“We sit squarely in the middle of an absurdist drama.”
Two years into this pandemic, we are living in a new world. And increasingly, we are seeing, perhaps, an emerging cocktail of tyranny that combines an Orwellian tyranny with the self-indulgence and passive obedience described in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” says author, journalist, and essayist Walter Kirn.
Tonight, we try to make more sense of our current political and cultural moment, from lockdowns to mandates, and how we got here.
“The results are in. The rich got richer, and they got richer faster than ever before. And they seem, it would appear, to have almost a rooting interest in this new status quo. Because why should they voluntarily retire from the business of getting richer?”
“Only in politics do results not matter. Politics seems to be the art of doing something ineffective, or even damaging, but having an ideological justification for it, that survives the disaster and goes on to create more.”