Not much left, friends [View all]

The news ain’t the news.
Companies giving up on DEI? White men will run the table in C-suites, upper management, academia — and it will happen fast.
Courts are playing games to undo an election of a Democratic judge in North Carolina.
It ain’t just trump. It’s Germany, Britain, Canada, Austria, the Netherlands.

It’s uncontrolled pollution, it’s AI bots instead of customer service, it’s skyrocketing rentals instead of homeownership.
It’s robbery of Social Security, fast or slow; it’s possibly devaluation of the dollar via US default on debt or US opting for crypto.
It’s lawsuits by state governments against the federal government, which will be another way to pay off GOP allies and nourish the kakistocracy.
It’s racism, xenophobia, forced religion, new barriers to travel, medical bankruptcies and fake or nonexistent medical care.
Shortages, extreme inflation, and staged chaos are probably coming.

It’s protection OF police, high costs to get body cam footage, wide zones to prevent videotaping police abuse of citizens. Police brutality without recourse. Domestic abuse? A family problem, be nicer to your man. Can’t feed your kids? Maybe go beg at the church.
It’s the truth going up in smoke, facts down the memory hole. Information only in the hands of the few.
It’s Eileen Cannon being able to stop Jack Smith from publishing a report, Eileen who will surely become a Supreme Court justice in the next trump term.
It’s going to be laws rewritten to screw the “blue states”, the big cities, the professionals, the liberals, the single moms. It’s going to be like Hurricane Katrina, “heckuva job Brownie” letting people drown in attics while the federal government pretends to be incapable of solving a logistics problem. Or maybe they won’t even pretend; maybe they’ll just say ‘let California burn’.

People are day-dreaming to imagine that it won’t be bad. When Germany went Nazi, there were countries and populations willing to resist. Right wing is everywhere, and media is more or less dead.

Davos is coming up. The 0.1% and its hired hands will be setting agendas, carving up the spoils of war. Because they’ve won. Not anything so small as “the GOP” or even “trump” — and sure as hell not trump’s base — but a global collection of fascists/authoritarians/misogynists who have nothing but disdain for democracy and disdain for the masses. When they meet in Davos, or wherever else, there won’t be real media listening in and reporting. The next phase of plans will get outlined in those places, out of sight of the clown car in Washington.

Ideals of democracy, equality, justice? I think the next generation is going to have to fight very hard to claw back basic rights.
Reality is going to suck.
Sticking your head in the sand is not helpful, and neither is stuffing our heads with details, because our compatriots don’t give a damn about facts, they have no power anymore anyway (whether they know it or not), and they are dumb enough to be distracted by the flame bait, clickbait, and kabuki theatre that the right wing is good at.

I guess it’s time to find a few friends, become more resilient, downsize, diversify, focus on small things that bring joy, and don’t count on anything.