Eyes for the Sky

INTERNET — Hurtling and herding itself in a nosedive towards populist megalomania and snark grandiosity, the medium an explosive novelty like early film sending crowds running in fear of images of oncoming trains. “Fascism” would be well described with enhancing modifiers like “mega” or “ultra” for the contemporary net miasma.

Drug lord darknet operator, flimsy heroism sucking along thousands of privileged nerds into anti-democratic direct actions: They are the clean ones, the good ones, the free and new few who can and should be trusted to kill with righteous intent, unlike the ages old black markets that are not quite so fresh, safe, privileged, and suburban.

Hagiography from on high for all who stand up for the primacy of the computer and its place above democracy, humanity, and compassion. Lawyers lugging stacks of thousands of letters of support, defendant not smiling like the cat with the canary but summoning all the having-it-both-ways ultrasincere guilt and character change so despicable to judges it evokes sentences beyond maximum, ostracism from politics for malignant influence and desperate idiot putsches — Hitler on his tongue at the crucial moment, addressing the internet from apartment balcony and declaring personal war against the FBI, filming the arrest and writing a column only rarely speaking of arts and literature except to mock a poet with mental illness. Laptop in mom’s dishwasher, not watching the library doors at that crucial moment when the agents come in for the arrest. Cryptodicks limp when it’s time to fuck. That’s not a National Socialist swastika, it’s got anime — actual Nazi? No, ultrafascist terrorist, begging for a drone strike like al-Alwaki, and he better have eyes for the sky. Is that dot surveillance white or smart bomb grey?