babylon is falling

'there was a frost in the night and this morning the tops of the poplar spires are touched, are turned to finest gold.' - kilvert, 9th october 1871. 

'neither succumb to the past nor to the future...' -  karl jaspers 

(autotranslation of the first line of the epigraph).  

preface to the first edition (rewritten)

'... we can  no longer hope for an eventual restoration of the old world order with all its traditions, or for the reintegration of the masses of five continents who have been thrown into a chaos produced by the violence of wars and revolutions and the growing decay of all that has been spared... 

homelessness on an unprecedented scale, rootlessness to an unprecedented depth.

never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest - forces that look like sheer insanity...'

this is not of course the first moment that hannah arendt's the origins of totalitarianism  has been popular. it was popular in the anti-nazi and an anti-stalinist 50ies, a decade haunted by nuclear war, it was popular at the first election of trump, it is popular again at his second election. 

there has been more discussion over on substack of dylan riley's hannah arendt was wrong thesis. 

the next presidential inauguration is due to be held on january 20th, 2029. whether it will happen or not, whether it will be trump (again), whether it will be a trump-a-like, all this is possible. 

and in the UK what will happen here? 

horsemouth would predict major gains for reform in the may 2026 local, mayoral, and regional elections (assuming they don't crash and burn before then). but then they have 3 years to wait until the general election  15th august 2029 (during which time they may crash and burn). 

reform is farage. farage is reform. but he himself has nothing to offer but a warmed up thatcherism and anti-immigrant sentiment. 

on the subject of thatcher clones kemi (bad enoch) played a good conference (horsemouth was shocked). he thought there was no hope for her, he may have been wrong. 

robert jenrick (jokerman) laid out his powellite stall. what are his concerns? litter. fare-dodging. a shortage of white faces in handsworth.

in this he is more avowedly racist than reform. reform at least, are working hard to render themselves electable (of the we're not racists but variety).  

but the people who want to go back to an earlier world are deluded. there is no going back. 

babylon is falling sing steel pulse from 1978 (and from handsworth). this is the way horsemouth sees it - the west is falling, china is rising, the entire of world history since 1945 (maybe 1918) is the history of that fall. if it is not falling to world communism but to chinese capitalism  (and the contradictions within capitalism itself) then that's what it is. global warming will profoundly destabilise what remains. it will be a century that favours command economies able to mobilise the vast engineering and logistical resources that will be necessary to keep the show on the road. 

and how do we respond? at great expense the machines can be made to seem to speak (this is not enough). 

the fact that it is falling does not mean that it will fall utterly. like the collapsed roman empire we will live on leaned up against its ruins for generations.