Post-irrationalized

Drawn on November 25, 2024 | Published from Miami

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Post-irrationalized

A new and rather perplexing cultural entity has emerged in the United States — one eager to replace the functional with the functionless, determined to reinvent society by aimlessly tearing down its structures, and ready to reset the order of things, indifferent to the damage inflicted on the world at large. This movement thrives on rejecting objective reality with baseless double-standards, celebrating ambiguity by exploiting a collective ignorance of nuance, and elevating the truth of myths over the truth of facts. It questions centralized authority in politics, culture, and aesthetics, yet ironically positions itself as its ultimate arbiter.

In practice, this generational phenomenon manifests in a peculiar disdain for expertise, where cobblers replace physicists and anecdotes outweigh data. This is a beast committed to elevating what was once complementary into a singular substitute for the status quo — imposing astrology and prayer over the unified healing power of science.

It thrives on a narrative where metrics like high prices are framed as symptoms of a lingering stagnation — blamed on the Biden administration — and where aggravating the illness by voting for figures like Trump is seen as inducing a necessary fever, one that perversely imagines mass starvation and death as the cure to upend the 'cycle.' Could this uncanny purge of intellectuals and propping-up of the undereducated be America’s very own 'Great Leap Forward' — one ironically orchestrated by vexatious utopians and cynical antivaxxers alike?

The dangers of this behemoth can be summed up in 'demanding representation without taxation.' It resists the oversight and regulation essential to democratic systems, instead pegging a new age of transparency on the opacity of anonymity, undermining trust in the same systems of accountability that once liberated their ancestors. The result is a self-contradictory force that embraces fragmentation as a virtue while championing total immolation as The Solution — a suicidal pact persuaded that Auto-da-fé is for the greater good.

"All that precedes the Apocalypse is called progress." [1]

— Romain Guilleaumes, 2009.

This cultural paradigm reflects the surprising union of two, albeit seemingly disparate, ideologies: Postmodernism and American Christian Nationalism. Both factions share an annihilative impulse to reset society, though cloaked in different rhetoric — one of pseudo-intellectual liberation, the other of divine mission. Deep down, this odd coalition converges on a shared compulsion to raze the existing world, convinced that only through unconditional destruction can the phoenix of a post-scarcity paradise emerge.

One cannot overlook the deeper sociopathic implication: when people claim, "Who needs medicine when it’s all poison anyway," or ask, "Who needs insurance when God’s my coverage?" the unforgiving conclusion rests the same — death. These declarations lay bare an unsettling intersection of fatalism and recklessness, eroding the fabric of pluralistic well-being in favor of individual absolution cloaked as righteousness.

"The end of the world will cause a stock market crash, that's certain. In case of an Apocalypse, buy gold..." [2]

— Romain Gary, a postmodernist, 1975.

Whether rooted in epistemic relativism or sacred absolutism, this shared disdain for democratic frameworks signals the emergence of an insidious cancer — one poised to metastasize into a force as culturally lethal as it is paradoxical. Is risking everything on such a union worth the gamble, when we know too well that oblivion reigns as their central mandate?

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[1] Original French; « Tout ce qui précède l'Apocalypse s'appelle le progrès.» 

Bernard Willems-Diriken, dit Romain Guilleaumes (2009), Le Bûcher des Illusions.

[2] Original French; « La fin du monde va provoquer une chute à la Bourse, c'est certain. En cas d'Apocalypse, achetez de l'or...» Romain Gary (1975), Au-delà de cette limite votre ticket n'est plus valable.