Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song touches on this. The world doesn’t end all at once like in the blockbuster disaster movies, it end for people, and cities, and countries little by little. Vox, I feel was pointing out that for the privileged, it won’t be noticed.
The ending of the world is, in fact, a recurring event, and that “the prophet sings not of the end of the world, but of what has been done and what will be done and what is being done to some but not others, that the world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and that the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news” - Paul Lynch.
PS. Prophet Song won the 2023 Booker Award. Highly recommended, IMO.
Oh yeah, I’ve had about 20 replies from people telling me the guards have to hide their faces to protect them and their families from the cartels. And I’m just like….the state created this war on drugs that created the cartels, and your excuses for the guards sounds like people excusing Nazi soldiers because they were “just following orders.” It’s depressing how many people just accept the official propaganda.
Yeah, it really is… All I see in these shots are just pointless cruelty masquerading as toughness. It doesn’t help that I just got done reading that history of concentration camps, either. People just keep justifying this shit, for the dumbest of reasons, and no one comes out better on the other side…
Canadian science fiction writer, tech journalist, and friend of Gizmodo Cory Doctorow had a great suggestion last month that would put incredible pressure on the U.S. “What if Canada stopped upholding U.S. tech companies’ intellectual property?” He asked in a paper for the Canada Centre for Policy Alternatives.
American tech companies charge a lot of rent. Most app stores run by Amazon, Apple, or Google skim 30% off every transaction. John Deere farming equipment is hard to repair without paying the company for expensive software unlocks. Car companies, and especially Tesla, lock basic features behind electronic paywalls.
Doctorow’s suggestion is that Canada not impose tariffs on U.S. goods but go back through its trade negotiations with America and “tear up these laws” that it agreed to regarding big tech’s IP.
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Not this time. If you add up everyone who is not-male, not-white, not the ‘right’ kind of Christian, disabled, plus LGBTQIA+ (the smallest group, which is why it’s being targeted early), that’s actually the bulk of the population.
Indiana is going to be much harder hit by the loss of disability protections and support than Chicago, for example. At some point, even MAGA voters are going to notice.
I need to read some of Gessen’s books and that might be a great one to start with. They’re such a brave soul and I’m glad we have their voice in this madness.
This one I just read is very good - One Long Night by Andrea Pitzer, who is a journalist, but does the topic justice, I think (histories by journalists can sometimes be hit or miss). It’s a tome (just over 400 pages), but it is a good, engaging read, and I like how she connects the entire concept of concentration camps across time…
The “Blame Canada” song from South Park was always a satire of America, but at least a comforting one, as it showed American self-awareness. Its last two lines: “We must blame them and cause a fuss/Before somebody thinks of blaming us!” This is now happening, as reality, and it has to be faced.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put an end to Black History Month and other celebrations of identity. But St. Patrick’s Day got a pass, and some are asking why.
