Dispatches from the Abyss: Divided We Fall

'Things fall apart... the center cannot hold' echoes through my mind regularly. Things are falling apart, the extremes pushing and pulling in polar opposites in an epic game of tug of war, but not with the powers that be, but with family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, randos on the internet. Divided we fall, and we fell hard. Now what? More Divisiveness? 

Divisiveness is trending. Every week I watch the blame game trends unfold and patterns emerge. Who is the enemy this week? Gen X ? Taylor Swift again? Podcasters? Another celeb? Taylor again? Far left? Centrists? Dems? Liberals, and so on and so forth.

How about the billionaires? The christofascists? MAGA? Pedos? Tech bros? AI slop? RUSSIAN Propaganda? Bot farms and trolls?

We ALL are falling for it left, right, and center. If anyone is to blame it’s every damned person in America. Okay, now let’s move on from that. We've been having the same arguments for the past decade. 

I suck

You suck

We suck

They suck

Everyone sucks 

We good now?

If we keep blaming each other and fighting with each other -- then they win because we are too busy fighting each other to fight them. Why are we fighting like it’s still 2016 and we don't know how things are going to turn out? It's here. No one is winning here - except the oligarchy, billionaires, christofascists, MAGA, Pedos, and Tech bros.

Real Progress is slow. Systems have to be built to support the progress. We had unsustainable progress with no support systems so everything is collapsing. That is a systemic change and it is going to take generations to build a sustainable foundation. My values haven’t changed in what I believe in and stand for. It’s going to take generations beyond our lifetimes to rebuild and it’s going to be slow at times.

We have to get past the “I’m not voting for anyone other than some perfect unicorn candidate” because such statements are based in privilege and emotionality and are sadly lacking in education specifically history, philosophy, ethics, civics, and the humanities. We won’t get sustainable progress over night. In order to do that, we have to stop fighting with each other and bots and troll farms.