I’m re-reading Ready Player One and it’s hitting differently this time. As America hurtles towards something that might resemble a lackadaisical Civil War with Trump simply ignoring upcoming elections with his “I swear it’s a joke” Trump 2028 hat and his “it really isn’t” shit-eating grin, I don’t know that any evil mastermind could’ve engineered the downfall our country any more effectively than Trump’s regime has. Complete undermining of faith in elections, complete destruction of our international reputation. The emptying of America’s coffers with millions of dollars spent on no-bid contracts for lowbrow spectacle and billions spent on a voluntary war and its economic fallout, and now heading towards a trillion simply on interest payments.
And on a whim I’ve picked Earnest Cline’s book back up from the library, seeking something as nostalgic and friendly as the movie portrays the story and I’m reminded that in the BOOK it’s not simple “corporations are bad and ruining things” – the BOOK takes place in a world where people use an online world to escape a commercial and environmental wasteland, where economic ruin and constant wars mean even a nuclear blast is just a fifteen minute news cycle, and the lead protagonist, living out of a trailer with a dozen other people in Oklahoma City, encounters the concept of a single-family home with gentle, nostalgic disbelief.
And I can see us headed there.
No, I see us gleefully, willfully, HURTLING there.
I try not to be afraid of the future, but I don’t see a way to be optimistic about it. It makes it hard to DO anything while weighted down with the waiting.
An entire culture obsessed with 80s paraphernalia as an escapist fantasy from what’s out the broken windows doesn’t feel terribly different from those of us who can’t stop scrolling Instagram and Facebook because it puts off acknowledging what’s happening outside our triple-locked doors. We just have shittier production value and much lower standards.
As a child in high school, I enjoyed writing under the name Cassandra. That’s begun to feel right again.
It’s funny / not funny that the book didn’t feel as cynical before. As prophetic. The sadness of feeling that, in the last 15 years (since the book was written), the American collapse has turned from sci-fi warning to an in-process nightmare unfolding all around us. And no-one cares.
I was listening to an interview with a political talking head, and the interviewer was talking about affordability and he retaliated with the horror of guys in girls’ sports. The interviewer brought up the Iran war and this idiot fired back with the “Communist war on Thanksgiving”. It’s just so far beyond the pale of absurdity – but it’s worked and is working, and I just don’t see a future there. We’ll have an election in November, and I wish I could believe that even WITH a “blue wave” or “too big to rig” result that it was going to matter. In two years, with Trump snug in his ballroom / bunker like a pallid maggot, kept alive by doctors and makeup artists, AI-generated banners all over the city and AI videos making his speeches, he won’t be leaving Washington DC. Gold leaf, UFC and war until the bombs run out.
At least the Oasis has rules.
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