New life plan: Live until I’m 90, so I can see the world make any progress at all

I’m going to have to be very patient. It’s more than waiting just four years, which will indeed be a long four years. The consequences of the Supreme Court especially will stall any societal progress for 50+ years. So I really will have to wait until the 2070s…

Still trying to make sense of all this. Once upon a time, I had hope. I’m not a naturally optimistic person, but there were rational reasons. Real signs. Basically, there was a narrative that Bernie Sanders was this generation’s Barry Goldwater. Although he lost, he inspired a new generation which would signal a shift in governing philosophy over the coming decades . These things take time. In the past it was Goldwater’s failed 1964 presidential campaign that signalled the end of the Roosevelt era, and solidified in the 1980s when Reagan was triumphant, and then Reaganism basically defined the next 40 years no matter who was in office.

Well, now it’s very clear now that Sanders is not the future, despite polling young voters or whatever. It’s MAGA that is going to set the defining tone for the next four to five decades.

It’s such a shame, because there are serious problems with the world due to neoliberal economic policies. And the only remedy is to bring back what worked in the New Deal era, as democratic socialist countries have already proven themselves around the world to have the highest standard of living, it truly is the only path to fixing anything. Unions, higher wages, environmental regulations, labor rights, minority rights, police brutality, housing costs, education costs, all those issues!

And yet now we are on a path to make every single one of those far, far worse. A second Gilded Age, with even more income inequality than the first. Historians note that rising inequality is a major sign of civilizations falling. So apparently, when these problems worsen it just causes people to become more bitter and aggrieved, blaming marginalized groups for why they can’t afford to live, and whining about niche ‘woke’ issues, and generally pushing the Overton Window further and further to the bigoted right.

Why does it have to be this way? There is an international trend that all over the world incumbent parties have lost due to voters being mad about inflation. Just goes to show how irrational voters are, since right-wing governments with austerity had it worse, but whoever is in charge gets blamed and most don’t look at what’s happening around the world.

It’s so crazy how random history is—he lost in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then he won in 2024 because of the pandemic-caused inflation.

With all the hindsight over the election and the campaigning, shoulda been more left or shoulda been more centre, who knows what might have been. Biden was a risk in 2020, but it seemed to have paid off that time. Then it turned out not to work well. He probably should have withdrawn earlier and allowed a primary, but then who knows many it was inevitable that the opposition party would win. Or maybe it’s simply sexism that doomed America. Debates and ridiculous shitshow of a campaign and a billion dollars wasted, none of it seemed to matter in the end.

(I just wish so much he went away in 2020, and at least it would have been a normal Republican destined to win now. But normal Republicans are essentially extinct.)

Misinformation online also seems to be a huge factor in why the world is getting crazier. Social media completely ruining the very concept of objective reality. It even appears that the youngest generation isn’t getting more progressive, as earlier assumed, but rather are influenced by far right podcast bros. This misogyny is only going to cause more social unrest as young women go in the other direction and resentment will build up even more.

The 21st century, frankly, sucks. The second half of the 20th century, for all its problems, did have quality of life steadily improve with each generation. Now it is going backwards, by every metric from income to lifespans, and it’s going to continue to go backwards. There’s very little reason to have any hope.

And the goddamn climate. We’ve all given up. We are a society gone mad. Leaving the Paris accords, denying reality. Rising temperatures are becoming increasingly obvious, we are all feeling it, and we do nothing but vote in science deniers. Absolute madness.

Sigh, it’s so frustrating. It’s like the world we live in is a badly written story. There’s no Karma. No arcs. All those scandals, all those laws broken, the indictments and felonies and proven sexual assault. It doesn’t matter.I was stupid enough to believe that there was a trend towards justice, that problematic old men get theirs in the end, and the gross far right had kept losing elections since 2018 so that seemed like a rational take. But looks like all that was happening was normalization.

Turns out, #MeToo and Black Lives Matter did not have the biggest impact on history. Old-fashioned bigotry was the future after all. Herein Elon Musk gets to destroy government services, RFK Jr gets to destroy healthcare, all those horrible trolls online get to feel vindicated. Furthermore, expect AI slop to grow even more prevalent on a dead internet devoid of truth, as Zuckerberg said himself. 

It’s certainly possible, even extremely likely, that the economy will implode and Democrats will win a trifecta in 2028. But by then, I believe, it will be too late. The opposition party, already corporatized and lame, will be pushed rightwards. There will be no going back. It will be too hard. And no revolution rebooting the system either. The damage will simply be permanent. 

No one is going to save us.

Personally, I never wanted to believe in the Great Man theory of history. It gives individuals too much credit. But it looks undeniable now that it’s his world, that fucker, and we’re just living in it. 

So, who knows what exactly will be, but for me it’s going to have to be a lesson in patience. If I am to have any sense of optimism, it will be for the very long-term. I will wait out the next 50 years, see if I can experience some progress in my lifetime, and then at 90-something I’ll allow myself to have hope again…