The Collapse Of Hope
A Bloggage
By
Alexander Gordon Jahans
The Evil demon has been removed from power and normalcy has returned. With it the terror of Neoliberalism holds court once again and while it is much better than the monsters who held office before there is a disquieting sense of unease to the fallen ruling powers being reinstated.
The Pandemic has not on the whole affected me much, my social life was destroyed five years ago so a life inside is no big change or sacrifice. What is disquieting is seeing the effect it has taken on the world. We are living through a global war, a siege against a pandemic. World War Coronavirus. Hundreds of thousands are dead, the economy is in shambles and generations will be scarred by the time this is done.
What is particularly dreadful is noticing how the pandemic has become a kind of background factor. Friends complain about being tired and irritable that they aren’t as productive as they would like. I almost have to remind them that we do not live in normal times. In the days of prior pandemics there wasn’t the air travel and speed and ease of access across borders that we have today.
There’s also a bitter fucking irony that the parties of closed borders have now become the parties of pandemic denial. Their desperate need to showcase their callous stupidity is so great that they would not even wear masks when invading the Capitol. Better to show the libs than have even the slightest element of self preservation.
I am reminded ofwhen a far right stalker claimed I doxxed myself by using my real name online yet the far right committed coups while using their real names and smiling for the cameras.
What especially troubles me though isn’t the fascists or the pandemic - I trust the self preservation instincts of the powerful and the wealthy to resolve those problems in the end - it’s the delusional insistence of the super rich and the powerful that this neoliberal system of late capitalist politics and economic instability is viable going forward because they have resources enough that they could easily be blind to the impact of this devastation until its too late.
The reason I think it is so hard for die hard capitalists to see the instability in their beloved system as it stands is that we have never lived through a death of a global political and economic system like this.
The fascists are not a terrifying foe nor noble patriots fighting for liberty. They are vultures who can see the capitalist system is dying and seek to replace it.
The problem capitalists have is that they have been under attack for so long that it is legitimately hard for them to consider that the inherent flaws of their system mean it is well overdue for a radical overhaul if not an outright replacement with another system.
I personally think that market based economics can have value going forward but definitely not like it is now. I would argue that we need to break up monopolies and have strong regulation, a much higher minimum wage that is a living wage, rent controls, higher taxes on the super rich (if you think I mean you, you’re not rich enough so relax) and increased protection to unions. (Except for the police unions. At least in America the police union has shown itself to be toxic and needs to be broken up.)
Maybe with the advent of the world wide web and global pandemics it’s time we consider having some sort of global government to regulate companies who exist across multiple parts of the world so the global government can impose taxes regardless of where people flee. Congratulations on hiding your excess wealth and the earnings of your company in a tax haven, the Global Economic Authority will be taxing that heavily with an extra high tax for being a slippery bastard.
Unfortunately the chances of this happening are slim. Instead it seems Capitalism is beginning its transition to Neo-Feudalism and starting to attempt legalising slavery again. In the age of drones and nuclear weapons when police will kill a black kid for stealing a chocolate bar and let fascists into the Capitol what hope does the common person have to achieve change.
There’s a bitter irony that the conservatives oppose identity politics when to the ultra powerful and ultra rich Identity Politics are a release valve for public anger and a way to pretend like progress is being made. Sure black people are being mown down by cops but you got a black man as president. Sure slavery is being legalised once again but the Biden administration is championing trans rights.
I am not undermining the importance of legislation to protect the oppressed nor am I undermining the importance of representation but it is very cheap to do politically when in practise income inequality is rising and practical demonstrations of oppression aren’t being seriously addressed. It’s like addressing that black people can’t sit in the best seats on the titanic as it is sinking. I’m glad the racism is being tackled but I want the dying to stop.
I almost envy people whose biggest concerns are the pandemic and Trump. I do not say that from a position of ignorance either. White Supremacists are obsessed with me. There’s something pathetic about their need to get a reaction from me after losing the presidency, the senate and congress. Sure they handed the democrats complete power through their incompetence but at least they can try and bully an autistic man. They are scum but they are fundamentally irrelevant to the future of the country and the world. We need to address the inherent instability of an economic system that is currently not fit for purpose.
Anyway in other news I am working my way through series 6 of Voyager after watching all of TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9 and ENT. If you had told me five years ago that I’d miss Enterprise when I was watching Voyager I’d have laughed in your face but that show was a marvel compared to Voyager’s reset button method of storytelling. Voyager also missed that the reason Seven was popular was that she added an arc and consequences to the ship of the reset button.
I know this was a blog about politics but I have a serious suggestion for anybody with the power to create and write for Star Trek: Remake Voyager but do it right. The existence of the Equinox already retconned the existence of another ship so you could literally have it tie into care take if you wanted. Or maybe Discovery or Picard could do something similar. Enterprise showed with series three that you can tell a serious lone ship in dangerous territory story without backups and limited supplies and they still managed to involve and episode where the crew turn into monkeys and an episode where they find a wild west planet.
I will have to write my full thoughts on Voyager later but if any show is crying out for a remake it’s Voyager. For extra drama you could even have a twist of Battlestar Gallactica by having an old Enterprise era NX model ship be the one pulled out. Actually I’d be all for three series of the crew of Enterprise pulled into the delta quadrant and possibly hundreds of years into the future as they’re on board the NX-01 for a reunion cruise before its mothballed for good. Or hell we never saw the last voyage of the Enterprise B so you could use that. Make the stakes even higher by having the crew stranded in the delta quadrant without the luxury of replicators or holodecks.
