Thoughts On The Situation - Feb. 2025
Introduction
Things are fucking with me.
I'm rarely at a loss for words. Today's an exception. I'm struggling to find the language to describe...
...I'm not even sure how to describe what I'm trying to describe. I'll just call it The Situation.
Falling Back On What I Know
I do a lot of programming. Projects of all size. Smaller ones, you can keep everything in your head at the same time. Larger ones don't work that way. You have to divide things up. Thinking about the details of one section at a time.
I'm going with bullet points here in a similar way. These are all in my head. All part of the same system. Too big to load into my head all at once.
The Brain Dump
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Is this the post that ends me up in a camp or disappeared?
I'm straight, white, and a dude. I'll be one of the last ones they come for. But, my thoughts will be a crime. I can see a clear path where they end up at my door. One that's strewn with bodies of those less fortunate.
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The analogy of fascism being like cancer is apt.
We attacked it aggressively, putting it into remission in world war 2.
It wasn't eradicated though. Things seemed mostly tamped down until our last checkup when we just found out we had stage 4 in a new area with no known treatment.
- Yeah, I'm being completely U.S. centric here. It's where I am and what I know and what I'm seeing.
- I mean, I guess the treatment last time was war. Given the size of the U.S. military, I don't see that working well for anyone.
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As much as I've heard the term fascism, I'd never looked it up. From The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition:
A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
- We don't have a dictator. They're fucking going for it though.
- I grew up being taught that america was a melting pot and that's what made it great. That we were the good guys because of the progress we'd made. I mean, just look at the Civil Rights movement.
- I had a course with James Hood while I was attending The University Of Alabama. He was one of first two black students to enroll at the university. Made famous by the governor doing a symbolic Stand In The Schoolhouse Door to keep his promise of "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever"
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The schoolhouse door stand was 1963. I graduated high school in 1993. Looking back at a thirty year period when I was 18 felt no different than looking back at the U.S. civil war of the 1860s. There was no appreciable difference between thirty years and one-hundred and thirty.
All that shit felt like History (with a capital "H"). Like, we'd been through it and fixed it.
I realize now how short a time ago that really was. The difference of a generation. Two at most.
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I used to think we were closer to Brave New World than 1984. Where an onslaught of entertainment kept folks from thinking too much. Not an outright fear of the government.
That ratio just flipped. If scrubbing websites of medical and climate change information isn't the modern day equivalent of throwing stuff down the memory hole, I don't know what is.
There's a bunch more swirling around my head, but putting all that down released the pressure valve.
Long Term Optimism
I don't see any way the next few years don't get really bad for lots of folks. That's been making me feel hopeless.
But, I don't feel helpless. At least, not when it comes to the long term.
I believe in art and creativity. The more someone makes, the more they put themselves in the mind of their audience. The more they learn empathy.
We are ripe for a shift to a more creative world. In my corner, that means a world where we re-open the web. Giving people their own sites outside the confines and restrictions of social networks.
Places we own. Places we're invested in. Making things better for ourselves and our audiences instead of trying to appease an algorithm.
Idealistic? Sure. But, what the fuck else am I'm gonna do? I know how to make tools to help folks make things. That won't be the full answer, but it's a part I can contribute to.