In light of the recent, tragic developments in Western politics, I think all of us who grew up with some hope that the world was finally on a progressive path after millennia of strife, oppression, exploitation, misery, poverty and war; had all our optimism dashed in the last couple of decades.

Personally I would put the beginning of the end of optimism to the epoch of the Thatcher/Reagan axis of greed and dominion. I want to point out in the strongest possible terms I was never a left winger, per se.
Having said that I WAS eternally resolutely opposed to the right wing and, goes without saying, deadly opposed to Fascism.

Yet here we are in 2024 suddenly finding ourselves neck deep in so called democratic nations turning to the worst kind of Nazism. That we have gone on supporting genocidal, colonialist polities around the world is a given. But now the bare-faced spectre of fascism has resurfaced in the western nations. Nationalism, racism, religious fanaticism, denial of science, false beliefs… for heaven’s sake, there are mad numbers of people who suddenly claim and believe that we live on a flat earth. Conspiracies that deny the genius of humanity by claiming almost everything we have created in ancient times was not from us but brought to us by aliens, while at the same time claiming that liberals are lizard people who sexually abuse children and cannibalise them!!!

If there is a god, then they must be looking upon their creation with optimum disgust right now. I will not discuss this issue further here except to say that the destruction of educational institutions in the west, another process begun by the Thatcher-Reagan alliance, is, to my mind at the very root of the bullshit we are now facing. Our new leaders in the west will set fire to the world before long and it will be no one else’s fault but our own, for allowing shiny things to distract us.