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“How about we close our eyes. A letter, an invitation, to come away. To start again.”
Humane people will be tjanking at this point in the sublime movie The Last Letter from your Lover, but not your hardy Eastern Cape hack, who cries only in front of the donkeys.
I had been looking for something all day to lift me out of the dark hellhole into which US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk had cast me — along with most rational, peace-loving people.
Everywhere I looked the “Tube” turned my insides out.
The very worst of human character is now in power with his frightening, far-right sympathising world’s richest man, ex-Pretoria boytjie Elon Musk by his side.
How quickly it felt we were all back in the days of confederation, a dreadful Republican world full of bile for the rest of non-Aryan society, as in all of us but for a tiny sliver.
So many executive orders zinging through the airwaves reversing rights of women, health rights, rights of employees, racism, deportation and the stripping of citizenship rights, bullying Denmark over “buying” Greenland, humiliating Colombians by deporting them in chains in a US military aircraft. It was televised blitzkrieg.
Everywhere you looked, just another assault on human rights and democracy, relentless and intentional — the felon president turning a leading democracy into a fascist AI tech platform, held in power by billionaire oligarchs.
By the way, these are not my terms, they are being circulated on YouTube; all about the “tech bros” led by Musk.
I was fed a fascinating insight by the alternative channel, DiEM25 in a piece titled “Elon Musk’s Move into Politics” where none other than science fiction author, activist and journalist Cory Doctorow spoke out against stuff I had never heard of, such as his exchange with Musk over trade unions in science fiction novels penned by the sci-fi legend Iain Banks and referencing another famous scribe, William Gibson.
Gibson, who created the “cyberpunk” sci-fi genre which describes how technology and power fall into the hands of nihilistic tech fascists, had often said: “Cyberpunk is a warning, not a suggestion”.
I am a fan of sci-fi, but also make a living from hard facts, the only thing wanted in life, according to Charles Dickens’s Mr Gradgrind in Hard Times.
So to hear suggestions that these sci-fi plots are starting to play themselves out in real society is profoundly shocking.
Doctorow and friends talk about tech bros — all those guys in the front row at Trump’s inauguration, with his cabinet in the next row, telling us who is ranked where in terms of importance — the money and then the politicians.
Money, clearly, speaks way louder than politics for Trump.
It has been said that all the social rights cuts serve only one purpose — to make up the cash hole created by gargantuan tax cuts doled out to the corporate oligarchs. This is the new language, people, and we had better start getting our tongues around this stuff.
Doctorow says: “I feel some personal responsibility because there is a cadre of tech billionaires who have read our dystopias and mistaken them for business plans.”
As humans become mesmerised by screens and big-tech content, it becomes crucial that we shake ourselves out of it, and get out to suck in some of the fast-waning fresh air — also under threat by Trump’s often belched-out slogan: “Drill baby drill!”
It’s all about pushback, but when we are not quite sure what it is exactly we are meant to be pushing back against, then it’s back to the start again.
The story of “techno-feudalism”, “cloud capital” and, wait for it, “Muskism”.
This holds that there are in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, and out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
Doctorow says Musk has absorbed just enough of the issues in his orbit to be able to deploy them tactically in his drive to promote conservatism.
He talks about the “myth building” around Musk who has “bought everything successful he’s done, from SpaceX to Tesla to Donald Trump”.
Anyway, Musk has X to promote his responses to criticism but I suspect he has crossed the line, and his behaviour will be remembered by democratic South Africans as truly cringeworthy.
But hey, don’t feel sorry for Trump and his new “Dogey” because their abusive first days in power have already reached deep, even into East London with US-funded health organisations being shut down by a Trump ban.
This includes support for the campaign against HIV-Aids.
All of this feels unbelievably burdensome and the natural response is to take to bed with the fans on because the humidity is drilling me, baby, absolutely drilling me.
Then came the spring of silent rain — Dr Beorn Uys’s rain gauge measured 125mm in two days!
The oracle of kindness was telling me to get up, take a bike ride (but did not say “Go round the corner and get a slice of caramel cheesecake”).
And then I decide to “paws” and think about the crazy cat ladies of Buffalo City.
They don’t waste their lives doom-scrolling, stressing about the sci-fi horsemen of the apocalypse and feeling sorry for themselves.
They get out there and do something only the best souls on earth understand, help other animals.
On Tuesday, as I was scribbling this, one of these animal activists broke her leg properly in two places working with puppies — fell on site and broke fibia and tibia.
“I am about to go into surgery,” Amber Wiggill said.
All this tech stuff is junk really, grey cyber-mist.
It’s out in the real dirty grey stuff, the grotty cement and rubbish-strewn open spaces where these majestic cyberpunk cats strut their stuff, staying clear of those dreadful aliens on two legs — but for the ones who come with hearts aglow. And traps — the best way to protect the feral cat colonies.
These are our true champions and I nominate you all for a Deloris Koan Local Animal Heroine award. Here is one for you, and you and you!
Now could the rain move off, the sewage stop spilling into our waters, and can I have a swim again?
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