It’s amazing how quickly things in the US appear to be ‘going south’, right now.
I remember posting on my mini-military blog, a book review, in which I lament the rise of right wing ‘plopulist’ politics, as a dangerous step towards political and social fragmentation, and thereby possible conflict.
I’ve also coined a few expressions, two of which I’m particularly pleased with: the ‘shelfie’ (now in popular use), and ‘plopulism’. The latter being shit ideas that gain socio-political traction.
Trump, Farage, Bojo, are all ‘plopulists’. And the danger they represent covers a spectrum, from – at best – the continued and increasingly unbridled ascendancy of rapine disaster crapitalism (more from Seb’s word-mint!) to – at worst – world war three, and even potential anthropocide, through self-immolation.
As Noam Chomsky points out, the word evil is just nowhere near strong enough to describe these kind of folks; the kind who will gladly sacrifice huge swathes of fellow humans to long slow painful deaths, via poverty, ill-health, and suchlike, or more quickly (but no less traumatically) in war, and poison our very life support system – Earth, herself – in pursuit of immeasurable personal wealth and power.
Several movies seem prescient right now: Idiocracy (2006), for starters. And, more scarily, Civil War (2024). I’ve thought many times exactly what this reviews’ byline states: Idiocracy looks more and more like a tragic documentary, as opposed to a comedic ‘mockumentary’.
And Trump et al’s vigorous efforts at provoking their ‘enemies’ look shamefully and blatantly like an attempt to precipitate civil unrest/war. We haven’t reached the bodies burned in pits stage yet. But Republican use of naked and unaccountable force already resembles Hitler’s use of the SA and SS, against their chosen scapegoats.
If those Americans who can see these fascist goons for what they are – and there seem to be plenty who do – don’t act en masse, decisively and immediately, Trump, and his lunatic enablers and moron minions, might drag all of us into very dark times.
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