america trash pile

A Stupid, Broken Decade

It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times. It was the 2010's.

To sum up the last decade in two words, it would be “stupid” and “broken”. This was the decade of unaccountability, where the war criminals of the Iraq, Afghanistan, and other myriad wars are rehabilitated, and the economic criminals that destroyed millions of livelihoods got away scot free. The guilty parties smugly maintain their immunity, protected and safe under the wings of capital. Everyone got away with it.

We wave goodbye to the age of the meaningless gesture, superficial togetherness; where political celebrity marketing became perfected. It was the decade where we realized nobody cares about the rhetoric anymore, it’s all just a boring TV show where we all know the ending, and it’s us getting fucked. Fun times.

Conservatives fully embraced their nihilist death drive and thirst for absolute power at any cost, and liberals showed their soft, pink belly of cowardice, compliance, and political incompetence. The Democrats’ kneecapping in 2010 and final implosion in 2016 sounded the death knell of the neoliberal consensus. Obama limped out of office, leaving wreckage in the wake of his waterski boat. A shitshow of the highest order, a reeking cesspool of bad candidates and consultant politics run amok. The car is indeed on fire, and there is in fact no one at the wheel.

Well, there is someone at the wheel now: a deranged maniac rambling at the sun, surrounded by sycophants vigorously shoveling money into their pockets.

This was the first decade to last a century. Everything happened, but also it feels like nothing happened. 10 years of stasis, no movement forward or back, a limping continuation like an unnecessary sequel to a boring movie. A franchise no one asked for that costs ten trillion dollars.

The existing political order has revealed itself to be utterly empty, devoid of compassion, a merciless machine whose main purpose has been to take away what little we had. The austerity has been brutal, working people demoralized to the point of catatonia.

We work longer for less pay, getting sicker and weaker, less protections, less power, less purpose. It’s always less. It’s always something being clawed away and locked behind a means-tested gate. Nothing can ever just be given because it’s the right thing to do. There always has to be a catch, so overly complicated it feels intentionally designed to deny the actual benefit.

Orwell was wrong, the vision of the future is *not* a boot stamping on a human face forever. It’s a popup ad letting you know that you too can become a Troopr and stomp on each other’s faces. Make your own schedule, be your own boss, make good money for every face stomped. Choose your own boots and your own faces. Download our app today!

There’s rarely been a time where we’ve felt less frustrated that things simply can’t get better. We’re overstimulated but somehow constantly bored, with more content and art and music and games than have ever existed in the history of the world, and none of it seems to matter. Little of it feels fresh or new. 

The central emptiness in American life has yet to be named.

The 2010’s were a period of being run by people pathetically attempting to emulate the past, which also sucked shit. We’re a reboot, always a remake. No one seems to know what they are doing, and the system seems to operate purely on inertia alone. But we were assured everything was going to be okay, don’t worry.

Many spent the better part of the last decade in near poverty, and it has been a masterful teacher. We unlearned a lot of myths that had been drilled into us since childhood, about the American Dream, about this so-called democracy, about the lie of the free market that produces exhausted, desperate people. We saw how truly rigged it is, the fix is in, and we’re all marks ripe to be tossed into the sausage grinder.

Financial elites of this country imploded our own economy and then bail itself out on our dime. The first black President presided over the elimination of half of all black wealth, and then held none of the actual crooks responsible. His bombs killed children. His presidency was swept away in just a few executive orders, and then he went yachting with movie stars, planning Netflix specials. A brief glimpse of actual revolt, Occupy Wall Street, was snuffed out under a “transformative” president calling for hope and change and all sorts of other well-oiled political marketing. If anything, this was an era of failed promises and shrugs.

The carceral state and militarized cops exploded. Bodies killed by the police stacked like cordwood. Our bombs destroyed kids overseas, and American children were poisoned by their own water. 

An impotent liberal cosmopolitan cadre attempted to self-negotiate their own destruction in the fake guise of “compromise”. All that hard work and stump speeches and concessions for nothing. A new proto-fascist movement arose in our very midst and millions willingly flocked to it. And no one with any power did anything to stop any of this. They grew fat and soft and comfortable while we watched, mouths agape, and when we took to the streets, they mocked us or sicked their cops on us.

Wildfires raged. Hurricanes slammed into our coastlines. We were left in the wake so a handful of weirdos can make more apps. Nothing got better.

At the end of this disastrous decade, we see that the capitalist system cannot save us. It simply doesn’t want to. It cannot be saved, and shouldn’t be. Looking at 2020 is like staring down the barrel of a gun pointed at the exact center of our foreheads, a deranged white supremacist grimacing, finger on the trigger. Depression and anxiety are our default settings now, we’ve rarely experienced a period of such sheer, intense existential dread. Thankfully, there’s a whole new self-care industry and pills to help us cope with this mess we had little hand in setting in motion.

My god, we all just want this to stop, don’t we? Just shut down this fucking insane circus, or just take a break from the static. We want to feel like our lives have dignity and value, and we’re not always having a boot on our neck. Just some relief that doesn’t come in the form of a Marvel movie. Like we’re all not just snack food for capital to chew up and shit out all the fucking time. Hell, most people would be happy with just a week of paid vacation or not worrying they’ll be bankrupted after going to the doctor.

We want the earth to not boil. We want to be a part of something greater than ourselves, a type of secular revivalism where the goal isn’t enriching some grifter preacher, but a system of justice for its own sake. To have a genuine sea change in how we view each other, how we design the world, how we care for each other. To see that human life, our natural world has inherent value and no one is disposable. To stop lying to ourselves that the capitalist system and its political leeches that created these problems can ever possibly solve them.

Here’s to the next decade: the stupidest and most broken time period we’re ever going to experience.