Winter is coming
But it won't be that cold
For those few of you who aren't Game of Thrones aficionados winter is coming is the motto of House Stark. In that universe winter also means that various creatures that don't want humans to live start to wake, bring back the dead, and wreak havoc on the world. I want to talk about a different kind of winter, the one that creates a tunnel that only some of us get through. In evolutionary terms, things like the last ice age.
In chess there is the concept of Zugzwang, (it comes from the German meaning must move) where pieces are set up to perfectly support and defend each other but, the way the game is played, a move must happen that breaks the formation and it is undone. We humans have reached such a place. The mass delusion that is capitalism is running out of people and resources to turn into profit, the climate disaster is in full flow and nothing is being done, the people who profit from racism and murder in places like Palestine, and all over the world, are at their last gasp and don't seem to realise it. Those of us who used to live in relative comfort from the crumbs that fell from the table of the rich or stolen from the poor undeveloped countries in Europe and America are discovering the crumb supply is no more, and the things we need to survive, never mind make life tolerable, are being taken from us at an ever increasing rate. The folks in the global south never had that luxury, or maybe only had it for a brief time in the 1960s, before their countries were overwhelmed by the corporations that have robbed them ever since. As Michael Parenti pointed out the countries themselves are rich, rich in resources, but the people are poor, because global capitalism keeps them that way. He also said extreme wealth and extreme poverty are the same thing, can't have one without the other.
The road we walk as a species is narrowing and many of us aren't going to get through to wherever it takes us next, assuming it isn't a dead end. Unless, of course, we do something about it. There's the rub. The comfortable life of beery Christmas farts and happy oblivion while someone else does the fixing and the worrying are long over. There's also the serious problem that we are being lied to, bamboozled and swindled out of our lives and happiness by people pretending they care about us. As all this goes on, the things we want, the things we need, are being taken from us and we are blind to it.
There's also a key problem: we live in a society that has been broken down into isolated individuals, we're easy to manage and control when turned into isolated atoms. This also creates peculiar delusions of grandeur. I recently read a pro-Israeli article where the author took the calls to reinvent the place as if they were saying that she personally must be broken up and reconstituted, not the racist and colonialist institutions that make it up. It was very odd to read. No-one cares about you the individual, you don't matter, they care about the murder being done in your name. Sorry to burst your bubble.
Let's dispel some illusions. You don't live in a democracy, you live in a place where the things you actually care about are never up for discussion. The current government in Britain, for example, is forcing the ever faster privatisation of the NHS while pretending to rescue it from two decades of neglect and damage, taking profits means less for patients, it's not hard to understand. Nobody that isn't going to make money from our suffering is in favour of it, but with the exception of the Green Party funding and rebuilding the NHS wasn't even discussed in the recent election. The removal of the politically bankrupt Tories just means that slightly more competent liars can finish the job even quicker. Do you want your health and education services to decay even more, and start charging you? No! Do you want the country to continue arming mass murderers? No! Do you have any choice in the matter? No! Britain is also an extremely corrupt country, and always has been, but during the recent Tory decades they stopped bothering to hide it so much.
Arguing for business as usual or maintaining the status quo is saying these things nobody wants should continue and not even be discussed. It's also saying that the righteous anger that people feel at being robbed and abused by systems they can't control cannot change anything. The people making that argument aren't speaking to you - they're talking to the folks that own and control the wealth, saying the good times are going to continue whatever the rest of us think and no matter how much we suffer. The other thing governments do is create bureaucracies that allow their cruelty to be disconnected from the damage it does, your life ruined because the computer says no. It's why the people directly responsible for thousands of deaths from Covid are still free, the system is built to let them hide from justice, and in fact the system performed perfectly in its own terms.
People are beginning to see through this: Starmer was elected on less votes than Corbyn ever got but don't remind him because it makes him cry. Trump got less votes than when Biden beat him. When Harris said I'm speaking to quiet anti genocide protesters she lost a huge proportion the vote in that state that had overwhelmingly voted for Biden. These characters speak but don't listen, they never have, they tell us the pain we feel from their actions is the best of all possible worlds, and they're lying through their teeth. Anyone who is old enough to remember Tony Blair gurning over the Iraq war can see this in action. Clinton was a master of feeling peoples pain, but never did anything to alleviate it.
The old small L liberalism, of giving you all sorts of rights and help on paper while making sure only the moneyed minority benefit from them, has run its course. People keep saying that there is a rise in far right populism - err no, their vote remained relatively consistent. Like in the Wizard of Oz, those of us no longer taken in by the empty promises of the worn out liberal wing of the political establishment have pulled back the curtain to see that the wizard is just a daft old man with some pulleys and levers, and we can't be bothered voting for them anymore.
Keep hold of your anger, let it bring you clarity. You must also stop singing songs like We shall overcome - because it contains the word someday. There is no more someday, we are in deep trouble and need to start looking after ourselves instead of expecting people who hold us in contempt to do anything for us. We have to grow up.
Side note: When I was researching this article I found this great selection of quotes from Parenti. Well worth reading through.
Onward, friends, let's keep out of the tunnel.
