Are We Witnessing A Collapse?

My professor for cross-department business administration was having a full blown crisis today. She told us she had to strip stuff from the curriculum for this class because of how much had changed just in the last week. Elon Musk and Trump are basically – um, how do I put this nicely? – disrupting the post-WWII world order in a way that is putting things upside down.

For the people who had been keeping up and thinking ahead, this is probably one of those “I told you so” moments. In a way recent events were inevitable in the current political, social, and cultural climate. But that doesn’t make the shock that it’s actually fucking happening, every bad thing we thought would happen if the US descended into a fascist1 oligarchy, any less devastating.

For the entire lecture, this woman was frantically trying to find different ways to tell us that everything as we know it was collapsing without ever uttering the word “collapse”.

It would’ve been fun to witness if this weren’t supposed to be an academic class (does the word “fact-based” mean anything these days?) and we were living through the word she refused to pronounce. I don’t blame her, though: she had to frantically update the class materials last minute and at least she was trying to convey what collapse means to a possibly way too sheltered audience.2

Sometimes I ask myself if it would’ve been better had Kamala Harris won. Maybe my business classes wouldn’t be so… tumultuous?

Credit’s given where credit’s due: she cautioned everyone from falling into the eco-fascist, human-loathing trap, reminded everyone that humans had been capable of coexisting with nature – and in many cases – nurtured biodiversity, and that a better world is more than possible. It’s natural.

What isn’t natural is the exploitation and violence of the last couple of centuries. That can only be maintained for so long. And then it goes boom, like right now. It may be billionaires tightening the bolts a little too much, but then everything going boom because people have had enough. I personally believe the boom has already happened and we will hear the ripples in a bit, if we aren’t doing so already!

  1. I have a feeling the word “fascist” is superfluous in this context because an oligarchy would eventually – even if not immediately – turn fascist. ↩︎

  2. I’m possibly generalizing, but my university does have a reputation for arrogance among students and wanting to be exclusive (because a majority are very, very rich). ↩︎

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