I’ve found it difficult to write online for some time now. I write on my own plenty, but as the internet is a venue for public consumption, it’s been tricky to develop a creative thesis for such that isn’t just a scorched-earth manifesto. In considering why this is, two basic ideas came to mind:

The first is that covid-19 is still around—and while we may be out of the Going outside may kill you part of the pandemic, the fact that this virus isn’t likely to leave the realm of concern for years. The fact it’s been phased out of media attention in the U.S. is reminiscent of the idea that the government just wants us all to forget it ever happened—lest we remember how they preferred we keep the economy going above public safety.

That’s a subtle dagger to the heart of this country. There is no longer a claim to be made that the state functions as anything other than a tool to enforce the needs of the economy. The only workers who were truly protected through the past few years were the well-educated, upper-middle class tech sector, and regardless of any one person’s politics, none could provide evidence that either administration did all it could to keep the people of this country safe and secure. We may not talk about it much, but that permeating idea that we are all on our own only grows stronger with each mass shooting or police killing or ecological disaster. They all only reinforce the government is willing to live with a horror show of a future instead of acting in the present, as they did before, and as they will again.

Secondly, the economic system the state protects pits us all against one another. The lines have all been drawn in the sand in terms of politics, so now culture wars create talking points about the ‘wokeness’ of major corporations and vanilla entertainment. No matter what a person may think, the only place they can safely have that thought is kept inside their head. Expressing it in any public fashion has, because of how the internet has grown under capitalism, opened it up for public critique. (This is why I haven’t had a comment section on this blog since 2006.)

Right now, even publishing ideas feels more hostile than it is, or ought to be. There’s a natural sense of alienation from the past few years that gets worse with each passing day, and then there’s the understanding that in a medium where everything is weaponized, any contribution is a de facto weapon. This is especially exhausting given that very little that exists online actually matters, and a vast majority serves only as a distraction from the failed state of reality.