FA+
Shop
Ranting on the State of America
3 months ago
General
Hello faithful,
I've been thinking about nuclear semiotics a lot lately. If you're unfamiliar, this is the science of trying to design warnings and symbols so that those in the far future, assuming humanity survives that long, will avoid nuclear waste storage areas if their common knowledge becomes forgotten. It's the last bit that sticks with me, because we're starting to see it everywhere. Resistance to vaccinations and a general aversion to science, in particular, strike chords with me. The commonalities of iron lungs and forearm crutches, children widely taken by illness, are no longer common. Science made that possible. But most of us have only heard about it. We've never seen it. We're far enough away from that point in time that it's become legend and history, and so many of the closest survivors of that age are plagued by survivor's bias: "I made it, so it wasn't so bad".
RFK doesn't want to make you safer. He just wants to be right. He wants to be smarter than experts, for those who make him feel insecure to be invalidated as being needlessly concerned. It's about shoving the nerd in the locker. It's about apotheosis, transcending consequences and common life. Because that's what's gonna happen with most of these people. Trump has enough money to be independent of the economy. Whether his measures work or not doesn't matter, just whether enough people think they do that he continues to be beyond consequence. Kristi Noem doesn't care if you're safe. She just wants to continue in the position of being able to decide what threatens you.
Looping back, there's an army of people who would gratefully worship the "Greatest Generation" without critiquing what they fought for. We've become what they were opposing, but it's okay; it's US this time. It's about fucking over the people that make them uncomfortable. It's about asserting dominance through homogeneity. Because, more than anything, ANYTHING, the crux of the American delusion is that we are #1. There can be no alternative. All that is must be tolerable to the American gaze. And the people perpetrating these crises have an unshakeable belief in what that gaze is. It has no basis on reality, or data, or experience. It simply is, fully-formed.
It scares me because the hope of semiotics is that whoever finds the places they protect would be interested in learning. But the most primal parts of our brain aren't interested in that. They're curious, and they seek satisfaction, not understanding. It's not about knowing that something is dangerous, harmful, or actively deleterious. They easily forget and ignore. They simply want to witness a spectacle.
Dogs will desperately try to eat toxic foods and toddlers reach out to hot stoves and electrical outlets. When stopped they scream and cry because you are DENYING them the experience. Because they have the unshakeable confidence that they WILL walk away okay; they are innocent in that way. What we are witnessing, though, is willful ignorance. It is trying to starve reality until it conforms to your comfort zone. And it won't stop until we're all buried under it.
Don't accept it. Don't allow it. Survive. However you can.
Love and Peace, at least one day,
Kami
I've been thinking about nuclear semiotics a lot lately. If you're unfamiliar, this is the science of trying to design warnings and symbols so that those in the far future, assuming humanity survives that long, will avoid nuclear waste storage areas if their common knowledge becomes forgotten. It's the last bit that sticks with me, because we're starting to see it everywhere. Resistance to vaccinations and a general aversion to science, in particular, strike chords with me. The commonalities of iron lungs and forearm crutches, children widely taken by illness, are no longer common. Science made that possible. But most of us have only heard about it. We've never seen it. We're far enough away from that point in time that it's become legend and history, and so many of the closest survivors of that age are plagued by survivor's bias: "I made it, so it wasn't so bad".
RFK doesn't want to make you safer. He just wants to be right. He wants to be smarter than experts, for those who make him feel insecure to be invalidated as being needlessly concerned. It's about shoving the nerd in the locker. It's about apotheosis, transcending consequences and common life. Because that's what's gonna happen with most of these people. Trump has enough money to be independent of the economy. Whether his measures work or not doesn't matter, just whether enough people think they do that he continues to be beyond consequence. Kristi Noem doesn't care if you're safe. She just wants to continue in the position of being able to decide what threatens you.
Looping back, there's an army of people who would gratefully worship the "Greatest Generation" without critiquing what they fought for. We've become what they were opposing, but it's okay; it's US this time. It's about fucking over the people that make them uncomfortable. It's about asserting dominance through homogeneity. Because, more than anything, ANYTHING, the crux of the American delusion is that we are #1. There can be no alternative. All that is must be tolerable to the American gaze. And the people perpetrating these crises have an unshakeable belief in what that gaze is. It has no basis on reality, or data, or experience. It simply is, fully-formed.
It scares me because the hope of semiotics is that whoever finds the places they protect would be interested in learning. But the most primal parts of our brain aren't interested in that. They're curious, and they seek satisfaction, not understanding. It's not about knowing that something is dangerous, harmful, or actively deleterious. They easily forget and ignore. They simply want to witness a spectacle.
Dogs will desperately try to eat toxic foods and toddlers reach out to hot stoves and electrical outlets. When stopped they scream and cry because you are DENYING them the experience. Because they have the unshakeable confidence that they WILL walk away okay; they are innocent in that way. What we are witnessing, though, is willful ignorance. It is trying to starve reality until it conforms to your comfort zone. And it won't stop until we're all buried under it.
Don't accept it. Don't allow it. Survive. However you can.
Love and Peace, at least one day,
Kami
