DDystopia

FERNANDEZ

In deciding for oneself whether or not to approve of governments, one ought consider what aspirational goals define that government. One understands that Utopia is impossible, but one ought still consider what sort of Utopia governments’ policies and actions are leading to.

In Trumptopia, they do not like immigrants. Every immigrant is subject to suspicion especially if they are Mexican or Muslim. Walls must be built to keep them out, the more physical the wall, the better. The fall of the Berlin wall was our generation’s most celebrated achievement. Trumptopia will build a wall around itself. Meanwhile, the Russians will be raising toasts to each other for this ironic victory.

Future generations will have to wait to see the fall of this wall. Minorities are hardly better off unless they are Russians. Russians get away with anything.

When Trump says, “America First!” you might easily construe he is talking about white America. Non-white America is only Second America; all the more so, America’s poor. Take care of big business and the problem of poor America will be solved. It will be solved not by better social services, not by better health care, not by better education, not by any means other than good old-fashioned trickle-down economics. This is principally the same mythical way poverty has been “solved” since the beginning of the industrial age. Though we know poverty has gone worse more than better over the years. In Trumptopia, the poor take care of themselves or die.

The poor are poor not because of big industry, not because of big business or plundering banks, not because of brainless capitalism. They are poor because of themselves. In Trumptopia, the earth is cooling down, not warming up. Coal is clean. Research on alternative and clean fuels are a waste of time and resources. They threaten big business. And if it seems as if America will be left behind by the rest of the world because of this, if it seems as if Trumptopian policies will not lead America to a better future, it doesn’t matter. What people can be made to believe is more important. What they can be made to feel now is more important. Fire them up with slogans no matter how awful and empty.

In Trumptopia, media and even the intelligence community, all manner of information gathering that cannot be controlled by the regime are unwelcome. They are dangerous. All manner of dissent in Trumptopia are acts against America. Freedom of speech means calling all manner of criticism fake news. Freedom of speech is flooding people’s minds with so much fake news they cease to discern right from wrong, good from evil, truth from fiction. There is no truth, only slogans and fodder-rhetoric targeted simply to entertain the base.
Dutertopia is not much different.

Like Trumptopia, it is dystopia. It is DDystopia. Here, America, the European Union, the United Nations, the rest of the civilized world are out. China is in, notwithstanding recent developments in certain places that fell under Chinese influence. Consider North Korea. Consider Myanmar. In DDystopia, drugs are the main problem, not inequality, not poverty, and certainly not the well-being of democratic institutions. If they are problems, they are problems of lesser concern.

If China builds over our territory, we cannot do anything about that. So we make the most of it by looking forward to loans and dole-outs our children and future generations will be paying for. They will have a lot to pay for especially if they continue to lose their democratic rights, their freedom and future.

There are many things Trumptopia and DDystopia have in common. It is the willingness to make immediate capital out of our collective future. The idea is to use up the future to fund the present and short-term goals, especially those goals which ensure the loyalty of the base even if these obviously put longer term goals in jeopardy. The idea of delimiting the use of coal to achieve immediate development is only metaphor for this clear contradiction: Utopia without a future.