Two months later we’ve hit the streets, more than once, even in the persistent cold. Not only are our once republican institutions functionally inert, owing to the Republicans who occupy them, we are now in an economic/tariff war with the entire world, including neighbors, allies, and penguins. If it were not so profoundly sad, the absurdity would be entertaining as a Netflix farce. Alas, though, innocent people, thousands, even millions will suffer, some even unto death. This Devolution will be televised on Fox Lies—and cheered on.
For an old man who has seen sixty-plus years and read many, many volumes of history, these days seem historic—beyond the simple, genuine historicity of the everyday—quite possibly historically bad, red-letter days, one of those moments when large-scale systems verge on collapse, tipping the secular apocalyptic. How we confront, resist, finesse, escape this predicament, I do not know. Holding a sign, I suspect, will not be enough.
I remind myself that the Fall of the Roman Republic did not lead immediately to the Fall of Rome, but then, Donald Trump is no Julius Caesar. And if stupidity is infinite, as Einstein quipped, the consequences of it in key positions of complex systems, like, say, a presidency of the United States, could dwarf all the geopolitical disasters of the past. In which case, I will have lived too long.
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