In the aftermath of 9/11, HST wrote ‘Doom is the operative ethic.’
Anyone that tells you they’ve got the handle on how things are going to go with Iran, with Fuel, with Climate, with A.I – Hell, even with our general election in November — should be treated like a Snake Oil Salesman, especially if they’re shilling the idea that we might snuggle back into the norm of the ‘rules based order.’
‘Nothing Ever Happens’ is a panacea doled out to ease your (rightfully!) anxious heart. Similar nostrums include ‘Getting New Zealand Back on Track’ or ‘Better Starts Now’. Cambridge’s BP is bone dry half the time I pull up: ‘Poor flow, please place the nozzle back. Thank you for fueling at BP!’
Really doing anything with how things are feels like pissing against the moon, anyone that thinks they know how November is gonna go, who the kingmaker will be, what moves the government might make, is a whack-job.
Labour doesn’t even know what they’re gonna fucking do, they just have a lot to say about what they won’t. The politicians know that we’re tethered to a web of geo-machinations entirely out of our control and I’d say the next decade is going to be a messy fight for who can best dawdle at the podium and go ‘welllllllll what we mighttttt be able to doooooooo….’
This makes me the person saying I know how this is going to go, which I don’t, I really think it’s in anyone’s court, which is unfortunate because this is the easiest election to win of my lifetime. I know what I’m doing when I cast my vote, and that’s all any individual can really be sure of. Households are experiencing dinner table civil wars every night. When I invoke that ‘Doom is the operative ethic’, I mean that we should be prepared for the worst, Gen Z was sold a lot of feel-good about a global village but just because the grown ups refused to hold up their end of the bargain doesn’t mean we have to just leave each other in the humid fuckstorm spurring our way – there are people going through a lot worse than us, and they’re getting through it by holding onto each other.
We need to surrender into each other’s arms and weather the absurdity, the doom, and the very literal storm(s) together.
