On The Uneven Distribution of Collapse

I think it's worth taking the time to talk about some of the million things that have happened in the world of (mostly due to white men). They have, unfortunately, an outsized effect on the rest of us. Some of these things haven't happened yet–some might never. But they're indicative of where we are.

Collapse at Home

Let's start with an old saw. There was another recent call to dismantle FEMA, which is a little like threatening to burn down a house that had already been hit by a tornado; it's not a huge loss, but we need what shelter we can get. Now, FEMA has already been wrecked by Kristi Noem, who is probably off pursuing her dream of hunting dogs through the plains, but what's left of it still serves some purpose. Dismantling it completely would leave disaster recovery to individual states, which is not a great idea. Many states don't have the kind of money or infrastructure necessary for recovering from modern disasters, and recovering from them on any kind of swift timeline requires greater resources still. Actually tossing FEMA into the trash requires Congressional approval, and since Congress can't tell their ass from a hole in the ground, that's not very likely to happen. That doesn't mean Trump can't hobble it further, as he did last year by executive order, temporarily halting distribution of over a billion dollars in recovery funds.

Then there's the hobbling of the Voting Rights Act–the landmark bill that has up until now helped build minority representation in Congress. The Supreme Court decided to throw this out at the end of April, paving the way for some serious redistricting, especially in southern states like Louisiana. I've long told you not to waste your energy with electoral politics, and this of course doesn't change that. I bring it up because this is evidence of the continuing sale of this country; the people in charge have no interest in doing anything for you, doubly so if you are Black. The thin veneer of democratic power we had has fully slipped. We must not expect any respite to come from the midterms or 2028, or electoral politics in general.

Case in point, Trump recently gave a speech to a class of Coast Guard cadets in which he said he would stay in office through 2028 and even 2032 (one would assume this would be a Weekend at Bernie's situation). This is not the first time he's suggested he will stay for a third term, and if you have thought an election would be the end of your Trump-related worries, I hope this disabuses you of the notion.

ICE is currently clashing with protesters in New Jersey at the Delaney Hall Immigration Detention Facility. Inmates there have been on hunger strike for over a week, protesting abysmal conditions there. Delaney Hall is a private facility, despite its ICE guard stooges, and New Jersey has had difficulty getting the facility to comply with even basic transparency. The clashes here have been quite heated, rivaling some of the fighting in LA and Minneapolis despite the lower exposure. I have not seen an updated mutual aid funding link, but I would keep my eyes peeled and give if you can.

Then there are the AI data centers sucking up water and power across the country for a service nobody actually wants. This is because, of course, these data centers aren't meant to power your awkward son's AI girlfriend–no shade, kiddo. But we're seeing this huge push for infrastructure in one part because it props up the utterly hollow US economy for a little while longer, and the other so the technofeudalist billionaires who run our country can construct a trillion-point surveillance state in what remains of our society. If you thought climate change was going to wash these Freedom City/Network State jagoffs into the sea, well, I'm afraid we're not going to get that lucky. To put a fine point on this, billionaire and not-so-shadow-half-president of the US Peter Thiel is fleeing the United States for Argentina, with his family, because of instability in the country. He's also going to start a massive surveillance program in Argentina, but, well, that brings me to my next point.

Collapse Abroad

Still touching on the United States for a moment, let's remember that the entire world is currently in an oil crisis–which means it's in an everything crisis. Tensions with Iran have returned to a high simmer if not outright boil, and as of this writing the Strait of Hormuz is yet again blocked, with plans to block further trade routes in the offing.

We're only just beginning to see the severity of this crisis at home, with gas prices across the country still close to record highs. Following high fuel costs comes high transport costs, and high fertilizer costs, which means high food costs and potentially even some shortages down the pike. This is a worldwide problem–it just came to visit us last.

Southeast Asian nations, like Thailand and Philippines, rely heavily on oil that passes through Hormuz. The continued shortage of gasoline and liquified natural gas makes everyday life much, much harder. Air travel is vastly more expensive, which decreases tourism, which shutters another venue of income for the region. I think that the acute nature of a war, which grabs headlines and TV time, belies the chronic nature of this crisis; it's going to be a while, and similar to climate change, it's going to complicate everything.

Israel continues to bomb Gaza and Lebanon, encroaching on sovereign territories with military and civilian forces in the West Bank and southern Lebanon. Thousands have been killed in just these exchanges. In Gaza, conditions are still terrible, with the survivors of this genocide pushed into smaller and smaller areas, and most residential buildings in the territory destroyed. Iran has begun intermittent attacks against Israel, and Hezbollah continues to push back with first-person view (FPV) drones, causing the IOF quite a few casualties.

On a related note, to bring this back around to a sort of general state of worldwide horror, Ukraine's military is now awarding their drone pilots with a video-game style system of upgrades. Kills are awarded points, and those points earn the pilots more drones and armaments with which to kill more people. I don't disagree with fighting a colonizing force however you must, but this is the sort of philosophy of combat that dehumanizes both sides of the fight to a terrifying degree. Gamified war will make everyone involved reduced to set dressing–not simply inhuman but not even real. As we enter this era of technofeudalism, we are reduced already to playthings for the world's elite. Being killed by a soldier who feels the same means we've begun to lose the rest, too.

All of this, all of this pain, killing, and literal genocide, is happening so that the rich can finish lining their pockets and building their fortresses. They know that the human project as it stands is about finished–we must change or die, and that is because of their actions. Trump gets a ballroom and bunker while we are told he doesn't even think about the average American's situation. Thiel and Altman and Musk push for AI use while fleeing from it. This handful of people will try to secure their future at the cost of ours. I would urge you to take action now; prepare, train, learn, push back where you can. Gather your strength. We can't take this anymore, and, importantly, we bear–even as unwitting or unwilling participants in the United States and capitalism broadly–some responsibility for the pain caused worldwide. We owe it to humanity to step up and join the fight.