Will Christmas Still Be There?
The Red One's worst fears might be coming true this year
In the film The Red One, Hollywood expresses the west’s aggregated and perhaps quite appropriate worries about losing Father Christmas, or Santa, or the Red One forever to evil forces in the cosmos, in particular Gryla, the ancient crone witch who likes to punish (I don’t like evil in women being age-defined, but the film barely misses pillorying with a modiocum of balance by showing Gryla with a young plastic face as well, so…
And whom does Gryla want to punish? The “naughty ones.” The “not-perfect ones.” The not “picture-perfect” (on the surface ones). Like these worthies...
I don’t think any scenario of terrifying, non-natural tryannies in any science fiction/apocalyptic/dystopic fiction matches the horror of this photo from an existing and ongoing unnatural horror saga. A fitting noble portait of the luminaries now in charge of our destinies, titled "The Tyrant, the Heir, the Handmaiden, and the Lackey.” (Courtesy of The Guardian). One for the ages, friends and countrywom/en... Move aside, Darth, you're so old-style.
And who are the naughty ones in the new horror-sci-fi movie now playing in Washington?
They’re those “decadents” our great new DOGE and rabble-rouser Elon Musk has been targeting for some time now, as Felix Krill uncovers in a great piece in The Conversation. Krill writes: “Decadence is a useful double-edged sword as a narrative. It frames the masses as sluggish and in need of discipline. The corrupt elites, meanwhile, simply need to be replaced. It bemoans the erosion of authority and draws on the premise that every society rests upon eternal hierarchies. Too much freedom, fun, and flexibility, the story goes, jeopardises order and, thus, prosperity…. Musk’s philosophy appears to be that men shall submit to the CEO-king’s long-term ambition. To conquer space, colonise Mars, and merge human brains into one singular artificial intelligence, the individual and its needs become negligible. And that’s what the decadence narrative is all about in the first place…. Hence, some rules for life: men must subordinate and obey for the sake of the greater good. Women must breed to secure the existence of our people and a future for our children. A new nobility shall replace the liberal elites and recreate culture. Otherwise, civilisation, or at least nations, are at stake. Does this sound familiar?”
In case you are more visual than textual—and since Musk thinks most real people are defective, not as smart as their great white masters—our X.com CEO-king and DOGE head honcho has left us with no doubts about who the “naughty ones” are in this tweet (oops, sorry, X-man):
Here’s Moira Donegan in The Guardian about what happened on January 20, 2025; please, please, please, may she be right about this:
“The Trumpist movement that ascended to power on Monday is relying on a tired, defeated America, one too diminished to do anything but submit to their demands and schemes. But the American spirit is indefatigable: it loves freedom and equality, abhors tyranny, values minding your own business and hates, above all, to be told what to do. When Trump was last in office, Americans found, at the end, that they did not like it. They will not like it now, either, and that dislike, however tardy, will have political consequences.”
But here’s why I worry about The Red One and whether there’ll be Christmas after 2025.
The North Pole might vanish!
Why? BBecause,as The Guardian also writes,
“Trump also overturned two of Joe Biden’s attempts to restrict fossil fuel development. One, which the former president put forth earlier this month, meant to withdraw swaths of the US coasts from future oil and gas drilling, including the entire US east coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, parts of the Pacific coast and portions of Alaska’s Bering Sea. Another 2023 order limited drilling in nearly 3m acres of the Arctic Ocean in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, which Biden announced when he approved the controversial and highly polluting Willow oil development project.”
The Arctic looked like this even ten years ago.
But
“Restrictions upon oil and gas development in the huge Arctic national wildlife refuge have been swept aside, a contentious 200-mile road through a wilderness area will be allowed to go ahead, and limits upon logging activity in the Tongass national forest have also been nullified.”
So where will the reindeer and the Red One go when the fossil fuel industry’s bold inroads are lovingly waved through? I can’t imagine that, but I can imagine what the Arctic might look like after that!
