Slouching Towards Idiocracy

Disclaimer: I’m in a mood so I’m just going to rant here and not worry about trying to provide examples or citations to support any of my opinions. Just know that I am a middle-aged female who has been paying way too close attention to the news since around 2016, and I am heartsick and tired. Here goes:

People these days think that conceiving of outlandish, grandiose, horrible, unthinkable things isn’t enough, but they must make these things happen, must bring them about, to prove that they can enact their horrific visions, have total agency over their lives, the rest of humanity be damned. Being told that you can do anything you want, be anyone you want, is the greatest fallacy of western civilization; it has raised up some petulant, spoiled ass children. They forgot to teach the other side of the coin, that if you can do anything, so can everyone, so one must consider that you live in a world with other people who might have competing viewpoints/interests/needs/wants.

Case in point, Elon Musk. He wants to be the world’s first trillionaire, and it’s not enough to merely think of it, he must now bring it about, no matter that it means he is indirectly causing incontrovertible environmental, planetary, and human damage. One person hoarding most of the world’s wealth, that is not how it should be; just because it can be told in a fairy tale, does not mean that one should work to bring it about ‘just to see’ what it’s like. And yet, here we are. And there are so many other examples. The ‘inevitability’ of an AI take over, allowing everyone to access guns everywhere, building huge resource-sucking data centers, expunging immigrants from the country like rats. All of this ugliness, we’ve been here before as a species, but we don’t remember, so it must not have been that bad. Right?

That brings me to the point: we don’t remember things. Information and learning are generational; every 20-40 years there is a turnover of cultural memory, and it’s no surprise that, ultimately, no one cares about the lessons of the past. I remember learning history, and not giving a fig about it, because I didn’t ‘feel’ the reality of what the struggle was for the people at the time; I naively thought ‘whew, thank goodness we solved all of those problems back then.’ And now I’m living through ‘unprecedented times’ myself, unable to really give voice to the experience as I’m living it. Those of us alive and under 80 today, we didn’t live through the world wars, we weren’t there when Jim Crow was real, when women were only allowed to be wives and couldn’t vote, when children died from diseases…other, braver, more patient people were there, and they made changes that took YEARS to bear fruit, and yet they did it anyway.

We learned those things in school because at some point as a civilization we must have decided that we had to teach future generations about the gains of the past so that we didn’t waste time recreating the wheel, or reinventing refrigeration; we were supposed to be building on the knowledge of our forefathers and foremothers to make an even greater human society for all. But we lost our way somewhere in there (maybe in the 1970s), and now it’s almost like we naively want to go back to those before times just to “see what it was like” for ourselves, like some kind of living diorama Disney ride.

Someone is making money on all of this, I guarantee you, they are burning Rome for profit, but we are the ones suffering; they’re building bunkers for themselves and their progeny, knowing that ultimately it will come down to the last rich person alive atop an ash heap of bones, and they just want it to be them, the the Amazing Race for billionaires. They don’t give the rest of us or the earth another thought; they are products of this brave new society as well, with little education and zero empathy, but all of the money behind them. And because their money insulates them now, they assume it will continue to insulate them into a dystopian future, and fail to see how their actions are bringing about the end times. Never mind of course that there might not be much use for their money if there’s no clean water, trees, vegetation, animals, or other people to tend to those things.

Only now it’s worse because a few people in power are choosing this new backward/bizarro reality for the rest of us, all for greed and control, not because they’re holy crusaders (don’t be fooled, although I guess one could argue it has always been a ‘few’ people in power making these sorts of decisions for the ‘rest of us’). The people in power now know that most people, like themselves, are easily fooled, don’t have a chewy moral center, don’t have a sense of history, don’t have empathy for their neighbors. I worry that, not only will we be forced to relive those harsh realities again, but also that we will get stuck there this time. We, like Marty McFly, won’t make it back to the future, because they will have ripped up the picture showing that it existed.

Listen, we won’t get a do-over because people won’t see a need to escape this brave new luxe world, they won’t have the patience and endurance to change it again by degrees for all of human history. In the 21^st century we are an impatient people, raised on immediate gratification, television and the internet; we don’t know what it means to stand up for something, and we don’t have a soul anymore. Those of us who don’t like this new upside-down medieval reality, the ‘woke’ leftists, will either be imprisoned or put to death (if these people have their way), leaving behind these crooked and morally bankrupt demons to run things and rewrite human history. Spoiler: this time the corporations will really win.

And here’s the thing: I’m also impatient for the future I was promised that is being summarily demolished before my eyes, daily, and on fast-forward for the last one and a half years. All I can do is grieve what I will never have, because now that I’m 50, I’m running out of time to ‘get mine’, to ever know what retirement could have been. The Boomers were the first and last generation to have and be able to take proper retirement. From now on, it’s the haves and have-nots in extremis; people who have money will be fine; the rest of us are so screwed because they are destroying what little hard-won social safety net there was. They’d better legalize physician-assisted suicide again because that will be the only human way to opt out of this insipid reality when you’re no longer able to be a contributor to it. We won’t be allowed to go gentle into that good night.

To recap, we can conceive of impossible-seeming things without giving a thought to the consequences of those things (like ginormous data centers and detention centers), and bring these awful, unimaginable things about, consequences be damned, just because we thought of it and because it makes someone money. That coupled with the fact that modern society also lacks a moral center and has cultural amnesia, I’d say we are primed for the tangible end of humanity. After all the hard-won victories over injustice throughout human history, it’s not enough that we have made amazing progress beyond dirt-floor dwellings and can have fruit out of season; no, we must start repealing hard-fought laws that people died for, because we don’t remember why we had those laws in the first place.

“Rule of law? Who needs that when we can have chaos and rape and pillage whenever we want! Only the powerful/those with the most guns rule! Surely women and minorities were exaggerating about how bad it was back then; after all, didn’t people like chattel slavery and women liked wifely servanthood and dying in childbirth? Sure it was rampant with disease and death, but but did you SEE those plantations? People knew their place. That was true luxury.” –Some MAGAt somewhere

Lack of social/cultural memory, overactive imaginations without consequences—it’s like we’re being run by giant toddlers who never developed a super ego to teach them to do unto others, etc.

I especially grieve for the future generations, our children, whom we are raising to be active participants in democracy, not to passively believe that politicians and governments would protect us. The US exists in a world where other, more civilized countries can and do provide health care to their citizens, but the US persists in thinking it is the wealthiest, most enviable nation because it war-mongers and makes money for its capitalists. Corporations are individuals now, and their needs must be considered before the needs of the people, because jobs, jobs being quickly overtaken by AI and ever-escalating greed.

Life should be about more than what labor can be extracted from you; life is meant to be lived and enjoyed; if we were careful custodians of it, the Earth would provide for us all. But the people of the US have long been brainwashed into thinking this is the best of all possible countries, while every lesson we didn’t learn in history class screams the opposite. The good guys don’t win in the end, heaven help us all.

Hey! We survived 2025

I make a family calendar every December for the coming year, using pictures from the year that’s ending. It’s a fun way to look back over the previous year and remember ‘where we were’ each month of the year. I just finished our 2026 calendar, and boy what a year it has been! On the personal front, we moved into our new-construction home this year, which felt like arrival for us after living in an apartment since our move back from Louisiana to Upstate NY in June 2023. We also attended three protests, something I hadn’t done since college in the mid-90s.

The New York Times had a 2025 retrospective this week that had a pic/event for each day of each month of this year so far, and it was a reminder of just how much cascading and crashing news there has been, one thing after another, and how emotionally exhausting it has all been. Since January this year has gotten darker and darker in this country, but we survived. We persisted. We pushed back, we protested, we took up space, we said NO. Things finally feel like they’re at a turning point out there, but I can’t help but think that it will still get darker before it’s all over. How will we view 2025 when we look back on it 5-10 years from now? Will it be the year we began to sign our democracy away to the highest bidder? Will 2026 be the year the Talibangelical fascists took over? Or will we all finally come to our senses as prices climb higher and higher, wages stagnate, and people die from lack of health insurance? Where will we draw the line and say ‘enough’ with the cosplay, the emperor has no clothes, off with their heads, etc?

How it will end is as-yet unclear, and I think we probably need a revolution in terms of freedom–I mean corporations have more freedom and protections than individual humans as of right now, and to me, that is the key issue underlying all issues. We may never get back to the type of reality we had pre-2016; I hope we all emerge stronger and empowered on the other side of all of this. Frankly, I don’t have a lot of hope left for humanity. All I can do is focus on my own nuclear family as we try our best to get through it all together.

I have no way of knowing, but I’m pretty sure my MAGA-mother down in South Louisiana has doubled and tripled down on things, and likely remains loyal to Daddy Solipsist-Narcissist-Psychopath (I refuse to type the creature’s name here). My mother was never one to admit wrongdoing or misjudgement, so I’m sure she’s still towing the line. It’s likely she’s alienated even more family than just me by this point. Before I deleted my Facebook account back in August, there was a picture of her in full propaganda gear, hat and all. We all know these die-hards would rather burn it all down than admit wrongdoing. It won’t end well.

Midwinter Meditations of an Estranged Daughter

It’s finally the end of the year, that dark time (literally dark in upstate NY) of year when everyone reflects on the past year and where the future might take them. There has been much buzz on social media lately about whether or not people going ‘no-contact’ with their families is a generational trend, with apparently Oprah and Mel Robbins weighing in, telling people who have done this to ‘make up’ with their families before it’s ‘too late.’ This is no different than those well-meaning family members that all who have gone no-contact have who told us “well that’s your mother” or “you’ll regret this one day,” once again putting the blame and responsibility for reconciliation squarely on the child’s shoulders, thereby expiating the parents’ responsibility in causing the desire to go no-contact in the first place.

Here’s the thing: people have been estranged from their families since humans have existed. Siblings have gone off to make their way in the world, women have run off and gotten married to escape home; people have left enmeshed families to strike out on their own. Maybe not everyone in these situations has become completely estranged, maybe they’ve maintained an illusion of contact with their families, sending letters or making occasional calls, but still never bodily returning to visit once they’ve left. This is not a ‘trend’ or a ‘Gen-X’ thing, it’s part of life for many. We are just hearing about it more now because of social media and widespread therapy.

Personally, I don’t think adhering to the nuclear or extended family well into adulthood is healthy or natural. Animals don’t do this, and what are we but animals? Your parents are supposed to nuture you into adulthood, to give you that unconditional love and security you need to become a resposible adult and member of society. If you’re like my husband, and you were lucky enough to have good parents who did this more or less successfully, you grow up and move out and build your own family. It’s the circle of life. There are no perfect parents; there is instead a job to be done, and ‘doing right’ by your kids really is nothing more than nuturing, putting the kids first by making them feel loved and cared for, so that they can develop identities of their own and eventually seek their own way in the world. Healthy parents have a sense of their own identify and individuality, and want the same for their kids.

It is when parents abdicate this responsibility–whether because of their own developmental issues or a personality disorder–parents who jealously hold onto their kids and try to dominate and control every aspect of their lives, and in extreme cases, abuse them–that, if they’re lucky, the children eventually grow tired of this and break away from the parents in order to live. There are those of us who had a ‘failure to launch’ situation where our needs weren’t properly met as kids, so we keep trying to please our parents well past the expiration date.

I went no-contact in May 2023 when I moved out of Louisiana and back to New York with my husband and daughter, without saying a formal goodbye to my birth family. They knew we were leaving, they didn’t know when exactly, but they knew. I’d informed my mother and sister that we were leaving the previous June. The for-sale sign went up in our yard in April, the POD was outside of our home for 30 days, then we closed on May 23rd and started driving to New York immediately afterwards. I was 47 years old when I left ‘home’ again for the second and final time. I haven’t spoken to anyone in my family since. It was finally an end to what I now see was a lifelong effort to gain my mother’s love and acceptance. Time and reflection have shown me that she likely never loved me, and that is not an easy thing to admit to yourself, that you weren’t loved by your parent. I had plenty of other family (now dead) who did love me, but for my mother, I think that I was something that happened to her (pregnant at 18), not someone she loved.

Why did I move back to Louisiana after 15 years away? I still beat myself up over this life-altering and nearly marriage-ending decision. All I can say is, such is the power that a withholding parent’s approval can wield over a child who has always been seeking that approval, I guess. The even bigger mystery is how quickly my mother’s desire for me to move home evaporated once I got there. Her best friend told me once off-handedly that, before we moved back, my mother used to wax on about how us moving back would make her ‘so happy.’ A couple of months of me and my 4-year old living with her (the situation was supposed to be temporary until my husband came down to join us after selling the house), that quickly turned into selfish rage and cruelty, directed at me.

My sweet four-year old daughter, who would gleefully run out to greet her grandmother as she arrived home from work every day, and me, contributing to the household groceries and cleaning, we were suddenly a burden to my mother, something to complain about. She absolutely would not help me with my daughter, would never even give her a bath, and had no sympathy for the fact that I was missing my husband and partner, while also working a new job and taking my daughter to and from daycare daily. I rarely went out, and I remember her watching my daughter exactly once when I had a company Christmas party to attend. (It became such an ordeal to get her to watch her own granddaughter that I just stopped asking.) I gave my mother a pass for a long time about her changed attitude towards us being there, ascribing it to her being stressed about having too many people in her house. Other than the two of us there was my grandmother with Alzheimer’s, plus my younger sister going through a separation that often landed her on my mom’s couch during that time. It wasn’t until a few years later, after my mother breezily said to me, TWICE, to make sure I didn’t miss it, “Well I guess I’m not close to your daughter because I didn’t really know her as a baby,” deftly blaming me for her lack of relationship with my daughter because we lived in New York, I finally saw more clearly than ever that my mother was never going to change. Not only was she not going to change, she was in fact going to perpetrate her disdain for me into the next generation with my daughter, that’s when the scales fell off my eyes and I knew I had made the wrong decision to move back to Louisiana. That decision will haunt me for the rest of my life.

These things are on my mind again this time of year. I have made a clean break at this point, and I no longer have any feelings of guilt about it. Taking my sister’s lead, I no longer send Christmas presents to my nieces; why do I need to keep up the pretense if she’s not? So for someone like Oprah (who apparently was estranged from her own family) to tell people they need to suck it up and make amends with their families, it’s really a slap in the face. The cycle was never going to break for me, and at some point, you have to choose yourself and your own family, if for no other reason than simple self-preservation. I see now that I internalized a lot of things growing up as being ‘my fault’ when I shouldn’t have. My mom wasn’t all bad, I wasn’t physically abused (except for those few years when she let her boyfriend beat the shit out of me with a belt as a kid–a story for another time), but that doesn’t mean I owe her a relationship after all of the hurt she has caused me, intentional or not. She will never change, will never accept responsibility for her actions. She doesn’t think she has done anything wrong, ever. I am 100% sure she has made all of this my fault in how she explains it to my extended family back home. The nasty words she spoke to me back in September 2022 still sometimes haunt me: “No one cares what you think.” Ok then, I’m out. And this time, I mean it.

They know where to find you.

A meme crossed my path this week that said something to this effect. It was about healing from toxic relationships; the ‘they’ is of course the people who hurt you, and whom you have cut off. I realize now that taken out of context it sounds a tad threatening, but the sense behind it was something like, Don’t feel bad for continuing to be in No Contact, because they know where to find you if they were interested. But they’re not.

I officially went no-contact with my mother (and subsequently my entire family) back in May 2023 when we left Louisiana for a second and final time. I blocked her number as we were driving out of state, and haven’t looked back. These last couple of years I still bought gifts for my three nieces, and I texted my sister happy 40th birthday this year. But we don’t ‘talk.’

I have zero idea of what has befallen my mother or family since, have no idea what she says about me, or how she rationalizes my leaving to anyone who will listen. I can only imagine based on her past behavior. I realized about a year ago that I had forgotten to block her number on my daughter’s phone–and she left a message on her phone out of the blue, emphatically demanding that my then 12-year old daughter call her. Blocked. She will still send the occasional guilt-induced birthday or Christmas card my daughter’s way. Last year she sent her a check for Christmas, which I promptly tore up and threw away. We don’t need your guilty conscience money, lady, and we don’t need your stupid cards either.

The degree to which I am DONE with this woman shocks even me sometimes. But what this meme made me realize was, this isn’t all my fault, it was NEVER my fault, I made a choice going on three years ago now, and I haven’t looked back. Is it hard to explain to people who don’t know my past (and even to some who do)? Yes, of course it can be hard. Do I feel guilt, even a little bit, for shutting her out so completely? Actually, no, no I really don’t. It was a long time coming, and I am still healing and reeling from realizing that this shit was going on my entire life. Does that make me heartless? Maybe? But only when it comes to her.

Implicit in the meme was the following wisdom: If they wanted to, they would. Full stop. Stop waiting on people to make amends, to show interest, to reach out, because if they wanted to, they would. Thing is, I haven’t been waiting for anything, I have zero expectations when it comes to her, but the meme made me realize, she has my email address, my sister isn’t blocked by me. There are ways to reach out and apologize for her behavior. If she wanted to, she would.