We have all noticed the rise of the far right. I mean, how could we miss it? They’re LOUD! And they’re mean. And they’re angry. And there are a LOT of them. In the U.S. alone, there are something like 110 million of them, none of them working with factual information, all of them deceived. They’re actively working to destroy this Constitutional, Democratic Republic and replace it with a Fascist authoritarian – because they actually believe that would be better.

But this is not just a U.S. phenomenon. It’s happening all over Europe, too. In one sense, I can understand how America might be deceived. We have no actual, personal experience with fascism. Yes, there was a strong fascist movement in the U.S. in the 1930’s but fortunately, (really? fortunately?) okay, fortunately for the U.S., Europe was already WAY ahead of us in going down the fascist rabbit hole and when America saw what fascism looked like in practical application people either dropped the idea entirely (most), or went underground (one percenters who still think the one percent should rule everything outright.)

But Europe? Europe is the place Americans got to watch fascism play out, the place we learned from. Europe lived through it. Europe lived through the hatred and the fear and the death camps and the wars and STILL – they’re embracing far right, fascist policies, again, and at an incredible rate. That just defies logic. Or, it should. But then, one remembers.

The internet. In the history of all mankind, there has never been a propaganda machine so widespread, so ubiquitous, so effective. In Europe, they know, from experience, the dangers of propaganda and a lot of those countries have laws preventing news outlets from knowingly broadcasting false or misleading information. But the internet isn’t regulated that way, anywhere.

I think of the loner, the angry little guy standing out on the street corner handing out flyers. How many people is he going to reach? It’s nearly impossible to overcome reality in such a circumstance. With the advent of radio, the reach of the wretched expanded and the rise of the Nazis coincided with the spread of radio signals. It took awhile to catch up to that type of propaganda but after a little over a decade, billions of dollars of destruction, and the deaths of 50 – 60 million human beings – along with the maiming of countless others, the species managed to get the lid back on that box.

But we can’t stop the internet. We can’t even slow it down. Propaganda is going to spread and there is little to nothing we can do to stop it. People who are ill-equipped to defend themselves from propaganda are going to fall for it and, once they believe it, they desperately believe it. The propaganda they consume quickly becomes dogma in their belief system. And the internet never stops. It just churns out garbage story after garbage story and people inclined to fall for those get a full plate of fraudulent information, all day, every day. And all of THAT plays out before we ever even introduce Artificial Intelligence. It’s really quite depressing.

To me, it looks like we’ve managed to get all the pieces in place to become a statistic in the Drake Equation. The Drake Equation is just kind of a rhetorical equation intended to try and estimate the number of intelligent species in the galaxy that have advanced far enough to broadcast signals into space, either intentionally or otherwise.

But a key variable (every element is a variable) is this: the lifetime of the civilization that rose to broadcasting-to-space level. That is, how long did a civilization last AFTER it’s first, usually unintentional, broadcast into space? Marconi invented radio in the mid-1890’s. That was humanity’s entrance to the modern, technological age. That puts us at about 128 years in. A commonly used number for this variable is 304 years. I have serious doubts about humanity’s ability to make it that far.

There’s a movement out there to refine the original Drake Equation, developed in 1961, to include the number of civilizations who figured out how to survive their entrance into the technological age and therefore become, essentially, “immortal.” (The civilizations, not the individuals.) That’s the variable humanity is standing on right at this moment, and, from my point of view, we’re in trouble.

We, the species, have the answers we need. This doesn’t have to happen. Climate change threatens the entire biosphere. We know to change out behaviors and exactly how but we won’t do it. That would interfere with profits. We know the most successful form of government: Democratic Socialism. But we won’t do THAT, either. It’s far too fair. Oh, and it interferes with profits. If we didn’t have wrong-thinking pressed into our little brains as children by religion, we might have overcome more of our social ills, as well but, no. That would interfere with profits. So…

Pull up a chair. Every person on the planet, these days, has a front row seat to the end of the species. I suspect the process is going to suck. It’s frustrating beyond comprehension because it’s all so unnecessary. This doesn’t have to happen, but it’s going to. It turns out, the few CAN ruin it for the many. Easily, in fact. We’re a species that developed enough intelligence to see our own destruction coming AND know what to do about it, but too stupid to actually do anything about it because doing the necessary things would interfere with profits.

I’ll tell you this: I don’t have an answer. I don’t know how to stop rampant propaganda, nor help those who fall for it. All I have is an appropriate epitaph for humanity: ‘For a short, wonderful while, there, we maximized shareholder value.’ What a stupid reason to die…

There, now try to enjoy your Sunday, after reading that. (Sorry. I don’t mean to be so depressing. I just calls ’em like I sees ’em…)