Listen
Listen.
The world is burning. We can hear the sizzling flames in the expanding targeting by ICE, pops in the darkling gloom that we hope are knots exploding in the heat and not gunshots. We can hear the break of the burned-enough-to-weaken log in the international shift to seeing the US as an enemy instead of a friend. We can hear the plop of a burned-through nubbin of a twig that drops in ashes, sending up skirls of embers in how the government is being run as an already-decided authoritarian regime; the Supreme court falling in line for executive powers; Congress abdicating responsibility. Even those who try to shift as far away from the fire as they can: the smoke is embedded in your clothes, the scent of it suffusing every economic breath.
Yet, we do not yet know what we'll land. There are superimpositions of multiple holographic states, each vying to look more real so attention will focus on them hardest, so they will resolve into clarity first.
Authoritarian technofascism
What is hoped for by this administration, and the people who worked with Epstein to architect this trail of dominos, is that we'll be too tired, divided, and confused to do anything but glassy-eyed try to make sense of the shifts, see where they land, and adapt. What, after all, is real? What is the truth? How can over a decade of setting up dominos fail to resolve? The Thimble-wee's (Trump, Hoffman, (Th)iel, Musk, Branson, Lutnick, Warsh, Ellison, Epstein...sorry I couldn't get Gates in there) are coherent, clear, and agreed that what should be is a technofascist, authoritarian state.
This is violent aggression for generations. It's late-stage capitalism pushed to its most extreme, possibly tipping back into vassals or even slavery. Pressure is put on the system to emphasize continued accumulation of wealth by a narrowing few.
Civil war
Civil war. The right has been calling for it for ages. Being off social media for most of the last decade, I didn't know it was an assumed given until my sister brought it up years ago, voice continuing to spin higher and higher in anger that was so short-fused as to erupt in seconds, so explosive I actually stepped back. Noting my reaction, I started watching for it. Once watched for, it's not just the right, though they've been at it longer. The threads of this permeate all our ideologies, rooted in our divisiveness.
This is violent aggression for years, maybe decades; and it could still end in technofascism. It's a fundamental breaking of the economy, shifting back to bartering and casual violence to be able to eat another day. Pressure is put on the system to make money something inaccessible for the most part, with the possibility for a caving USD.
Abundance
There's another image trying to form, one of abundance. But abundance in terms that are not always as pleasant as the word suggests. Abundance itself is shifting and scaling, reaching and crashing in on itself as it tries to be birthed. It's a nigh utopian vision, and as with most utopias it leaves some things to the side, waving them away with a dismissive, "oh, that will all sort itself out."
It tries to assert it will be benevolent, but threads are there that indicate it could turn otherwise. It's capitalism 2.0, and...it's really not ready for prime time.
The unexpected
And barely glimmering under it all is the burgeoning of...something different. Something both old and new. Old community ties refreshed, new-to-us ways of implementing seen and interpreted information.
It seems to want to turn back the clock to community, and understanding that the basics of human life cannot be taken for granted. In a mass intake of breath to ready itself for a yell or scream – just listen – Minnesota has started defining a possible future based on the ancient task of...caring about your neighbor. Entire social systems have quickly evolved to ensure food, shelter, and healthcare continue in the face of intense, persistent, and arbitrarily present aggression.
Nationwide, there is a growing sense of being present, annoying, capturing points of view, and brave for the sake of community, all in the face of spreading aggression. A distributed network of volunteers and donated materials are accumulating around a mass effort to 3-d print whistles to bring people to a scene.
And in New York City, a new burgeoning of socialism actually making it into our governing structures – the simple shift of a person, perceiving and interpreting the same information and coming up with vastly different solutions that ease pain in the span of days, weeks, and months; rather than years and decades and seemingly-never.
This has the potential to start healing pain we've carried for generations. It's a different currency, a different set of values. It might be a new form of capitalism, or it might be something altogether different. Pressure is put on the system to distribute wealth, to reduce or remove the differentiation between the poorest and wealthiest amongst us.
Supporting cast: AI
Threading through them all is AI.
The authoritarian technofascist state assumes it will suddenly, magically, give them perfect surveillance. They are willing, even happy, to take the mistakes while it gets there, if only to surface the glitches. That the mistakes lead to internment, injury, and even death: eh. Population decrease is part of the overall plan.
In civil war, it will be likely be pushed to bots and drones and surveillance nets. It will be the Terminator movies made real, but with a different origin story. It won't be an AI "suddenly" deciding to wipe out humanity from a moral logic. It will be programmed and trained to kill the enemy; and then somewhere the generative, statistically modulated code will be set in charge of the wrong parameters. It won't be the product of AGI, but the product of assholes and/or stupidity. Set to kill the enemy, and the uncontrolled, agentic code will shift how "the enemy" is defined.
In abundance, there is still a thread of magical thinking about AI – that it will make it so everyone is their own CEO, with their own infinite cohort of tireless employees that will magically both replicate what works ad infinitum, and fix what doesn't generatively without you having to step in...or even be aware. Again, there is a thread of magical thinking: that somehow people who don't know anything about making a thing, will own entire self-driven, solo-preneur empires that produce it.
In the glimmering possibilities, when you listen – just listen – to people who love their work and want things to function, and like making and building and creating, AI is just...not worth it. It's taking every morsel of information it can, eating through natural and energy resources, and doing shit work that someone else has to fix. It's not about community.
The cold, hard reality is that the Trump administration is working hard to take away our voting. It's been in the cards since before the 2024 election, with Trump telling audiences to vote for him now so they'll never have to worry about it again.
We vote even in our quiet lives. Do we sit with caring about others? Do we gleefully revel in the mayhem? Who do we continue to share our lives with?
We vote in our deeds, in the simple community support we could share – or hold tight to our own sense of safety.
We vote with every call to our Representatives and Senators, every call to state legislators that can enact more localize bulwarks.
We vote in our actions. Do we continue to support the big tech companies who are march-stepping towards fascism? Do we let the bullies know they are seen?
We vote with our use of AI. Each of the AI scenarios are tied more strongly to the version of our future that I noted. The ties aren't immutable, but they are sticky.
The goal of Thimble-wee's is that we just cave already. Accept our fate and let them roll on over. The only safe people in that scenario are the Thimble-wee's. They are willing to sacrifice us all so that they feel the future unfolding before them without stress, struggle, or snarky eye rolls. Civil war is their contingence plan.
