We knew this was coming, didn't we.

I was born in 1954. It's hung over my head my whole life. Yours too I bet. I grew up reading dystopian novels, tales of vicarious journeys into the dark side of man, nightmares that lodged themselves into the recesses of our psyches, nudged there by notions that those stories were too wild to be true. After World Wars I and II we knew what mankind was capable of, but we were better than that. Better fools than we would have ourselves believe.

Then came the 1960s and the world turned upside down. Change was in the air. Much of the upheaval in the 60s was about today, we just didn't realize it then. Hell, I'm still trying to wrap my brain around it. Little did we know, that was the start. The road and the proverbial can were going downhill at an ever quickened pace. The can took the wrong fork somewhere on that road, and we followed.

After the effort for a better world, that was beaten down at the barrel of a gun at Kent State, life became about excess. All the while though, in the back of the mind, it loomed. Mankind seems more adept at rationalization than rationality. Did this predicament we find ourselves in today sneak up on us or did we fool ourselves into believing our own arrogance? Did we look away in lieu of the good life?

Much like Dorian Grey, we sat at the apex of man, and exchanged our nation's youthful vigor for the pleasures of abundance after making a deal with technology, and comfort. That deal is now coming due. And like Dorian, we look at the landscape that reflects our excesses, and we see what we have become. And it's ugly.

In the end, Dorian slashes, with a knife, at the hideous figure staring back at himself in the portrait, and in a stark realization becomes that which he feared. A dark, empty, and rotten shell of a man. Dead by his own hand.

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/covid-zero-new-zealand-has-completed-... Zealand

Coming soon? Yesterday Caucus 99 discussed Australia. NZ has taken it a step further, it seems.

We're all dealing with coronavirus, and so this piece is important:

Coronavirus, capitalism and the forces of nature

Dystopia does not do a lot for us. It does not inspire people to change the world; only the right utopian dream will do that. But for some reason dystopia has become the "default narrative" for this global space and historical time. Only by examining dystopia will we be able to understand its prevalence as a trend. I suppose the resultant literary genre for the prolonged investigation into dystopia would be called "horror."

Today, I read an article by Chris Hedges. What he writes may not come as anything new to those who frequent C99%. It's a "sense" or a feeling that seems to be shared here. But Hedges is such a wordsmith, so powerful and blunt, that the article is stunning, at least to me.

He starts out with a haymaker of a punch:

A popular acronym in IT support is RTFM (Read The F*cking Manual).
So a few days after President Trump's special adviser Kellyanne Conway used the term "alternative facts" and one month after Obama created a Ministry of Truth, people have decided to RTFM.

My first post here, so hello everyone. I am 70. I have never bothered with American politics except asking my family members who live in the USA to vote for Nader. When i was in the University I supported the Socialist Party. I am a Bolivian citizen living in the Windward Islands (Caribbean), member of Evo Morales party Movimiento Al Socialismo and before that whatever old school anarcho-communist party was running.

“Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms."
- Philip K. Dick