Looking Back at the Year That Was, and Looking Forward to Hell

So, it wasn’t the greatest year for me, personally, though it certainly wasn’t the worst.

It was the second year where the heavy hand of climate change was obvious for all to see, with the endless West coast fires leaving cities wreathed in smoke for weeks at a time. Climate change is now reshaping the environment.

Trump was a nasty piece of work domestically. In foreign affairs, his legacy remains to be seen: If the Syrian and Afghan withdrawals actually occur, if the North Korean peace winds up being worked out, and if he avoids war elsewhere, notably with Iran, he will go down as a great peacemaker–whether those who hate him or not like it.

The economy is about due for another crisis and recession, but I don’t follow economic matters as closely as I did back in 2007/8, so I can’t call it exactly. Still, be wary, and store away fat in the larder when (or if), you can.

Meanwhile, in Europe, the so-called populist right continues to rise, Macron (a heartless, neoliberal technocrat), is running scared of his own protests, and in Britain, despite the Tories being demonstrably incompetent monsters, the Labour and the Conservative parties are running even in polls (which means Labour is almost certainly slightly ahead.) A recent study showed that 75 percent of all news articles about Labour leader Corbyn lie about him, so that explains rather a lot. Much of the rest is explained by the fact that Remain spends most of its time attacking Corbyn and by the fact that a lot of Brits are heartless scum. (There is a reason why neoliberalism started in Britain with Margaret Thatcher.)

Nonetheless, the simple fact is that there obviously has not yet been enough suffering among the comfortable classes, because they still seem to think the status quo is acceptable. They need more people they actually care about to suffer and die as they watch, I guess. That’s unfortunate and not a prescription; it’s just an observation.

The US 2018 mid-term elections mean much less than people make them out to. Nancy Pelosi, hamstrung by an ideology which insists on PayGo and attempts at comity, will do nothing significant. Even if Democrats lurch back into power in 2020 in the face of Trump’s unpopularity (as opposed to their own popularity), it will mean nothing if they continue to run “slightly less nasty policies than the Republicans.”

This is not to say there is no possibility of hope. Despite Democrats deciding to be the war scum party, objecting to Trump actually trying to end wars, it is true that Medicare For All is becoming party orthodoxy. Perhaps we can hope that Americans will be slightly kinder to each other even as they kill foreigners in large numbers.

And perhaps someone like Sanders will win the Presidency.

Still, the Democratic party remains firmly neoliberal and hates people like Sanders.

Despite all the squealing, 2018 wasn’t the worst year ever or anything. There wasn’t a World War, we weren’t in a worldwide depression, and the worst of climate change and environmental collapse has yet to happen. Certainly, for some people, it was the worst year ever, but that’s true of every year.

No matter who wins what, politically, the trend is decidedly to the worse. The Paris accords on the environment will not be met, and if even they were met, they would be insufficient. It is already too late to stop the worst of climate change. Meanwhile, the old political order is staggering, and what will replace it is by no means guaranteed to be better.

Even if it is better, it will come to the scene too late to stop us from hitting a wall. We are, for example, just going to lose a few hundred million in India. Unstoppable. The SouthWest of America is going to run out of water. Unstoppable. And so on.

This is now triage time; if you are wise, you will put less of your effort into “saving the world” (now impossible, by any reasonable definition) and more into choosing who is going to survive. The survivors will determine what the post-catastrophe world is like, so who survives matter.

Grim? Yeah. But this is what is, and denial will just get more people killed.

Meanwhile, there is still beauty in the world, real maple syrup is still sweet, and love still warms. There is plenty of good in the world to celebrate, enjoy, and live in. I suggest doing so; your misery serves only your enemies, not you.

Be well in this New Year to come. Survive your enemies, spit on their mass graves, and write the histories.

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