Raging against a dark machine

Powerless in the dark. Picture: Armand Hough/African News Agency (ANA)

Powerless in the dark. Picture: Armand Hough/African News Agency (ANA)

Published Jul 2, 2022

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This has to be done quick-quick.

No re-reads, rewrites, polishing: just type fast, hit send and hope it gets to the page editor before the power goes out and Stage 4, 6 or 10 crashes down on us.

Sorry, boss, you’ll just have a minute or two to read it when (and if) your email comes back on. I can snail mail you flash cards, if you want, but after so many years of typing I suspect you won’t be able to read my writing.

Blackouts make powerlessness even more profound. As the warnings were being sounded, receipts gathered and mountains of evidence revealed, the destruction of our nation, encapsulated by the gutting of our electricity grid, carried on relentlessly. There was hardly even an attempt to cover up the rot because so many of those who coulda woulda shoulda acted to save Saffers were right there with sacks, briefcases, gym bags and probably black bags stashing in the cash.

We looked on with old-fashioned hopes that shame and dishonour would take hold of the guilty, but watched powerlessly as it went on and still does.

Remember the days you picked up yet another airport-lit novel about a madman or group of megalomaniacs intent on destroying the world and rebuilding it to meet their own foul needs? Thankfully, there was always a hero or two ready to unleash a ton of explosives, missiles or laser weapons to bring them down.

Now the world could use a couple of those heroes and we wish we had some kind of laser to keep the lights on.

The good news is while the world goes completely (more) insane, we won’t have to look.

We can avoid watching the slo-mo train smash as the “great beacon” of world democracy implodes, and its insides are exposed as misogynist, felonious, backwards, gun-loving hillbillies, with a few million exceptions.

That it got to where it is, exposed since that day of infamy when the orange one was elected as the leader of the free world, is beyond belief. After Roe v Wade was overturned, one US Supreme Court judge said same-sex marriage and contraception should be reconsidered.

He didn’t make too much mention of interracial marriage because he’s married to a white woman, but there’s more talk in those far-right circles that desegregation of schools should also be challenged.

The bigotry unleashed by the orange regime was there already: it just became “acceptable” because he and his thugs wanted to stoke it. Now a handful of racist radical Christians effectively rule millions of Americans.

Britain’s equivalent, send-’em-to-Rwanda Eton boy Boris, continues to party, lie, cover up and change the rules to hang on to the power reins with his rich, posh, elite cronies.

Further east, another of the world’s tyrants is killing the people of a sovereign, democratic country in shopping malls, railway stations, hospitals, community centres and alongside roads with quick easy access to mass graves.

It is a visceral demonstration of the fragility of democracy. I never believed it could happen, because good people and doing what is right would prevail. Now I know it to be true and wonder where decency, respect and compassion have gone.

I also see how little it helps to rage against the dark machine. Viva democracy.

  • Lindsay Slogrove is the news editor

The Independent on Saturday