THE WORLD IS NOW ON FIRE

WHAT TURNS TO ASHES WHEN WORLDS ARE ON FIRE?

It’s difficult to know what to say. Beyond what I’ve said. Over the years, I’ve tried to guide you and teach you as best I could.

The world is now on fire. Has it been, only we haven’t noticed? I chuckle sadly to myself, and sulk: so this is what I wasted my life warning people about. Here we are, at last. All I want to do is make music. I’m weary of me.

What turns to ashes when worlds are on fire? Who sets worlds on fire? And what’s our job, just to gather round the flames? Or are we about to get singed, too?

Let’s dispense with the obvious. This was what was going to happen. The moment that Trump was re-elected. Crises, crashes, wars. America becoming a pariah state. The rapid destabilization of the world. The fracture of global order. The breakdown of democratic values of peace, justice, and truth.

I used to say: we’re at a turning point in history. In those days, having been blacklisted from American media, my words fell not just on deaf ears, but few. I wonder if this lesson is seen clearly yet.

The future is now obvious. To anyone with eyes to see. How did the 1930s end? Where did the world go in an era of depression, chaos, and disorder?

Trump’s vision for the world is now crystal clear. Just as America’s a thing to be pillaged, raped, looted, and left for dead, from its democracy to its economy, so too is the world.

Do you remember when, a very short while ago, pundits of the usual kind talked about “spheres of influence” as the limits of the Trump doctrine? And suggested there was a “Donroe Doctrine” at work? That implied a boundary at the Americas, and even then I warned: Trump is after…the world.

Now you can see that clearly, too. Iran isn’t anywhere near the Americas. Trump’s malign portrait for the future of the world isn’t about “spheres of influence,” at all, really, which implies a kind of gentle conclusion that a certain kind of American can live with. Oh well, I guess that doesn’t sound too bad. I can still drive my big car and enjoy my big house. Not so simple anymore, is it?

Trump wants to remake the world. To reflect his anti-values. The Trump Doctrine, and I shudder at writing those words, because they aren’t nearly disgraceful enough to do justice to the obscene, goes more like this. Nothing is to exist. Nothing. Except power, violence, and aggression.

I just read a column by one of America’s typical neoconservative pundits, who turned “anti-Trump,” and is now crowing about the “return of American deterrence.” Do you think that declaring war on half the world is deterring anyone?

It is, but not in the way that simpletons like this think. Trump is indeed, LOL, deterring the world…from wanting anything to do with America. China doesn’t need to lift a finger to destroy America. It just said that out loud, if you know where to look. I’ll talk more about that. The point is that the only form of “deterrence” happening in America during the Trump years is that the world is disgusted and repelled by what America’s become. Go ahead and have fun checking your portfolio this morning (unless you’re a Havens subscriber, in which case you’re making…lots of money.)

Gaza was a warning. The inhuman brutality that was witnessed there was a precursor of things to come. Will they bomb Iran until it’s leveled, too? Who’s next after that? Cuba? Then who? Do the fighter jets scream over Greenland? Do the troops mass at the USA’s northern border?

The world is now on fire.

Power, violence, and aggression. These are the oldest of American values. The myth is that America’s the world’s oldest democracy. LOL. The reality is that America was segregated until the 1970s. History is a weight heavier than lead. In the world Trump wants to make, any form of unchecked, unbridled violence is to be accepted. The decapitation of nations, the assassination of leaders, the bombing of nations, the deaths of masses of innocents.

And the truth is that we have learned to shrug at all this. Too many of us. We scarcely bother to remember a world in which all this was obscene. And yet it remains what is. We barely remember: we used to be better than all this. The grotesque follows us, a lurid shadow, and we don’t dare to look behind us. History is weightless to us, but only when don’t carry its burden.

And then, eventually, it crushes us. How did the 1930s end? We all know the answer, but few of us are asking the question. We’re inured, beaten, dead inside. That is what the authoritarians want. We’ve become beggars of the soul staggering through a wasteland. Thirsty for water. But we keep on choking on sand.

I can speak to you in all the formal terms. Geopolitics, finance, economics. The micro-mechanics of this region and that leader and this bomb and that missile. And Americans are taught to focus on this. They don’t think in terms of systems. But now we are at a civilizational turning point.

We become less and less of a civilization by the day now. When we say: well, I suppose it’s OK if Trump takes down this bad guy, and that makes him a good guy, or at least less of a bad guy. I see this illogic being trotted out, like a wounded animal, in America now, over and over again. In this way, when we accept, even justify, the obscene, history’s shadow deepens. History’s weight grows heavier, until at last, it will break our backs.

It’s foolish for me to comment much, really. What purpose does it serve? None of us can extinguish the flames now. A fire like this burns in only one way.

Until it burns itself out.

How long do you think it will be until Trump’s rage—which is America’s despair, ignorance, fury, and fear—have been exhausted? How long will this fire take to burn itself to ashes?

And do we understand that fires leave behind only ashes? To say that the world is on fire is a consequential statement. We are sliding the corpse of the old world, its order, stability, peace, institutions, values, ideals, into the crematorium. Soon enough, the white hot flames will reduce it all to gray powder. Will we put the urn in the Oval Office that Trump will inhabit for a third term?

Havens will have a very good week. It already is. Thank you to all those who’ve subscribed so far. You’re already seeing life-changing returns. Over the coming days, they’ll continue. That makes me…happy isn’t the right word. Perhaps I grieve a little less.

I created Havens to protect us all as the world…

Burns.

Now, perhaps, you see how real it is. Don’t mistake that for anything but what I’ve been talking to you about. How I feel. A profound sense of sadness, as deep as midnight. You see, when a world burns, history itself gathers around the fire, and all of humanity’s dead and buried kneel, singing hymns to the stars.

They are praying to us.

Hoping that, above the sound of the bombs, the missiles, the warmongers, we hear them.

Love,

Umair (and Snowy)