Adults should outgrow the need for bedtime stories. Consider fascism as the notion that some deserve to be entertained or placated more than others deserve to eat. Escapism means evasion of problem-solving. Turning lead into gold was probably symbolic for transforming our malleable grey matter into something lucrative for our keepers.
A nation dependent on dreams has neither time or place for truth or consequence. Our culture is nothing but hero-worshiping the least self-sacrificing, yet it’s forever the villains justifying sacrifice by others and mass-hallucination that any fantasy matters to the universe. Every gated community/echo chamber/news bubble/comfort zone/safe space has the lone function of blocking out the mass of reality contradicting the fantasies at play inside.
Street protests today come across as people LARPing twitter threads. Which in turn come across as proverbial old man farmer shouting angrily at a clear sky, as inundation of any variety only suits dry fields. Masturbatory nonsense, thinking this government cares for any siggy on any petition in any circumstance. Give less feeling to your thoughts and more thought to your feelings instead. Whether enraged or outraged, any rage over respective branding of church or state or industry failing to be met with love by all is shallow. The universe existed and functioned for a long time without anybody’s wishes, and neither love or cruelty is necessary for survival. We refine ourselves through shame and remorse, but persons who can justify killing anyone whether brown or trans or fetus ultimately want a society where shame and remorse are unwelcome. As opposed to trying to save everyone. Why can’t we build the means for removing living embryos faster, cheaper and safer than dead ones, and with no lingering strings attached legally or financially? Because both sides want blood on their hands. As violence is the only universal language and the only language understood by most, even extreme violence has a time and place, but others have every right to find value in lives you’d rather not.
I say schools and news media are doomed because everyone wants them to replicate their social media, and thus never be met by anything they’re unfamiliar or uncomfortable with. Preaching to choirs grows nothing, preaching outside a fabricated womb is to exist in unpopularity. We learn only by experience, and to lessen our experiences is to lessen what we might grow from, but if any of us were truly so immaculate beyond reproach we’d have no need to blame this and that and the other thing for what ails us, as they’d hold no power. I never understood why anyone anywhere would ever trust a bank with anything.
People who believe diplomacy and centrism can always accomplish what violence cannot, have never tried meeting a rapist or murderer halfway. If lacked education makes it impractical to replace elections with a randomized lottery system where anyone might serve office, there is no democracy worth defending. I think opportunists are far more common than conspirators. The most unrealistic bit to the X-Files was the notion people are smart enough to think in foresight beyond immediate gratification, especially the sorts who just buy unearned degrees with pillaged hoards. Chaos rules. And I bet for the 20 or 30 survivors of WW3, there will be no more capitalism or financial incentives. Money in our countries doesn’t evidently belong to our countries but to whomever is most willing to sacrifice our countries to claim it for themselves, in keeping with the fancy of their fantasies.
Allowing ourselves to be guided by lust and wrath does educate us so much more than does actually seeing either pursuit to its end however. The setting sun is beautiful with grief because it knows to go away before burning us all where we stand, but without it the day’s labor leads nowhere.