“And we are so fucked”
Said the beautiful girl across from me
Postface to our discussion of politics, artificial intelligence, books, and the state of the world
But who had not yet mentioned a boyfriend
With both of us away from home
remaining unsaid
We live in the future
and the future sucks
A future none of us asked for
The evidence is all around
This backwater town
We find ourselves in
As exhibit A
The dead businesses and dying streets
The remains of chain stores that just can’t make it work
A place where there is no future
But the people still believe in the dream
Spoon-fed illusions of flags and evermore meaningless phrases
used to sell things we don’t need
In the name of being a good citizen, a good consumer
But it is the same nightmare that traps and eviscerates them
That traps and eviscerates us
Not quite such a stranger in this stranger land
A view of the world through glasses of red, white, and blue
And of being the best because that’s all we’ve ever been told
A freedom that imprisons its adherents
Who have a vision of how things should be
and yet weald tools of abhorrence
Unless you are the other
The lies have a seductive sweetness
Like overt flattery to get you into bed
But I’m a big city liberal, even if those labels don’t work for my brand of social
deconstruction
These are not villains
Not even victims
They are the ones who believe
The ones who’s attention is stolen
Like land
Labor
And capital before it
Those who put their trust in oligarchs and plutocrats
Who are we
to judge them
for finding the face of God
In the rapture of evangelical nonsense
Not selling souls
But giving them away to make lives a little easier
Like liquidating possessions with blind faith
To open heavens gates a little wider
While those same oligarchs and plutocrats
Are searching for the face of God
In machine learning snake oil
The new gods of Super Artificial Intelligence
With trillions for those first past the post
God code in their pocket
The only price
The enshitification of the world
One water and power guzzling data center
At a time
What does the future of the future hold
As serfs of technofudalism
Sharecropping in a dopamine fueled A.I. slop hellscape?
A world of abundant productivity
Yet without labor to sell
We become congregants in the cult of abundance
Without income
Therefore, no tax
No representation
without taxation
It works both ways everyone
Just ask the Saudis
Thou shall not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind
As they say on the plains of Arrakis
We have forgotten the lessons of John Henry
A man famous through song
for dying battling a machine
Although more likely
A man exploited
A man of color
A man in prison
A man who became the model for Superman and Captain America
The models for modern American Gods
We are unable to make peace with God
Never mind the devil
The continued anthropomorphizing of technology
Without sympathy or empathy for people
Blame determinism and move on
As adults die in mass shootings in churches
While their children survive
Because they’ve been trained since kindergarten to run, hide, or fight
What happened to the world?
It’s like I’m on normal speed and
Everyone else is skipping the beat
Listening to a different song
“Goodnight,” she said with a hug
“We are all fucked”
And I went to my hotel room alone.
Image “The Idol of Monopoly” by Paul Krafft
Word Outlet 