The Destruction of Myths and the Creation of the Future

The lies we've been fed were created to benefit the wealthy. It's way past time we destroyed them.

DISPATCHES FROM A COLLAPSING STATE is the exclusive home of Jared Yates Sexton’s political, historical, and cultural writings. It depends on your support. Subscribe now to keep this project going and access additional content, including weekly articles, video Q&A’s, and AUDIO FROM A COLLAPSING STATE, a bonus podcast.

---

On Monday, December 5th, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility in California did something amazing.

Actually, that’s an understatement.

They did something historic. Reality-shattering, actually.

They harnessed the power of fusion that powers the stars of the galaxy and created an energy source that should change everything about our world. It was a moment that should live in the annals of time with the splitting of the atom, the advent of electric power, any discovery you could possibly imagine. If this is cultivated, if it continues, it could very well solve the problem of fossil fuels, pause the calamitous threat of climate change, revolutionize energy as we know it, and, this is important, possibly shift our views of scarcity and the wars and genocides that spring forth from it.

We are so far away from any of these dreams coming true, and as we will discuss there are many, many massive impediments that could keep these utopian hopes from coming true, but it is a staggering achievement.

And yet, it’s been relegated to second page news. If that, really. It’s a little note in the papers and websites. It’s something people casually bring up in chit-chat, possibly right after talking about the latest Kanye West meltdown or…other things.

It’s vital that we discuss the possibilities, but also that we investigate that critical misunderstanding of importance. Especially when it comes to someone like Elon Musk and his continual debasement of himself and discourse in general. Because what was achieved at the Ignition Facility in Livermore, California is everything Musk is not.

Actual. Real. Substantial. Impactful.

Which makes it even more disturbing that Musk’s rantings and ravings and general public meltdown has so captivated our culture that it’s nearly impossible to pay attention to much of anything else, including an achievement that could change literally everything about everything.

And there’s a reason for that. It’s about the lies we’ve been told, the falsehoods we’ve been forced to believe since we were too young to know any better, the absolutely damaging and unreal illusions that ensured we wouldn’t ask questions, expect too much, or ever, ever trouble the status quo that benefits people like Musk and his powerful friends.

But now that fake reality is starting to crumble. Quickly. And our opportunity to build something better is only growing with every passing second.

Like a small star birthing into being.

---

We’re roughly one month out from the January 17th release of THE MIDNIGHT KINGDOM: A HISTORY OF POWER, PARANOIA, AND THE COMING CRISIS. I could not be more excited about this book and I can’t wait for you to get your hands on it. This is the story of how our world was made, but also how we can change it. Preorder your copy now to ensure you get yours before supplies run out

---

This past Sunday Elon Musk came onstage at a Dave Chapelle performance in San Francisco. The results were…mixed.

Honestly, if Musk wasn’t both repulsively rich and currently engaged in one of the most despicable and breathtaking collapses in modern history you could almost feel bad for him. But he is and he most certainly is. And to see him venture into public and face the fact that he is almost universally loathed is more than a little satisfying.

Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that this incident received arguably more attention than the discovery of world-changing energy, but it still is no less surprising. That’s the nature and makeup of this sick society, however, as personalities and wealth now account for the vast majority of our attention spans. It’s the kind of thing that happens in a hypercapitalistic society that has been warped and perverted by neoliberalism. That’s undeniable. But living within it and feeling the infection throb with every passing heartbeat is a shocking thing.

Musk’s behavior over the last few months has been something. Since being accused of sexual misbehavior he has dove full-bore into the ugly and toxic ecosystem of the American Right, a cesspool that eats everything it touches like so much acid. It is, as we have discussed, as much a movement of the mentally unwell as it is white supremacy. Which is to say, totally and inargubly. Musk is, like Kanye West, Donald Trump, and any number of Right Wing figures, breaking down in disturbing and confounding ways, embracing conspiracy theories that put vulnerable communities in danger and threaten to destroy democracy itself. This is what happens when wealth and power, particularly wealth and power served by the system and white supremacy and the patriarchy, break down as they are revealed to be empty and useless.

And, of course, Musk’s status as one of the world’s richest men is essential to understanding what is happening. For years now he has maintained his status and affluence because of the lies that dominate our society. Born into wealth and assisted by laws designed by the wealthy and for the wealthy, laws that ensure that even the most incompetent people (see: Trump, Donald) stay wealthy, he is now standing before the world as he actually is. A privileged, largely untalented hack and grifter.

It is also essential to discuss those lies that made this situation possible in the first place. Neoliberalism has systematically hollowed out the government as an impediment to wealth and corrupted it into a redistributive machine that takes our wealth and then transfers it to the already exorbitantly rich. It has been made possible by a myth that the government is good for nothing and ruins everything it touches. The free market and the barons and oligarchs like Musk are the only ones capable of doing anything. Ever.

Musk’s cars are garbage. His “innovations” are useless distractions designed to grab headlines. The only means by which he has ever been “successful” is by succeeding in using government programs to his benefit and convincing sad, desperate people to treat him as a messiah because he is willing to play the role. The lie is coming unraveled, and as I’ve said before, when that lie withers he will openly embrace authoritarianism as a means of saving himself.

But enough about Musk.

Let’s talk about the scientists who actually achieve things.

Serious people we couldn’t even possibly hope to name. In fact, I couldn’t tell you a single person who worked on this project because they’re more interested in innovating and doing their work than bathing in the limelight and inspiring cultish devotion. And they did that work with the help of government money.

Money, it should be said, well spent. Or at least better spent than funding cars that randomly catch fire or kill innocent bystanders.

It turns out, government projects can work. They can take public investment and turn it into results the free market would not only be incapble of achieving but also unwilling to. And why? Because capitalism has no interest in renewable or unlimited energy. Because capitalism demands scarcity. Anything else is actually detrimental to the capitalist project in totality.

We have been told that men like Musk would give us the future, but they can’t even give us the present. It’s a complete and utter sham, a grift that has taken our money and our focus and everything that isn’t nailed down. These innovations are spectacular, but they will be attacked and undermined. By people like Musk, especially people like Musk who inhabit industries like fossil fuel. And people like Musk who have coopted governments and politics and will undoubtedly attempt to make this new innovation a nationalist project, a reason for war, and a catalyst for profit.

The sins of our past are many. But they are easily diagnosed and dismissed. It is the pursuit of profit at all costs, the strangling of all that is good and giving and decent. We do not have to live like this and if we can manage to disabuse ourselves of these lies and see what is very plainly obvious - that people like Musk have held us back by convincing us they are something we can see they are not - we can change literally everything.