all efforts to reform the american system is capitulation.
no progressive in the democratic party is going to rise up, take control of the party and save us. there is one ruling party. the corporate party.
it may engage in petty, internecine warfare, as it did in the recent government shutdown.
it may squabble over power and the spoils of power.
it may come wrapped in more tolerant stances regarding women, lgbt rights and the dignity of people of color,
but on the fundamental issues of war, internal security and corporate domination
there is no divergence.
the longer we pretend this dystopian world is not imminent, the more unprepared
and disempowered we will be.
the ruling elite’s goal is to keep us entertained, frightened and passive
while they build draconian structures of oppression grounded in this dark reality.
it is up to us to pit power against power. ours against theirs.
even if we cannot alter the larger culture, we can at least create self-sustaining enclaves where we can approximate freedom.
we can keep alive the burning embers of a world based on mutual aid
rather than mutual exploitation.
and this, given what lies in front of us, will be a victory.
-chris hedges
i remember going to visit john batchelor in 1982 in new york city. he'd written the further adventures of haley's comet and said it was a dystopian romance. that's the first i heard the term dystopia and i acted like i knew what it meant. it's like the opposite of utopia, but it's real, though it may be a romance or not. i don't think it panned out as a career really and i think he tilted hard to the dystopian right after a couple more desultory forays into the fictional. i couldn't see the romance, and i forgot the plot, but that was my introduction to the word dystopia. i don't think we have the same ideas about the present dystopia.
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