“all the foundations of the earth are out of course.”
– Psalm 82:5b

“..those who travel in order to acquaint themselves with the different manners of men might spare themselves much pains by going to a carnival at Venice; for there they will see at once all which they can discover in the several courts of Europe. The same hypocrisy, the same fraud; in short, the same follies and vices dressed in different habits. In Spain, these are equipped with much gravity; and in Italy, with vast splendor. In France, a knave is dressed like a fop; and in the northern countries, like a sloven. But human nature is everywhere the same, everywhere the object of detestation and scorn.”
– Henry Fielding, Tom Jones

“Wind of heaven
Blow away dross and deceit
Refresh our battered souls
Brace us for what is to come.”
– Ray Simpson

Trump really does not give a shit. He is threatening with Putin to isolate Ukraine like Hitler and Stalin did to Poland in 1939. He may well go and sell out Taiwan next. All the geostrategic logic argues against it, but the only logic he obeys is whatever stokes his wealth and ego. Orwell’s vision of a world of three blocks in eternal conflict.

John Oliver and other slickly-edited liberal talking heads laugh at the absurdity of Fascism¹ 2.0 but it is not funny. Where is the will to fight? I heard the CEO of Proton question in January why it was that only Europe still felt the urge to play by the rules. What if the whole ‘rule-based-order’ is a mirage, like in Plato’s allegory of the cave? Another friend said that while Trump and his fellow international fascists give meaning to many (a majority, or at least a plurality) of people’s lives, the centre and centre-left just offer bullshit. Centre-left governments have not arrested the rise in inequality and the enshittification of public spaces, services and infrastructure. Rather the rich have just got richer. People want to tear it down or at least watch a simulcrum of it being torn down on their hand held devices.

Where are we heading with all of this? Towards a global cataclysm or a temporary carve up of the planet into US, China and Russia spheres, with their nukes and surveillance tech, burning fossil fuels and extracting from the earth, with military juntas scrapping it out in the zones where the dystopian superstates wage proxy wars or where they just don’t care?

This is the world Generation Alpha are about to inherit. The loss of innocence on a pre-teenager’s face in the pincer movement of geopolitics and adulthood. Who can look forward with optimism to becoming a woman in this shitshow?

When I read the Bible the Old Testament is all justice for the poor and the bringing low of the mighty. The New Testament is all the transience of this world, a Platonic philosophy reflecting on the life of Jesus Christ cut short in its prime. I feel like an pocket of air in a liberal bubble observing powerless the approaching apocalypse while the solitary candle lit each morning for my devotions suggests hope in the face of brute strength, the animalistic instincts of this destructive all-conquering species, hope that there will be a reckoning, but also the realisation that so many of the liberal tropes I took for granted until around 2016 came not for free but on the back of calamity, of millions of lives tortured and murdered, of environmental devastation, of the human will to survive, in spite of itself.

Whatever happens the days are getting longer and the birds know that spring is fast approaching.

1. Wikipedia: ‘Fascism … is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy’ ↩︎