Pre-election Soothsaying

2024, Divided States of 'Murrica

Nov. 4th, 2024

I come from a long line of people who fled their unsafe home countries. That is, they successfully fled before being trapped and ruined there when things “went south”. That is, they saw it coming.

I’ve been seeing it coming in the U.S. for many years. It’s why in both of my novels, “the United States” is known as “the former United States”.

But no one ever believes me. I’m like Peter Boyle’s character in that classic episode of “The X-Files”. I’ve been warning people about not eroding checks and balances and separation of church and state my whole life. Yet over my lifetime more and more people have been mindlessly actively doing that or at least allowing it to happen. My warnings are always seen as crazy or radical. Yet here we are.

‘Murrica is sick with insecurity and lack of substance. In ‘Murrica, sports statistics and theme park nostalgia for college strip drunkenness pass for knowledge and culture. That’s why there’s no ability to grow and adapt, only to have temper tantrums and pick scapegoats. It’s why politics is approached like a sport, i.e. picking your local team and sticking with it no matter what.

It’s no secret that I see the MAGA bloc (the American Taliban) as a cult, with all the dangerous, insular small-mindedness that implies. Whether they win or lose this election, I believe they’ve already given the American experiment a lethal injection. The process began a century ago and can be traced step by step to today. Culture, in the academic sense, is bigger than everything else. The SCOTUS is already seriously broken. A century of progress can be and is being undone far more rapidly. The ‘Murricans did not learn from history.

I challenge anyone to make a convincing case that this culture can be saved after becoming so far gone. (I’d *welcome* a convincing argument!) Half the country has been hornswoggled simply by pressing their insecurity and nostalgia buttons. It can take decades for one person to de-program after getting sucked into a cult. We’re talking about generations, continually programmed via self-censored information flow and tribal reinforcement. There’s no de-programming 40 million cultists actively programming each other and being programmed from afar.

I don’t personally know anyone else who’s able to accept this yet. I think everyone is still “crossing their fingers” or believing that a few hoped-for future political victories could fix things, whereas I’d prefer to plan my escape from a culture that’s already brain-dead. ‘Murrica is a zombie.

My point is, I don’t imagine the results of this 2024 election can reverse the cultural necrotization that’s been a long time coming, and if the election goes the wrong way it’ll just accelerate that zombification.

And escape I must. I’m a member of the group that’s always first against the wall — secular intellectuals in the genetic minority. I can pass for white, but I can’t pass for a card-carrying citizen of Gilead. Maybe I could if I weren’t autistic, but I am.

The only question left to be answered, as far as I’m concerned, is exactly how it will play out.

Will the American Taliban make ‘Murrica the next pariah state that’s too dangerous and destabilizing to be allowed to exist, requiring the rest of the world to nuke the shit out of North America? Sorry, Western Hemisphere. You’re going down with us.

Will we become the next Middle Eastern Model for perfect consumership of imports and military products via perpetual civil war? The cult’s switch from New Testament to eye-for-an-eye Old Testament would certainly lend itself well to that model. Our never-resolved Civil War is begging for it. They kill us, we kill them, Israel-Palestine on a larger scale, with the weapons suppliers lovin’ it. It’s lasted for thousands of years in the Holy Land, so the Military Industrial Complex surely would love to see it happen here. Sorry, Western Hemisphere. You’re going down with us.

I don’t know how it will look after they take the vote back away from non-whites, non-Christians, and eventually women, reinstate debt slavery, and kill the already castrated FDA, OSHA, EPA, SEC, etc., but I do know I don’t want to be here by the time it gets that bad. Without recourse to law, without civil liberties for all, without secular public education and equal representation and taxation, it’s just another Iran. We are and always have been *this* close to being just another Ayatollah-run state. But ‘Murricans didn’t learn from history.

People will complain that I’m being defeatist, and that we can’t recover if we give up. But I’ve been fighting against exactly the present state of things all my life. What do you expect?

From my perspective, at this stage it would be better if there was a mass disengagement from continued status quo consumerism and a mass exodus. That would hit the corporations much harder than “fighting” and thereby playing their retribution-driven polarization game. Only a serious bottom-line hit to the corporations via consumer disengagement might switch their propaganda mode from pro-Talibanism to peace, prosperity, and equal recourse to the law for all.

But let’s be realistic. Fighting and continued status quo consumerism are more likely, which is why their current approach has worked so well for so long.

Make a convincing case for a very different prediction. Please make a convincing case for a very different prediction.