Every morning brings new outrages and novel depths of depravity and corruption. We forget last week’s dire news because we have trouble keeping anything straight anymore – the end-of-days technology of AI and Data Centers, and oh Jesus so loves our lethality, and yes, Trump is Jesus, more people disappeared by ICE, after everything we know, powerful men are still resigning in the face of sexual assault accusations, Iran is this month’s arch-enemy, Cuba next month’s, Europe is weak, Orban loses even after Trump’s intercession, Kamala Harris wants to run for President, really?, here comes a new resegregation of the armed forces, new addictive drugs cooked up in labs that are more dangerous than any previous iteration, 24 hour celebrity news, lifestyle news, billionaire news, pop-star news, hyper consumption, speed of distribution, speed of effect, speed of collapse.
I have not watched talking-head pundits in many years. Their calm description of utter madness and wickedness in the perfectly rational language of teevee newspeak makes me wonder if I alone am the only one who sees that they are offering nothing but delusional, deranged horseshit.
We were not meant to live under constant def-con 9 stimulation, under surveillance, under threat, equal parts bewildered and nauseated and overwhelmed by volleys of electronica. Dislocation should be the defining word of this era, more than cult, cruelty or decline because it encompasses all of those words and more. Information and images and voices no longer flow to us as we choose. In their disjointed layers of importance, they strike us with the force of 24 hour a day flash floods roaring with poisonous sludge.
I want to live in a deep canyon in New Mexico. I want to live along the Allagash in Maine, I want to wreck the internet, I want to retreat, I want to engage, I want to run, I want to fight, I want it all to go away, I want to stay sane.
The Hopis had it right: Koyaanisqatsi. We are out of balance. If we are lucky, the shock of what is coming will cause us to reconsider our lives. We have time.
