A conspiracy would be better. All you’d have to do is bust it open, out the Illuminati, take down the Lizard People, whatever. In real life, the conspiracies aren’t like that. They are shortsighted arrangements made by petty animals, not the superpowerful world-dominating enterprises we hear about from the paranoid.

They are “think tanks,” board meetings, organized crime, third world juntas, first world Strangelove war rooms. They are just groups of assholes trying to do asshole things for power and money, and in so doing they are trapped, serving the same animal instincts that have had us rocketing toward extinction.

They don’t control shit. Of course they control their fiefdoms. They can make like Mitch McConnell’s fuckboys and kill thousands of us to save a few bucks for their corporate fam. But at the end of the line? They’re owned by nature.

Not in the “mother earth will get revenge” hippy sense, but in that they are driven to eat up every resource like locusts, vie for every advantage until everyone is fucked and nothing is left, just like everyone else in this hellworld we’ve created.

A conspiracy, in the Alex Jones sense, would be better, because it would mean someone, anyone, has control of what’s going to happen to us. Someone would be able to finagle their way through the ongoing ecological calamity, hide out in the hollow earth or move to space in arks, whatever. But a giant pile of animals fucking animals fucking animals? No control, no quarter, no safety for anyone.

Xtian fundamentalists are fond of referring to backslides toward the Dark Ages as “Awakenings.” Social justice activists – particularly African Americans fighting racism – use the slogan “Stay woke.” And of course, conspiracy bros have their classic exhortation to the “sheeple.” Who is awake and who is asleep? Safe to guess what I think.

I think a lot more people than ever before are starting to wake up to the realities we’re dealing with, the danger we’re in, and what will ultimately need to be done about it. But is it too late? I feel like there’s still room to hope, but it’s slim as fuck. Long live the fighters.

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