt heretofore only rivaled by French aristocrats living in Versailles circa 1780.
I'm no accelerationist... but do we need this to happen for things to get better?
If Harris had won, where would we be? We'd not be experiencing the devastation and upheaval of the current moment, so what would we be experiencing?
Stagnation, most likely. The slow rot that's calcified the Democratic party, rendering many of them little more than corporate shills wearing pride pins, would continue. Inequality wouldn't be addressed. There may be the occasional nod towards addressing climate change, but it would ultimately be toothless. The ongoing genocide would still be supported. None of the fundamental issues of our system would be addressed and the working class would continue its decline. Death by suffocation rather than a bullet to the skull.
But, as I said, unnecessary suffering affects me on a deep level. So many people are being strangled by the hands of the current regime, including those I love, and I just can't accept that all this suffering has to happen. There has to be a way towards a better future that doesn't involve condemning whole swaths of people to ruin. Just because I personally can probably get through all this relatively unscathed doesn't give me the authority to throw other people's lives into the meat grinder so my ideals can be realized.
So does this all need to be happening for a better future to be birthed in the ravaged hellscape of the old world? I don't buy it. I can't.
And yet, the Bubonic Plague is in large part responsible for bringing medieval feudalism to its knees. Does this mean progress is only possible when the reset button is hit? Only possible in the aftermath of devastation? Only possible after a period of misery? A fundamental part of my being rejects that notion. There simply must be a way forward that doesn't involve mass harm.
But I worry that conviction is me being squeamish and ahistorical. I don't want it to be true, but I struggle to think of examples where huge positive change didn't come about as a result of extremely hard times.
Hard times can always lead to worse times, however. There's no rule that says the aftermath of tragedy is guaranteed positive movement. World War II was directly birthed from the first one.
Is progress always forged in a paroxysm of torment? I don't know. I hope not. The feudal system was already growing weaker and would have ended eventually, the plague simply shattered it early. History is an estuary of trends colliding with each other, which sometimes births a whirlpool or is sometimes disrupted by a flash flood.
Palestine is never far from my mind
How can it not be? Gaza has been razed to the ground in a tsunami of bombs. Israel was actively starving the population by preventing aid from getting in, and now that aid is allowed in, IOF soldiers open fire on people trying to acquire said aid. The horrors go on, from the torturing of prisoners, to the mass graves, to the unabashed execution of aid workers and journalists, to the bombs bombs bombs, so many bombs that the very rubble itself is saturated with the wails of the dying.
We've been witnessing horror after horror come out of Gaza and it blows my mind how some people still justify it. This is a major point of disconnection between the Democratic leadership and their base. Schumer says his mission is to keep the left pro-Israel. I'm sorry buddy, but that is just not going to happen. The Democratic base—and not just far left weirdos like myself, but across the whole coalition—is converging in opinion on this one.
A poll was taken asking what kept former Biden voters from turning out in the most recent election and the Biden administration's handling of (and Harris' refusal to reject) the ongoing genocide was one of the top deterrents. Many Arab Americans couldn't bring themselves to vote for Harris, and why not? Obviously, Trump's policies were absolutely going to be worse, but something I think Democratic leadership doesn't get is that it's not enough to simply vote against something, people want to vote for something. A vote for Harris may have been a vote against Trump, but it is still a vote for ongoing genocide and a large number of people couldn't reconcile that with themselves. They were too aware that signing that ballot implicitly meant cosigning the continuation of genocidal policy, in many cases against their own people.
What creates voter apathy? Shit like this. The feeling that no matter who you vote for, one of the greatest atrocities of the modern era will continue to be carried out.
For the record, I did vote Harris. I personally can compartmentalize and justify my decision, but I really can't blame people who couldn't.
If you'll allow me to wallow in self-indulgence for a second...
Create? At a time like this? I have to. It’s either that or play the new season of Diablo IV until my eyes are so punished I need to go up a couple of prescription levels on my glasses. So. Yeah.
“Musk rigged the election” is just Blue MAGA cope
Word has been going around that Kamala Harris actually won the election and that Musk rigged the voting machines for Trump in some way. While that is a very real possibility I wouldn’t put past these chucklefucks, there hasn't been definitive evidence of such tampering. I've seen sensationalist headlines all over social media (including a "bombshell" report), but doing even a modicum of digging shows the claims made are tenuous at best.
I guess the reason I'm bringing this up at all is to say: stop it with the conspiratorial nonsense. Our politics are already beholden to the deranged whims of conspiracy theorists, let’s not play their game, yeah?
You know, reading about unhinged conspiracy theories used to be a lot of fun for me. But now conspiracy theories are mainstream and it’s not fun anymore.
God, I sound like a hipster: “I was into conspiracy theories before it was cool 🤓”
Biden could have been great
But he wasn't. While the infrastructure bill was a much needed injection of spending, it was neutered thanks to Manchin and co. No meaningful action was taken on climate change. Despite his "pro labor" reputation, he broke a major railroad strike as it was gaining momentum. And of course, the genocide. Can't forget about that.
I don't want to be overly negative—there were good things done under his administration, such as the expansion of climate research funding (...while simultaneously opening wide drilling in Alaska), solid judiciary appointments, and some attempts to limit the big tech monopolies. But many of the successes were undone by Trump with the snap of a finger and none of it was enough to cover up the rot at the center of it all: "Genocide Joe" will be his ultimate legacy, a failure of a president who had an extremely important moment to rise to the occasion for, only to topple into a sinkhole made of nails.
Zohran Mamdani is worse than fascism, apparently
The amount of energy that has gone into smearing Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic primary winner for the New York City mayoral election, from his own party just makes me sick.
It turns out that talking about policies aimed at improving people's lives... resonates? That not bending over backwards to please a genocidal nation spiked voter turnout amongst an increasingly alieneted youth? You can get people excited for a better future? Status quo doesn't have to be unto a god? But nah, we need to have leadership go on CNN and waffle about endorsing him and not so subtly imply that he's antisemitic while we're at it. So many who rightly criticized Cuomo when he was in office suddenly find that what was distasteful about him doesn't actually matter that much. It just pisses me off, and that's the bottom line.
“vOtE bLuE nO mAtTeR wHo” uh huh sure yeah, interesting how that seems to only apply to the rightward direction of the political spectrum.
The infamous Rupert Murdoch rag, the New York Post, is set on finding as much dirt on the guy as they can and it's just coming across as so desperate when all they're able to produce is "he might be a nepo baby" or "he messed up the 'race' part of his college application"—and any of this is more disqualifying than the litany of Cuomo's misdeeds... how? What's especially heinous is that the New York Times is getting in on it too, having initially acquired the “college race scandal” material from an avowed white nationalist hacker.
I'm going to make an extremely pessimistic prediction though: it doesn't matter if Mamdani wins the mayoral election because ICE is going to get him somehow anyway.
Can the damage be undone?
Supposing Democrats get back in power, what will they do to rebuild from the wreckage of the MAGA wrecking ball? If the party continues as it is, then I'm afraid the answer is "not much." Recovery could take generations given the calcified leadership of the Democratic party, or may not even be possible given how extreme corporate capture is.
It really is so much easier to destroy than to build.
Sweeping changes on or exceeding the level of the New Deal would need to be introduced, something the Democratic party as it stands is incapable of doing. The damage may not be able to be entirely undone, but it can be mitigated and the overall amount of human suffering can be lessened significantly... if something bold is done. Whether that comes from within or without the Democratic party is a question I can't answer. Can the party be fundamentally rebuilt? Will a strong third party finally rear its head? Or maybe something else? The future is unwritten and I hope that means He Who Holds the Pen decides enough is enough.
...with Suffering and Misery for All
In moments like these, there's one phrase that bounces around my mind, the recurring motif line from Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five:
So it goes.