It’s difficult to explain to folks today what it was like to live in the long shadow of the cold war. And, in particular, the pitch black shadow that was the Cuban missle crisis. Back then, you literally could not be certain from day to day if this or that “spark” [from anywhere around the globe] might lead to “the big one”: a nuclear exchange that wiped out millions [billions?] around the world.
So, has it just become a bit easier?
Now, admittedly, it’s hard to say what is really going on here. Ater all, just as we have a ruling class behind the curtain here calling the shots so too in Russia they have their own rendtion of the war economy, the military industrial complex.
But, given how we are all, in the end, “human all too human”, anything might happen, right?
And, who know, this might even devolve into the existential crisis that blows the mindlessness that is our “pop culture” right out of the fucking water.
There are no perceivable culprits, only the natural sequence of exhibitions of power , as usual. Failure to do so, result in heavy prices to pay, with usually the blameless footing the bill.
The trained eyes, as well, only see the contingent sequence of events, without which vision would become un sequential. They are made invisible by a represented fiat, where representation is variably ‘real’. There are consequential degrees of visibility and transparency.