The Uselessness of Action When Staring Down the Barrel of Nuclear Destruction

I have been working on a cute gen x piece, all ‘born slippy’ electro shit, and a helping of my generation’s apathy and nihilism. Slacker as a way of life, as a pose and a philosophical position, is all well and good, invokes the right hint of nostalgia and that madeleine moment of being able to taste youth on the tongue, but what use is it when the world is ending? It feels kinda empty, decadent, useless and worthless. Who cares about nostalgia, who cares about music, who cares about art or the new Big Thief album (very good, incidentally) when Putin is threatening to continue down the road to WW3, and nuke the fucking lot of us?

I simply can’t find the enthusiasm. If all this is ending, I want to listen to Mick Jagger sound like he is from Kentucky instead of being from Kent, minus the ‘ucky’ singing alongside Keef’s good slide guitar. I want to smoke this entire eighth of weed with my feet up on the sofa, and get so stoned that the ceiling starts to move. I want to shut my eyes and remember better days and people I loved. I want to hug the boy and tell him how much better he has made my life. I want to see my darling Ruthie’s sweet face, and listen to her tell me to take it easy and enjoy life a bit in her lilting Welsh burr. I want to remember how once I bit into the juicy sweetness of life and sucked the apple dry. I want to walk in the sunshine, and let the San Francisco breeze cool my skin and breathe in some salty marine air without a damn mask on.

I am sure we all have things that we would like to do in case it is all coming to an end. I imagine vast hoards of us having an extra drink, slice of cake, a quiet day, an extra hug or two, all collectively huddling and wondering how our leaders allowed it all get to this point? Bunch of useless, incompetent fools, who do not have our best interests at heart. This is what happens when money and ‘economy’ is centered over humanity and our precious planet. I groan when I see some old Boomer in a ‘there is no plan(et) B’ teeshirt, but to be frank, some of us need reminding of that fact. We can’t spend money in the grave. I suppose those who have the most money see themselves surviving it all, it is only us poor and to them, we are all useless ‘eaters’ and consumers of precious resources that are not going to have access to some mountainous bunker complex. I hate these elites like I hate Abba and global warming.

There is a certain hopelessness to the situation. There is nothing any of us can personally do to stop this big slide into disaster. We have to rely on those who have continually let the world and all its inhabitants down. We have to rely on a failed patriarchy, run by old men who seem to have no use for the world, having had their time already. What is it about some men that they have no desire to see life go on? Are they so entitled that their race already more or less run, don’t see they have a responsibility to save some of it for the children and our future generations? Why are they so fucking selfish? Why is there no desire for life to carry on?

Usually human beings, facing the end of their life, can gain some comfort knowing that it all will carry on once we are gone. What happens to a soul to make that no longer a comfort but instead something they have no desire to see happen? How do they become so corrupt and self centered that they do not want their children’s children to see the sun rise, or the water on the shore of the lake lap, or the clouds and the fog burn off in the sunlight over the bay? Are they all so sure there will be a world capable of supporting life after they are done making money from their bombs and munitions, the economy of death?

Day six of this new reality. Covid has become history, a footnote, no longer a worry. There are bigger fish to fry, namely the survival of all of us ordinary people. The temptation is there to simply throw up my hands, give up, and cry in a corner. We have all had such a terrible couple of years with the pandemic, we are already tired out and demoralized. My heart is breaking for us all. We all just want to survive, we all just want to be happy, and have good days ahead of us. Like the Ukrainians, we all want our children to survive and to live in peace.

The Ukrainians have been denied peace by an evil invasion of their sovereign territory. I fear we are next, because once that madman has got done marching in there, he will not want to stop. He has the taste for blood, suffering and expansion, he has become a Hitler or a Stalin, devoted to evil destruction and as I type those words, I wonder, how dangerous it is for me to say them? Really the question should be how dangerous it is for us westerners not to say such things? How dangerous for our freedom, our souls and our future not to stand up for what is good and right, not to stand up for everything we love, and the future of our planet and our precious children.

I sincerely hope all of you enjoy today, it really does feel as if it is a real possibility that things about about to get even more bleak and desperate in ways none of us could ever have predicted. To dismiss all this as ‘willy waving’ to use a cute British phrase much loved by some of my dearest friends, could well be naive, but then again, what is the point in not hoping all of this will simply fizzle out. Us humans do so much of beauty, of interest, of good, we also do so much that is truly evil. I just hope the good wins out. I quite like writing silly little articles about pop culture, I don’t really want to pivot to doom and gloom and war and destruction. Come on, boys, no more choosing to allow your bodies to be used as weapons of war by old men who make fortunes from death and destruction.

I found some sunflowers for sale. I bought one and put it in a vase on my window seat. It is not much, but for what little it means from here in my safe little apartment, I stand for the Ukraine. The elderly woman and her sunflower seeds standing up to the Russian soldiers might be the bravest thing I have seen in a while.

Peace.