the playground of the world

"And we used to sleep on the beach here - sleep overnight. They don't- they don't do it anymore. Things changed... see?

They don't sleep anymore on the beach!"

 

- that heartrending monologue from the start of GY!BE's Sleep

 

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It's the 4th of July here in the States, and for the past three hours this one-horse town I live in has resounded with at least one firecracker every half minute, culminating in twice-hourly grand cannonades the likes of which make half the dogs in the county piss themselves... and they're still going. Ever since the 2008 economic crisis, Americans started cutting back on some forms of conspicuous consumption, like Holiday decorations. Few places now cover their lawns all through winter in inflatable, permanently lit snowmen and light-garlanded fiberglass deer as they did in the 2000s, or drape entire neighbourhoods in false cobwebs interspersed with animatronic witches for Halloween. The national holiday celebrations, however have only grown more conspicuously consumptive, as though one puffed-up display of symbollic defiance can compensate for the year-long tightened belt, as though by a single evening of fire, King Canute might deny the coming flood.

This overcompensating attempt at self-hypnosis, this running with a rattled saber, cannot bluff away the growing reality of the phrase "service economy" any more than could Colossal bloodbaths. After less than a century, the American Empire spirals surely in the time-honored pattern of decay: increasingly bloated aristocratic and servant castes increasingly ensuring that nothing gets done.

One question remains: whether this particular culture is capable of scaling down, gritting its teeth through a respectable senescence and retaining sufficient relevance in uniting with others to survive the coming Sinocracy's assaults, or whether it will ride its denialism into complete collapse. I can't say for an absolute certainty which option Americans will choose... but listening to the still-booming self-reassurances that we're still scary (at least for one evening) instills in me a very strong suspicion on the topic, and I certainly hope I can make it out before suffering too many powder burns.