Living in the End Times

A&E muse on the election of Joseph R. Biden as American President and wonder the degree to which his administration will be as uncool as we expect.

A&E get in one more show before the 2020 election, when things are likely to get REAL. Topics include: polling, the astrological tone of things, pre-vote fascism, and the coming socialist wave (thanks to the zoomers).

A&E pay their respects to Edward Van Halen and ponder the ways in which reality has begun lapping us on the track of spacetime. Also: Donald John has the COVID, Amy Coney Barrett is a handmaid, and the Left remains inept. Our response? Dispense with Western philosophy, and maybe civilization, in its entirety. It's obsolete, like Van Halen, so let's move on.

Starting with a discussion of Tyler Childers's "Long Violent History," A&E speculate on the prospects for civil conflict in the United States. Other discussion topics include the guaranteed anemia of a Biden presidency, the burning planet, and life on Venus.

From injunctions to "be mindful" to armies of yogis sent into office buildings to help overworked staffers relax, the U.S. has for decades been caught in a trap of what we are now beginning to recognize as "toxic" positivity. The intention of these programs: to both distract you from what's really going on and shift the blame for your mental exhaustion, depression, and abuse from the culprits (which is capital) to you. It's your fault, citizen, that you're depressed or poor. And the consequences of this move are more clear and horrifying than ever.

In his 2016 film Hypernormalization, Adam Curtis uses the Soviet Union of the late 1970s--a society that everyone knew was crumbling but for which no one could imagine an alternative, forcing politicians and citizens alike to maintain the pretense of management--as a model for the West today. In the wake of the horror unfolding across the U.S., where no one knows how or has the political will to solve the problems confronting us, A&E discuss how Kenosha signifies a new wrinkle in American history, a shift to something much more dark on the horizon.

Reminiscing about the good old days with Ice-T, A&E recall also the genius of the Black Panthers and the new Fred Hampton biopic on its way: Shaka King's Judas and the Black Messiah. Plus: Frantz Fanon and indigenous resistance to police violence.

COVID-19 has laid bare what was already apparent to many of us: America is the Bizarro World of the DC Comics universe. "Me want pandemic get worse. Me no want people get health care. Government confirm UFO." There is no modern precedent for any of this, and no framework for how any of us can or should respond. At the same time, there is no public intellectual or media culture on the Left to address the situation. It's all careerism and cynicism. The consequence? Alex Jones. And real life Lex Luthors like Jeff Bezos.

Much as it abandoned working class politics at least a generation ago, the political left abandoned theology to the detriment of not only itself but America as a project. So let's pick it up again. And what better place to start than the only Christian theology that matters in the 21st Century: Liberation Theology. A&E discuss, referencing James H. Cone, Homebrewed Christianity, Kanye West, and Jay Bakker. Plus: Fight Club.

As Jean Genet once noted, the only way to escape horror is to dive into it. Head-first. Or, as Zizek and others have argued, there is a hopelessness to the present situation that might be just what the world needs. A&E discuss, using Cuaron's Children of Men and Orwell's 1984 as points of reference.