Fascinoma

Last night, by way of wishing Happy Easter, I was ranting to my scientist brother about the brownshirts and how I’m afraid that the jig is basically up; the shitheads aren’t coming back to reason anytime soon. Unless and until, like their German forebears, they find themselves living in the ruins off whatever their daughters and wives can pull in whoring for the troops of the conquerors, there is no brute fact sufficient, so nothing will ever punch through their sanctimonious delusions and let them see their grandiose cause for the cheap hustle (the exploitation of their resentment, neurosis, ignorance, and immaturity) it always is.

One of the key reasons why this isn’t going to happen, and why the republic isn’t going to heal itself with free speech is, of course, Fox News. Now Fox itself isn’t that big a player, it doesn’t make that much difference hour by hour or day to day. But think of it like The Asteroid Tugboat people hypothesized a few years back. If you need to alter the trajectory of a thing in space over time, say, an asteroid on a distant-future date to collide with earth, you can get there ahead of time and attach an ion-drive thruster to it. The ion drive can't really develop much torque, can’t accelerate things quickly or out of heavy gravity, but it can exert long-term, steady pressure enough to actually and significantly change the trajectory of even big things, perhaps enough to save the planet!

On the other hand, or perhaps conversely, as long as we have Fox News pushing the discourse ever-so-slightly but constantly and inexorably to the Corporatist Right, things cannot get really or lastingly better. The fascists really can push the one superpower and thus whole planet into ruin. Eventually, on this trajectory, America will be a police-state kleptocracy where government monies are spent only on armed force, prosecution, imprisonment, and protection of the ruling class's ever-growing private property. Economic chaos, civil unrest and environmental degradation will only accelerate this process.

Dark days ahead, my friends.