A whole civilization will die tonight...

I don’t really pay attention to the news these days. I mean, there are things I can’t help but see when I’m online. I’m not blissfully unaware that we’re bombing Iran, for instance. I saw Donald Trump’s horrific, monstrous Truth Social post about “an entire civilization” dying, because I don’t completely avoid social media, though I do my best.

Erik 'daibo' Kain@erikkain

This buffoon is destroying a civilization, alright. Just not the one he's talking about. Monstrous dangerous idiocy.

8:29 PM · Apr 7, 2026 · 287 Views

1 Repost · 4 Likes

It’s all just too overwhelming sometimes, though I suppose that’s no excuse to not be “involved” or whatever, but you get to a point where you start to feel like someone whose entire purpose is just banging one’s head against a wall and blowing against the wind and shaking your fist at clouds. Get off my lawn you sonsabitches.

Some people listen to reason, cooler heads sometimes prevail, but too often only when all other avenues have failed. True disaster must take place before we shake off this pernicious bullshit.

Things are getting better in many ways. Violent crime is way down. It was way down before MAGA became a slogan, before this latest wave of anti-immigration sentiment and the ramping up of ICE. The America of yesteryear, the one MAGA is referring to, the one we supposedly need to return to in order to make this current America “great again” was, in many ways, far worse. Cities were more dangerous. Poverty was more widespread. We had a lower standard of living. Racism, homophobia and sexism were far more prevalent. And yet, despite all the progress, there’s a kind of malaise that’s settled over everything. A social decay, partly born of decadence, but I think more rooted in meaninglessness. Existential despair.

Naturally, starting another war is the answer to all our problems. That’s just what American presidents do. Trouble at home? Economy not so hot? Pesky Epstein files hounding you? A lot of exhausting bureaucracy in the way of your unilateral, constitutionally questionable, ambitions? Just go bomb some middle-eastern country! Nothing to see here folks. Look at the shiny shock and awe.

The constitution is an afterthought when it comes to foreign policy, and Trump — now fully Neocon 2.0 — doesn’t care one tiny bit about law or tradition or constitutional limitations on government. A neocon Trump admin is the hideous lovechild of two of the most noxious ideologies in modern American politics. An aggressive, lethal foreign policy combined with a nationalistic, isolationist America-first conservatism. What a Frankenstein’s monster.

I spent a lot of time (and suspect I will continue to spend a lot of time) critiquing the social justice movement on the left over the past fifteen years or so. Social justice is important to me, but the rise of overly woke performative social justice and bloodthirsty cancel culture, combined with an overzealous corporate buy-in, played right into the hands of the culture warriors on the right. The kind of discourse this leads to only benefits the powerful. Divide and conquer. Bread and circuses.

Then there is the AI question. The tech industry is gleefully saving face after the whole NFT debacle. AI is everywhere. AI is disrupting industries and killing jobs and we have no real plan, no real sense of how we’re supposed to recover from all this efficiency. White collar jobs are going the way of factory worker jobs. So many sectors are facing down the barrel of AI replacement, from coders to journalists to just about every office job in the country, not to mention the creative industries. I have spent the last year or so trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to do as Google AI search slowly eats away at my livelihood, chomp chomp chomp, chews us up and spits out the bones. AI writing is everywhere now. It all sounds like shit, and a lot of the time it’s blatantly innacurate, but it sure is efficient.

Uber drivers replaced taxis and self-driving cars will replace Uber drivers and while I realize this is the way it’s always been, given the lack of horse-drawn carriages at my disposal, it’s hard not to view the scale and speed of change with worry. I used to think of hover boards and jetpacks and populating the stars when I thought about the future. Now I imagine getting a self-driving Uber downtown, and after I say where I’m going the car is going to reply, “Oh hell yes, that’s a great idea! Would you like me to recommend some dining locations for you to enjoy?” and I’m just going to lose it.

Efficiency is the holy grail of capitalism. Productivity. We will be so productive, thanks to AI, we won’t know what to do with ourselves. Kids are growing up now with AI at their fingertips. No need to learn how to draw, to learn how to write, to learn how to play music or think critically. ChatGPT will do that for you. How do we sustain a free and innovative society when entire generations are being numbed and dumbed down by technology?

Is that too cynical? Maybe I’m just doing what every older generation has done when they peer down the ledge at the youth in dismay, the damned kids and their new slang and their weird culture, and say “back in my day…”

It’s not as though the older generations have done a very good job so far. Look at who we’ve elected. Biden was unfit to lead. There’s no denying this. He was too old and his mental decline was plain for all to see. Trump’s mental decline is just as obvious but Trump is more dangerous and his supporters, or at least his most passionate supporters, seem to have locked in. The sunk cost fallacy is real, or maybe it’s just more important to pwn the libs. I still see [TRUMP] clan-tags in Call of Duty, which is bizarre to me. Culty behavior. How many non-interventionist Trump supporters are now whole hog on Iran? Seems like quite a few. You can do all sorts of mental gymnastics when it’s your guy in charge. But it can always get worse. Trump could just be a precursor to something far more malevolent, something that a society too reliant on AI will be even less capable of resisting.

It’s all madness. The inmates have taken over the asylum. The guards have joined in. The doctors are passing around the good drugs. Things are getting better, sure, but for how much longer? How long can the powers-that-be continue to prop up the economy before the recession hits? There’s been a recession waiting in the wings since before COVID-19 and we’ve just been plastering bandaids on, hoping nobody will notice. All it takes is a little media scare and one really major stock market crash and then the whole house of cards comes a-tumblin’ down. Our president doesn’t care. He’s turned his sights overseas to the promised land, where missile strikes and malice gives this cabal of vampires all they need to be sustained forever and ever and ever amen. How long can we maintain a free society, a democracy built on the rule of law, when those entrusted with maintaining the law, with upholding social norms, are so unscrupulous? When ambition and power are all that matter, and ideology trumps both common sense and common decency, what then?

My only consolation at the moment is watching the rifts form on the right (rifts that have been forming for some time, but which have cracked open further as the Iran war rages on). Tucker Carlson called Trump’s remarks “vile on every level” and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones started wondering aloud whether Trump could be constitutionally removed from office. Candace Owens called Trump a “genocidal lunatic” and podcaster Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump in the latest election, said “A lot of people feel betrayed … he ran on ‘No more wars,’ ‘End these stupid, senseless wars,’ and then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it.”

All these political movements feel desperate to me, MAGA most of all, and it’s wild to see how fast they’ll eat their own (the woke left is also highly skilled in the art of cannabalism). But as quick as these groups are to self-destruct, they are just as quick to circle the wagons.

It will get worse before it gets better.

Update: Of course, right after I publish this a 2-week ceasefire with Iran was announced. I don’t think this changes much. We still have a president threatening to end an entire civilization over an unprevoked war we started. I’m glad that a ceasefire agreement has been reached and the oil will once again flow freely through the Straight of Hormuz, but it was flowing freely a couple months ago, before we dropped any bombs.

Oh hey, also, you should watch Ari Aster’s Eddington. It’s fantastic. Hits a little close to home in some ways, totally outlandish and over-the-top in others. A great little glimpse into the cultural and political tensions that fomented during the pandemic. If you enjoyed One Battle After Another, give this one a watch. Great satire of both rightwing craziness and performative social justice shenanigans. Here’s the trailer:

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