A Guide to Revulsion
I’m not sure where we are, but we appear to be rudderless
There is no itinerary in this guide.
The part-time job I started a few weeks ago needs a different version of my brain than the one I use to write. It feels more difficult since the outside world has become such an unreliable narrator. Perform capitalism as if I didn’t see noose cakes and the rebirth of Jim Crow. I wish I didn’t know that the big prize for elites was to preside over rape ranches. The list of things goes on and on. I try to pretend like I’m not drowning in my own revulsion, but it catches up.
Moving back and forth between the denial world and the revolting world is an uncanny energy drain. We’re supposed to just go about our days pretending the noose cakes aren’t ultimately referencing our own necks. Like we didn’t see what we saw, and we don’t know what we know.
I remember my father on an average day in the late 1970s or 1980s, I think of his frequent bad moods, his suspiciousness. The expression on his face was frequently troubled and heavy. Only now do I tie that to his engineering work in the aerospace defense industry, and his Top Secret clearance. He even had like Top Top Secret clearance, whatever they call it.
I wonder now what he knew. I mean, I suspect he knew a lot of crap. And of course he couldn’t talk about it. In hindsight, I see my father as someone who knew a lot of horrible things and it made him miserable.
*
What good is a guide without maps, highlights, lists of interesting facts about local fountains or favorite dishes or holidays? There is no architecture here, only rubble. I’m not sure where we are, but we appear to be rudderless.
Welcome, citizens, to your new life at these unidentified coordinates. We’re on the brink of a post-human world the oligarchs have yearned for. Perhaps we’re moments away from AI having consciousness. You are here to finance death plots with your paychecks, grotesque plots concocted by a ruling class that is interested in neither your comfort, nor personal evolution, not even your survival.
Say hello to the new robot confederacy. You have boarded the train that cannot stop. What was that movie, with people in the back eating cockroach Jell-o squares? Right, it was Snowpiercer, directed by Bong Joon Ho, based on the French graphic novel. The elites in the front of the train dined in abundant elegance. I remember giggling when I watched that movie, thinking it was exaggerated. I’m not giggling anymore and I don’t see any exaggeration.
I know people say this a lot but really: how will future historians write about this period, assuming there is a future and it will have historians who write books?
At the moment I’m turning into a version of the Greek mythological figure, Echo, just repeating these horrors, stuck in the reverb of it all.
I hope to be back soon with another letter and some words or topics that feel more grounded.