In the last month, it almost seems as if the kid in charge of the ant farm changed the channel on the television he had playing in the background from SciFi to Comedy Central. Almost everything that a large swath (but still a minority) of the population knew has been proved true (proven well enough). The Supreme Court ruled in multiple cases in ways that once seemed impossible. The absurd fantasy of Ukraine has collapsed into sad and pathetic tales of liars that lie and the fools that believe the lies. Several European countries are facing real pushback and an amazing fact comes to the fore – people do not like being without basic necessities such as electricity because of cavalier foreign policy. Biden has proven more incompetent than could have been written in a 70s disaster movie with Leslie Nielsen playing the part of Joe. Less funny is the mounting evidence of the absolute trash that ‘science and experts’ became touting injections that work less well than sugar-water and are definitely more dangerous; this is not funny but it is ironic. Boris Johnson resigned last evening, if Benny Hill were still with us it would have been appropriate to ask him to produce a retrospective documentary on BoJo’s follies. And finally, but certainly not least, some ol’ boy decided enough with uglification and neo-pagan death cults and blew up the Georgia Guidestones. It would appear that our world could be teetering on the verge of a reset to the reset, a return to nominally acceptable absurdity; that maybe people have had enough of the over-the-top warp speed nonsense that has been our lot since the world collectively entered a fever-dream of ludicrous in early 2020 ----perhaps.
I resolved yesterday to never utter or type a certain term related to a form of state capture that I believe methodology deriving from was used in 2020. When I could not help but notice a surge in people coming here looking for the term and then quickly determined that some thought that Johnson’s cabinet resigning and forcing him to resign surely must be a sign that the CIA was at it again I had to walk away. A conversation with the squirrels and my dogs in the backyard makes more sense, their years-long war of stalemate makes more geopolitical sense than human idiots that latch onto terms they do not understand but repeat with certitude to make, or believe they make, a point.
I will not even pay attention to the low-boil events that I myself said in 2020 would happen in the summer of 2022. It was utterly predictable back then that the passions, emotions, and desires of various militant groups that were used to seize power could not be pacified for long, that change simply could not be accomplished fast enough and that this year we would see that come home to roost. It was even easy to predict that a Floyd 2.0-type event would be required in order to ensure that the angsts were tied back into the narrative of racism. All of that is happening, sort of, just at a low-covered boil at present. It is also not yet what one would expect, and may not be. It is not happening for the reasons and with the passion that I anticipated as being one of the two possible outcomes for this year. It is more ironic than concerning at this point. It has meaning, but not the scary meaning that many attach to it; not yet, maybe not ever (but then again, it only would take a change of the channel to alter that).
I read yesterday that current polling shows that recent Supreme Court decisions seem to have a net-zero change in potential voters in the midterms. Instead of one side garnering massive support it would appear at this early stage that people merely solidified on sides in equal percentages. That too is ironic, funny in a detached sort of way. All of that can and could change – but what if it does not….? If polls do not shift will the cover be removed from the boiling pot above? It is hard to imagine that would move the needle in the desired political direction of progressive change.
We could think because the evidence is piling up, that most people in the West are ready to return to the old normal of moderately incompetent politicians, predictable stupid, and less bellicose absurdity. We may or may not be wrong in thinking that. The next several months will give us some clues.
From a historical perspective, such a change would make the most sense. Even normal humans have a limit as to just how far they can be pushed before they push back. Owning nothing, eating bugs, and being happy were always a bridge too far as a short-term goal. A few wins now, no more major political moves toward a brave new world, and perhaps even political victories in 2022 and 2024 might be in order. It might be just the thing to calm down anxiety and move Joe Sixpack back into his comfortable sleep. After all, the system works, right?
Never mind that there is no possible way of reversing the transfer of wealth that has occurred. We all have become poorer, we literally own less. And the most egregious government overreach may have stopped, but the precedent is there. The government did not stop because it admitted that actions were illegal and wrong, they stopped because most of us were tired of it. There is a lot of future danger in that.
People will starve in all of this, and some will ‘eat the rich.’ We see that in Sri Lanka at present, but in the west, we still have a lot of capital in the system and despite how weak and decadent we have become, there still exist elements in the population that could and would channel Ghallager with a mallet if pushed too far. There are radical extremists that want to act, to accelerate but in the last month, their appetites seem satiated with the covered boiling pot.
Time will tell, we will know by January of 2023 but it is beginning to look like consolidation might move forward using the tried and true frogs boiling in a pot method now and less of the in-your-face warp-speed change variety. We all know that all the big, and bad, changes are done by the Republicans. Maybe it was foolish to think the Democrats could pull it off. If they can grab full majorities and pack the court and change everything, well, they will have risen above their mediocrity in that feat. On the other hand, if the reset of the reset to get the reset going again requires the Republicans to take power and pave superhighways for the Democrats, well, that will be exactly what has always been.
