Have you started to wonder what your grandkids or great-grandkids will think of you? Assuming of course there are any grandlets… nukes ‘n weather ‘nall, ya know? They will be the ones writing your eulogy.
They will KNOW you cowered in fear. Fear of the Eye, Fear of the Ironic Fist of Loss and Pain and Dispossession. They will know you knew what was “going to happen”, and then “happening”, and then “happened”, yet you did nothing to stop it… they will know you were “just good uh‘Muricans”…
They will KNOW your lameass excuses are just that…
Some legacy, eh? Thanks, Least Greatest Generation.
2017 was the year the chickenshit came home to roost. Right then. The obvious signs of environmental disintegration, the end of relatively mellow centuries we overthrived and overpopulated and overconsumed and overshat on the systems we depend on, with obvious, oblivious disregard. All in the hands of nutjob politicians, pathologically acquisitive capitalists and military ‘minds’.
Oh sure, you heard the whiney news from those pathetic gaia earth hippy treehuggers and moonbeam smartypants elitist scientists, but it was hard to believe them, when there was still football, Nascar and beers, upbeat economists, wars and a new season of Game o’ Thrones to enthrall. Plus, if they were for real, what they had to say would be on the news all the time, right? Back to videos… this heatwave will pass.
Then Suburban Survivor became the new game, for real… and I tell you what: it was good you hung onto whatever hand tools and firepower you had. You darn well needed ‘em… There was a lotta shit, and some bigass fans spinning.
You listened to your false profits, spouting gibberish: “Technology will bail us all out”. Or “Actually only a few of us deserve to live in air conditioned luxury and plenty. The rest of you 7.6 billion laggards need to suck it up, tighten those belts, quit dreaming and get back to work”. Or “Conniving creepy people over there, and now even some here in the Homeland, especially the lefty fake thinkers and the overly tan, must die so our death’s head machine culture can continue to thrive”…and thus can you continue to have new cars, the latest scintillating gizmos, flags and… “Freeedom”
…WTFFFingF???
Freeedom to what? Life deliberately getting so much harder for so very many? Confusion still today rains and flames and quakes, blaring nonsense and soothing fibs, vaguely consoling as we struggle to keep a roof overhead and industrial polluted food on our table in front of the tv, in the thin sanctuary of our nests…
Of course, the rubble of clues lie all around. The Constitutional Congress of 2026 eliminated the need to vote, the Supreme Court rebranded itself as Court of the Supreme Hegemon (CSH), which, among other reforms bundled all existing databases and sensors into GoogleCrystal, a miles-deep quantum computer buried in “a secure location”.
You seriously expected some Great Leader Person to arise on Facebook and guide us all to democratized Capitalistic redemption? Solutions were on you, baby. On You!
Imagine your grandkids running into the pod saying: “Grandma, Granddad, I saw a BEE. A live BEE! Just like it’s picture in National Geographic!” like it’s a big deal. Well, it is now, 25 years later…
We don’t have to imagine hordes of the destitute in sprawling sickly squalor. We can see them through the porthole, just a couple of blocks away through the amber haze. (Hey, we finally got zombies, ya?). We manage to live in a simulacrum of 2017, crammed in tiny super-insulated apartment pods, traveling folded into gritty communal self-driving carpods, with a public school degree from Wikipedia U (ordered by the CSH to monetize itself. So sorry, Jimmy. So sorry), gig programming AI slave jobs for droids, and tethered by extractive debt for every breath, glass of water, meal and fart, unable to go outside for more than a few minutes in the relative 38C cool of night, dependent on our Amazonian Houselet Thing emulating extinct nighttime insect sounds for a nature experience…
Maybe someday, just before you croak, we grandkids will beam you a holo to say “Hey, Thanks for nuthin’ Gramps! We’re glad that Trump character Deep666’d your Social Security and Medicare. But all that other social welfare stuff like clean air and water? You could have at least tried to stop the evil Blob. But you didn’t. You got what you deserve. But you also crammed this ridiculous hell down our throats. You are not a Friend. F.U. and now F. Off!”.
And that will be that. A Eulogy for the Least Greatest Generation.
—Dan Carey