My head is still spinning. A bloodless coup. A revolution. Just took place in real time. In full view. I saw it coming. Like a tsunami. Barrelling towards me. I’m thinking something will get out in front. Something will stop the impact. All the time I’m thinking. No. Nothing can stop it.
Here I am. Trying to pull my thoughts together but knowing I don’t have much that is useful to offer.
I remember a conversation (probably many) I had with my sister, decades ago, about the impact the internet would have on what we would believe to be true. Everyone would have their own stream of ‘information’ tailored to their own interests, we said. Truth would fragment like grains of sand. Shattered. Off kilter. Our minds would be vulnerable to whatever filled the space.
We had no idea.
If I believed in deliberate plans, I would say that way back then Trump and Musk and the boys were the ones who put it together with the express intention of taking over western civilization. That’s not how I tend to explain the world. I see it more as opportunistic. Inventions give way to those who can, with no compunctions, to do what they will, for their own advantage. But it doesn’t matter how. It matters that the battle for the minds has been fought and it has been won by the ‘non mainstream media’.
It was brilliant, in a gross sort of way. Vilify ‘mainstream’ media. Vilify universities and the educated. Glorify ‘alternative’ everything. Turn the zillion dollar internet media movement into the victims, the underdogs. Convince the ‘alternatives’ that they are the ones being oppressed. Convince the ‘alternatives’ that they are the only ones who are privy to the secret, the real, the hidden information. The truth. My head is spinning. I don’t blame you if you think I am spiralling.
Here I am. My trained analytical mind is not useful. “You have been brainwashed by the western education system” one relative told me. “Why can’t you just accept what you read? Why do you always have to analyze it? Question the authors? Question their allegiances?” Others have said that I’ve drank the mainstream cool aid. I’m naïve.
And I’ve said the same about ‘them’.
Here we are. There are no bridges. No pathways. No on ramps. No segues to bring us together.
But I am so deeply disappointed. I wanted a revolution. I loved singing with the Beetles. Revolution. Evolution. Solutions. Contributions. Constitutions. Institutions. It was all there. I wanted to change the world. I have always known that this western empire would be overturned. The planet cannot sustain it.
But the American thing that happened last week wasn’t it. I wanted the revolution to overturn capitalism. That’s the thing that has made such a mess out of it all. Greed. Individualism. Narcissism.
Here it is. A system run by billion- soon to be trillionaires. With their own newsfeed. To convince the masses that they have drained the swamp. They have beaten down the elite. Of course, if the masses are not impressed, they can always revert to being the victim and point the finger back to the past or to a conspiracy against them.
I hope someone besides the billionaires get what they thought they wanted. I’m not optimistic. I think we may be looking at a giant, painful, one-destructive-decision-at-a-time example of “Be careful what you ask for.”
I have no hopeful wrap-up here. I lost. I need time to lick my wounds. Give me a minute. I will circle around. I will stage my own personal come-back. Until then I’m going to keep watching how-to videos of knitting stitches, salsa dance steps and making omelettes.