“Knowledge is inherently precious even if you can’t sell it,” Greta said. “Even if you can’t use it. Knowledge is an absolute good. The search for truth is vital. It’s central to civilization. You need knowledge even when your economy and government are absolutely shot to hell.”
— Bruce Sterling’s Distraction (1998)
“Sometimes, it was hard just to stop focusing on the simple reality that other human beings can kill you — and often, it seemed, that they can kill you without much compunction or consequence. They can kill you by refusing to pull their mask over their nostrils, by bureaucratically denying you adequate health care, by allowing you to live on the street, by keeping you at work while a tornado closes in, by shooting you with their guns just because they felt scared.”
— New York Times
“He, like everyone else, […] is exactly where, exactly what, exactly when he is meant to be. It is the Tao.”
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read William Gibson’s All Tomorrow’s Parties but that line didn’t hit me until I came across it today. Timing, right? American democracy on the ropes. Millions dead/dying from a global pandemic. The planet gasping for breath. And here I am, exactly where/what/when I was meant to be. Seriously, this is the most peaceful I’ve felt in months.
Set in the near-ish future, Neal Stephenson’s latest novel (Termination Shock) charts a world gone haywire with the aftereffects of human-driven climate calamity. Like the last couple of novels I’ve read, it incorporated COVID into the storyline as well as the January 6th insurrection.
“…before you knew it there was a white guy in red-white-and blue war paint sacking the U.S. Capitol in what the media described as some kind of Viking getup but Rufus knew perfectly well was a Plains Indian-style bison headdress. And just like Comanches with their raids, those people didn’t stick around and try to plant their yellow rattlesnake flags on the Capitol dome. They just wandered off, having counted coup on democracy and taken a few cop scalps, and melted back into their nomadic trailer park encampments.
This excerpt reminded me of some of his descriptions in Snow Crash.
In all the millions of words written or spoken about the January 6 Insurrection, I don’t recall anyone describing what would have happened had the mob — and Trump — been successful. So I asked my friend Bob Priddy (the smartest person I know) to speculate.
“There would have been more lawsuits than we could count and Trump’s judicial appointees would support democracy, to his howling dismay and most Republicans and every Democrat in congress would stand together against any such illegal power grab. The capitol would become a fortress for the Trump mob while its leader quickly would be in custody on numerous incitement and conspiracy charges, be ruled incompetent to continue to serve under the 25th Amendment, and his Vice-President would emerge from his hiding place to proclaim the legitimate process of government would continue. He, as the new commander in chief of the military and in exigent circumstances would in no way defend Trump (recall that in the immediate aftermath of January 6 most GOP’ers flatly and publicly blamed Trump and their cowering did not develop until he left office in the normal course of events — a situation that would not exist if the mob gained control of the capitol), would call upon the protestors to surrender or starve to death or be killed by military forces that would go room to room hauling people out or killing them. Congress, or as many members of it as survived, would reassemble; states would re-certify the election results and the certification process would be completed.
President Pence would, as he did, attend the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20, wherever it would be held, and would leave Washington a hero rather than a temporarily-noble Trump nebbish who rose above himself at a critical time.
The following days could have been a despicable bloodbath but the insurrection would have been contained to the capitol. There might be minor uprisings in several states but the National Guard would be activated by governors and the uprisings would have been put down and state courts and local prosecutors would have reacted as usual and constitutionally-punished the trouble-makers.
There would not be a civil war but there would have been blots throughout the nation that time would never erase. But Democracy would have survived because the nation would not geographically divide.
Donald Trump would face criminal charges and unending civil lawsuits seeking damages to the Capitol and personal injuries by those who resisted the mob or private citizens whose well-being was threatened. He would declare bankruptcy to escape payment of damages but would be allowed to keep his domicile under the bankruptcy code. The rest of his empire would crumble because it is built on paper and would return pennies on the dollar to satisfy judgments against him. If convicted of crimes, he could not be put in prison but would instead be sentenced to house arrest, allowed outside for an hour a day for exercise restricted to holes 8-13 on the golf course at Mar-a-lago.
Upon his death, Mar-a-lago would become a national institution for insane oligarchs and in time be transformed into an Ellis Island-type of historic site.
Each year on January 6, or on the Monday closest to it, National Insurrection Day would be observed with parades and speeches focusing on the greatness of a Democracy that withstood its greatest challenge and would never fail.
And urine samples gathered from every member of congress ceremoniously would be poured on the grave of Donald Trump.
I’ll make the same prediction about Trump’s final resting place — and for the same reason — that I made for Rush Limbaugh. It will be inaccessible to the public. El Rushbo is in a private cemetery somewhere in the St. Louis area, not in his hometown of Cape Girardeau.
“the collapse of Kabul sends a clear message: liberal values lack the dramatic emotional appeal of faith-based cruelty. Liberalism is weak tea when up against men with rifles who operate on divine guidance. Liberalism is basically neighborliness and it lacks the satisfactions of ferocity.”
Author Tim Wise explains why COVID anti-vaxxers aren’t a MAGA death cult… it’s a mass murder movement.
When you would tell them repeatedly that wearing a mask was less for the wearer than for others, they shrugged. If other folks are at risk, they should stay home and let the rest of us get back to the gym, the hairdresser, concerts, movies, and tailgate parties before the big game. […] Their freedom to do as they pleased was more important than other people’s lives.
Suicidal people don’t act or think that way. Homicidal people do.
If you refuse a vaccine when you have no valid health reason to do so (as almost no one does), thereby keeping the virus alive longer by increasing the risk of mutations, you are saying that other people’s lives don’t matter to you.
I cannot weep for someone who thought the “blood of Jesus” was all the vaccine they needed.
On a personal level, treating deniers like pariahs means banishing them, metaphorically, to the cornfield. It means cutting them out of our lives entirely: no invitations to the cocktail party or backyard barbecue, no seat for them at the holiday table, and no invitation to the grandkid’s graduation, Little League game, or dance recital. Refuse to speak to them, break bread with them or communicate with them in any way until they get their shit together and learn to play by the rules of public health by which rational, decent people agree to play.
Till then, they have made their ICU beds. Now they can lie in them, and sadly, die in them — completely and utterly, alone.
That’s the conclusion of Laura Jedeed, a freelance journalist who deployed to Afghanistan twice — once in 2008, and again in 2009-2010.
I remember Afghanistan as a dusty beige nightmare of a place full of proud, brave people who did not fucking want us there. We called them Hajjis and worse and they were better than we were, braver and stronger and smarter. […] It was already obvious that the Taliban would sweep through the very instant we left.
And now, finally, we are leaving and the predictable thing is happening. The Taliban is surging in and taking it all back. They were always going to do this, because they have a thing you cannot buy or train, they have patience and a bloody-mindedness that warrants more respect than we ever gave them.
I am Team Get The Fuck Out Of Afghanistan which, as a friend pointed out to me today, has always been Team Taliban. It’s Team Taliban or Team Stay Forever. There is no third team.
We knew how Afghanistan was going to end way back in 2008. In this scene from Rambo III Richard Crenna warns the Russian commander how stupid it is to start a holy war in the middle east in the name of freedom.
And this from 2009. Matthew Hoh, a former marine saying Afghanistan is not worth U.S. lives.
“I feel that our strategies in Afghanistan are not pursing goals that are worthy of sacrificing our young men and women or spending the billions we’re doing there,” Hoh said. “I believe that the people we are fighting there are fighting us because we are occupying them — not for any ideological reasons, not because of any links to al Qaeda, not because of any fundamental hatred toward the West. The only reason they’re fighting us is because we are occupying them.”
“How should I mourn friends who threw away their lives because irrational politics overrode rational thoughts of self-preservation? What should I say to the grieving spouse you leave behind? “Well, at least they died doing what they loved to do” becomes even more ludicrous when what they loved to do was LIVE! I probably won’t go to your funeral at all. It’s your fault that I have to make that choice. I don’t want to be your pallbearer.”