If you’re a time traveler, please pass this note to my friends and I on 1 January 2020

1 January 2020 — HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Dear friends,

Enjoy, it’s downhill from here on.

There’s going to be an attack on mankind from something called COVID-19.

“So,” you may be thinking, “this is the alien invasion that will unite us all against a common enemy.”

No. In fact by March, offering your hand is an act of war.

COVID-19 is the modern-day plague and it emerges from the dark bowels of David Attenborough’s rotting planet.

It’s going to fly into town, kick you upside the head and leave you reeling and flailing and grasping wildly at theories and science.

Everyone turns into a fucking epidemiologist because they think they know how to read data. They slap on some latex gloves and get to work diagnosing and advising on treatments from the personal to national level.

Actual scientists will try to remain credible in the face of an ever-evolving shit-show that forces them to adjust and re-adjust their advice.

First surgical masks aren’t necessary but soon after they become crucial.

Panic stations: there aren’t enough ventilators in the world! By June most aren’t being used.

One thing that almost all governments enact is lockdowns. Stay at home and wait it out.

And that’s where we’ll stay most of the year…going stir crazy. The stirring gets ever more violent with each new apocalyptic headline.

When it slows down long enough for you to look out the window, you see only strangers.

What the fuck are they doing outside? Visiting people? Do they hate society and hospitals?

It doesn’t matter. You will take aim with a mouse full of self-righteous ammo. Whatever you believe will be confirmed by the news.

Or if you don’t feel like you can trust those sources your thumbs will reach for intel smuggled in over the border via WhatsApp.

Confirmation bias by us, the underdogs.

“We have God on our side!” you’ll say.

“Their science is a hunk of shit sculpted by greed-heads.”

Faster we spin.

Nothing makes sense, but you’ll get used to it.

I mean, hell, Adolf Hitler will win an election in December.

The biggest welfare pay-outs of all time will come from conservative governments while the Chinese Communist Party will give not one red cent to no worker.

And they’ll be the ones leaving this foul year in the green.

“Ex-communists, make the best capitalists,” as Slavoj Zizek likes to say.

Indeed. Is there some sort of global coordination to fight this worldwide plague?

No, siree. Nice try. Trust no one.

You’ll try to get a grip on something familiar, but the world will spin you right off the handlebars. It’ll spin a decade in a matter of months.

Trump still has a grip on America’s pussy. He’ll throttle her foundations pretty good and test the comity of all her children.

The deep blue cult will wind-up the dark red cult will wind-up the deep blue cult will wind-up etc.

A white cop will kill a black man and the whole world will feel it.

We’ll be spinning so fast that the centrifugal force will pull those in the middle to the edge.

Faster and faster.

I suppose this has been building for a few years but today, Americans hate each other more than they hate any other nationality.

We’ve been losing grip since we left our caves. Nature never intended for you to know the news beyond your tribe. Or beyond your neighbouring tribes. Or beyond those who speak your language.

That’s more than enough to saturate the sympathy glands but now you’ve got to absorb the tragedies of the entire world too. Welcome to our collective overdose.

Addicts will adopt every outrage available to keep the fire going. Their hearts will burn so white-hot that no one can handle them.

The meek shall inherit the world, don’t you know.

But there’s a terrorism of kindness underway from those who believe that they hold the monopoly on it.

They will ask you to remove your spine and bend over backwards, thank you please.

You’ll see a lot of smiles this year and they’ll mean as much as the cardboard they arrive on.

“It’s all gonna be okay,” your Chief People Officer will say. “Here, try a little mental wellness.”

She’ll steal ever more ground from religion — the original HR department.

It must be the tonic if they’re in agreement, you’ll surmise. Even celebrities are pushing it…the holy trinity.

Marketing departments will try convince you that corporations have taken over from government institutions as the only moral agents you can trust.

“Shut these nerves down, it’s too fast!” you scream. “If I can’t have sense then give me concussion.”

The sheltered-in-place — pyjama jobbist and jobless alike — will sit deperately alone with their thoughts and their cravings: community, purpose and meaning.

Some will find that sweet, sweet hit of solace in the tribalism of identity politics or the anti-woke brotherhood.

“Here you are accepted,” they say. “Stop struggling against yourself and join us in the struggle against the oppressor.”

“This is 2020, motherfucker. Anyone can have a social presence, nay a platform. A free platform that reaches to the ends of the earth. But of course, it comes with the responsibility to speak like a politician.”

As we boobytrap our passageways with dominoes so we pave the road with good intentions.

Can the cat navigate the gauntlet?

Can our peers tiptoe type around the word traps on social media? At work?

The magician’s mother, JK Rowling, she’s a woman but she gets banished from her gender tribe.

Like in the Middle Ages, the harshest treatment of Christians came from other, more devout, Christians.

Chrxstians?

We know it’s not right but we don’t possess the eloquence of our favourite, dead public intellectual.

The argument will either be so high-brow that it goes over the head or gets reduced to headbutts from the least capable but most willing.

Every movement gathers fans and fanatics who pervert the original ideas and add their own.

You will attack the worst on their side and disavow the worst on yours.

Faster we’ll spin.

Eyes bleeding.

Mouths frothing.

Pants pissing.

But you know what, thanks to Cardi B there won’t be a dry pussy in the room, you’ll see.

And if you make it to the closing party, you’ll have stories to tell.

Write me back,

Your friend, the future.