Hard truths are often hidden in grim realities. Time and again, far-reaching events appear in societies suggesting a profound political and moral reordering of the social fabric. Yet while these events are often warning signs — flashes of impending danger — they are largely ignored by political and financial elites as well as by the corporate media, all of whom have an inclination to isolate such events and deal with them unconnected from each other. Treated in isolation, they are quickly devoured and disappear into a neoliberal-driven image society dominated by a culture of short attention spans. In a capitalist order that has turned dark and increasingly unable to deliver on its promises, social and systemic problems appear disconnected, individualized and reduced to personal narratives, and quickly disappear in a neoliberal disimagination machine that relentlessly tries to normalize an existing misery-soaked state of affairs.
Notable events, warnings and crises are now rendered digestible, insulated and politically insignificant, eliminating the necessity for in-depth analyses. This ideologically and pedagogically regressive approach to understanding the world offers no threat to the systemic capitalist relations of power and its darker mechanisms and effects, which are often hidden from view. Lost here are the connections between the pending crisis of environmental collapse, rampant inequality, the threat of a nuclear war, rising authoritarianism, collapse of civic society, rising antisemitism and the war on women's reproductive rights. When disconnected, such events do not raise enough cause for serious alarm. Under such circumstances, the disruptions that emerge out of and lead to a broader crisis are not merely overlooked but covered up. At the same time, engaged and informed critique and the critical institutions that support a strong democracy are viewed with contempt. One consequence is that such warnings quickly disappear from public attention in spite of the fact that they speak to profound changes percolating in society that necessitate a critical understanding of the emergence of new political formations, more impending forms of domination and potential modes of resistance.
