Sixty-Five Orbits
Dateline December 30th, 2024
It's my birthday today, I am 65.
Holy shit.
I would love to regale you with lessons learned or achievements accomplished, but such are few and far from fantastic. I am filled with two emotions as we enter 2025: fear and despair.
America is about to install to power a multiply convicted, felonious, adjudicated insurrectionist who legally cannot become president due to the 14th amendment of the Constitution. Americans chose this man over a decorated attorney whose job it is to prosecute criminals, primarily because the attorney was two things Americans consider to be indefensibly vile: the attorney was female, and her skin was not white.
Project 2025 is now openly the goal of Trump and his enablers; this means that I, and
every Queer person be they trans or not, will become nonpersons and
lose the rights they
already possess. Expect the loss of
marriage equality, of course, but more than this,
trans people like myself will be "erased from
legal and civil society entirely". When this statement comes from a group who openly admire Hitler and are already planning concentration camps, I find every part of it quite ominous. And I have not even gone into what will be done to the rights of women, non-Christians or anyone with melanated skin.
The biggest reason this is happening? A third of you - yes
you - did not
bother to vote. You didn't think it mattered, you didn't like either candidate, you were upset about some thing peripheral to your own future, you just couldn't be arsed to scribble a hasty check in a box and mail it in. That's why the third of the nation that has gone insane won. If even half of you had bothered to vote, Trump could never have won.
Oh well. Those who do nothing, have still made a choice.
It's going to be a very rough next many years. Food is going to be hard to afford with tariffs and the
lack of migrant workers to pick that grown locally. You can give up on
getting any new electronics for a very long time.
Disease will spread, and people you know will die or become crippled for life.
Forget voting again in 2028; democracy is
over and done. You will know fear, you will know suffering, and you will know the
domination of a dictatorship. You don't truly believe this right now. I know that. You will, though. Soon enough.
It is almost certain that this website, and every other one you enjoy,
will vanish as it will become classed as 'pornography' for containing Queer content of any kind, however innocent and nonsexual. This false definition of 'porn'
will become a serious and
enforced media crime. I would burn or bury your disk drives as soon as possible, starting today - remember, even a reformat can be reversed with specialized tools. We are already seeing Queer content being removed or avoided as early submission to the coming regime. You have lost your country, Americans - and the rest of you, well, you can see the far right starting to take over. How goes America, it has been said, so goes the world. The Americans let you all down - they didn't just screw themselves.
I suspect Fimfiction will be available only for another two years at most. Like many sites. So, enjoy the last days of your favorite websites. Unless something truly dramatic happens, you are all screwed. All because of those who couldn't be arsed to vote in just one nation - a nation with outsized influence on other nations of the world.
You see, this is the path that leads to the future of The Conversion Bureau. I know this path. I worked it out a decade ago.
That future is now coming.
Dead oceans, and land
almost empty of animal and plant life.
Perpetual smog layer around the globe. The Worldfavela instead of functioning cities and towns. And global government by oligarchs with absolute power.
Disease and poverty being nearly universal. A small, limited exchange nuclear conflict. Vanished, conquered nations erased from the map. The fall of America. Food riots and military policing of the population. Megachurches becoming not merely mainstream, but mandatory. It's a comin'.
Only there is no Equestria. That isn't going to come and save any of us. Just the bad stuff, no science fiction salvation. And you voted for it, either by actually voting for it, or by failing to vote and allowing the victory of evil by default. This is not going to be a good year. The decade ahead is bad, too. The one after that is going to be even worse.
You humans could have chosen the other path. The one that leads to more freedom, high tech, a clean and healthy world with a biosphere that survives. That is almost certainly gone now. My only remaining question is how rapidly the screwing of the world will be implemented. How quickly a dictatorship is enabled. How soon the first tactical nuke or dirty bomb is used. How long it will take until most comics, shows, and websites are made illegal. Oh, barring literal massive, nearly universal violent revolution, it's a comin'. It's a comin'.
Taylor, screaming at the Statue Of Liberty buried in the beach.
Shaka when the walls fell.
Picard, his palm on his face.
And me, age 65, watching democracy and freedom destroyed by a minority of radicalized bigots, insufficiently unopposed.
It's dark out now. It's going to get a lot darker. Right after January. Happy birthday!
- Chatoyance, 2024
