American Apocalypse

I think all those post-apocalyptic movies, the zombie movies, alien invasion movies, all these things. The Quiet Place movies, the End of Us, Leave the World Behind, and what have you; I think all of these movies arise from the collective cultural subconscious of America; and reflect their realization that, in fact, America IS in post-Apocalypse.

America is a memory, it’s nostalgia for a bygone period of history that almost no American living today ever actually experienced. And that is the appeal of “make America great again”; and you can’t fail to notice the post-Apocalyptic realization that is the subtext of that chant. You know that everything the US conceived itself as, the image it curated and broadcast around the world — say in the 1950s and early 60s — that world is gone. It exists only in the cultural memory, while the world you are living in is a hellish landscape of moral chaos, violence, tyrannical surveillance and authoritarian hubris arbitrarily restricting your every move, your every word, your every thought; while you exist in financial instability and employment drudgery, under crushing debt and taxes and bills. With no purpose, no dignity, no meaning, no respect, only a few hours here and there to unplug from reality and inject yourself with the anaesthetic of entertainment, day in, day out, until you die. The bright, sunny world of happy America is just like a story being told by a survivor of Armageddon to his kids about when there used to be birds in the trees, and running water, and cookouts, as they trudge through the rubble of a city demolished by nuclear holocaust. That’s why they have those movies, it is them realizing, even if unconsciously, that they are living in the aftermath. “Make America Great Again” is magical thinking, it is the ultimate example of the denial phase of mourning and grief; pretending that you can raise the dead.