it's easier to imagine the end of the world than an end to capitalism.

read that one more time. and then think about why it’s true.

The first time I heard that phrase in June 2024 it changed the trajectory of my life. That sounds hyperbolic, but I don’t think it is. I can’t tell you exactly how it changed my life just yet, but it was the catalyst to a major shift in the way I viewed and understood the world.

I was turning 25 in 2015 when Donald Trump announced he was running for president, and up to that point in my life I had not paid much attention to politics or ‘the way things worked’ in the United States or globally. I never felt like I had a reason to. I’d lived a pretty privileged and at some points quintessentially white midwestern american life. Even what would be considered childhood trauma, was pretty standard american stuff for the 90s and early 2000s. Plus having a large and local family as a support system helped a lot, so while everything has its nuances all in all pretty standard stuff.  

I attended the same school district from kindergarten until I graduated high school. My siblings, both my parents, aunts, and uncles graduated from the same school too. My cousins were my best friends, we took summer vacations to North Carolina with our extended family, had bonfires in the backyard, attended vacation bible school, belonged to our church’s youth group and even went on mission trips. We went to football games on Friday night, I played basketball year round, and was given a ‘98 2-door ford explorer when I was 16. When I graduated highschool in 2008 I went to the same state school as my parents, joined the same sorority that my mom had been in, and had a great time in college getting a degree in marketing. A very midwestern american life. 

After school, my first job was back home with a regional real estate developer. I was there for 5 years or so, and was still pretty oblivious to politics in general when I started. I worked closely with the owner of the company, and I was learning not just about real estate and development, but beginning to see how things worked. We made flyers and hosted events at our golf club for people running for judge and city council, attended and presented at zoning hearings, put together funding packages and plans for new apartment communities, etc. And I have a distinct memory of the owner wearing a red MAGA hat around the office during and after the 2016 election. 

And that made sense to me, it still makes sense to me. He was an old, white, racist, sexist, misogynist, greedy, and cruel real estate developer. He was also charming and friendly and almost kind to people he liked and people he wanted something from. He probably saw himself in Donald Trump. 

When Trump announced that he was running for president in 2015, the absurdity that he was being considered a semi serious candidate was almost entertaining. I knew why my boss supported him, but surely he was in the minority. There couldn’t be that many people that either agree with or could look past the bankruptcies, the racism, the sexism, the misogyny, the greed, the cruelty he had blatantly displayed his whole public life. 

Some parts of the ‘let’s just see what happens’ and ‘it’s something different’ arguments from those people supporting him made a little bit of sense. Like I could understand their perspective, and maybe it would be nice to try something different in this country, but this didn’t feel like the right kind of ‘different’ we needed. 

On November 8, 2016 I watched the election results at home by myself before going to bed and cried. I wasn’t really sure why I cried other than it all felt wrong. Confusing, and wrong. I hadn’t been on the Hillary train, I wasn’t really paying attention other than to the highlights of that election season, but it just felt impossible. Looking back now, I think that’s the moment the bubble I’d lived in for 26 years burst, and it wasn’t anything dramatic, nothing physically changed in my life, but the blinders attached to my rose colored glasses were coming off. 

I met the person that would become my husband shortly after the election. We clicked pretty quickly because we share the same values and laugh a lot. He was a little more jaded towards politics than me and he probably would have described himself as a leftist at that point in time. I was just coming out of my happy little midwestern bubble, and he had lived across the country, experienced different hardships than me, and had a deeper understanding of what was going on in our country. He introduced me to democratic socialists, the idea of universal healthcare, the podcast Chapo Trap House etc. It was a welcomed new perspective for me with new solutions to persistent problems, ones that I had not heard or explored much to that point in my life. 

Between 2016 and 2024 I did my best to pay attention, following progressive social media influencers, reading articles that were shared in stories, listening to liberal podcasts, and supporting Bernie Sanders. Doing what I thought I was supposed to do as a person that cares about others and supported equality for all. 

When my husband and I were fortunate enough to buy a house in May 2020,  I put a trans rights sign out in our front yard in what is pretty solidly Trump country. Believed in and supported the Black Lives Matter protests. I volunteered to work the polls for the 2020 election, we got vaccinated, and wore masks. When Roe v. Wade was overturned, I made a giant sign and hung it on our front porch. Deleted my twitter account when Elon bought it. Made small recurring donations to local charities that supported oppressed groups. We weren’t doing anything crazy, but it felt like we were doing the right things. Even if the hate, division, and support for MAGA continued to grow.

Scrolling Instagram in June 2024 I saw a clip of Joshua Turek talking about the book ‘Capitalist Realism’ by Mark Fisher on his podcast. In the short clip he pretty much said ‘the thesis of the book is that it’s easier for us to imagine the end of the world than it is an end to capitalism. We talk about the world ending, but we never talk about just stopping the machine for a second to figure things out, and Mark Fisher says that how we perceive reality is indecipherable from the machine and from the reality that’s been superimposed over us since we were little kids.’ 

I had never heard capitalism described that way. I had learned what late stage capitalism was over the last few years. I believed that’s the period we were in as a country, and I thought I understood what it was, but I had never heard capitalism described this way. Like it made up everything we know, not just ‘the economy’. We imagine the end of the world before the end of capitalism because capitalism is our world. I don’t know why, but this felt like something I had been searching for. 

Joshua Turek clip

I ordered the book Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher after watching that clip. And I read it. It's not a long book, it’s barely 80 pages, but it probably took me one full month to read. Not because I wasn’t reading it very often either. It’s dense. It’s a short book filled with tons of information and complex language, and I was not a regular reader. It would be uncommon for me to physically read a book a year, though, I would listen to a few audio books, and was a regular listener to a few different podcasts that reviewed books that other people read. lol. 

But I read the first few passages of the introduction, and decided this was something that would require a highlighter and pen to make notes in the margins. I hadn’t done something like that since college. It took me an entire month to read because I would have to stop every few lines, look up definitions to words, reread those lines after I knew what those words meant, what ideologies were being referred to, who authors, philosophers, and theorists were, and then make my notes throughout. 

When I finished the book, I was proud of myself, but my life was changed. I know I only absorbed a fraction of the insight and wisdom in the book, and it will require rereads. I’m not mentally ready for that just yet though. I can pick it up and read passages and the notes I made 9 months ago because it is a brilliant book, written by a brilliant person. But it’s also devastating.

It doesn’t rattle fundamental beliefs, or give you something to think about, or offer a new perspective, it shatters the worldview that Americans have been baptized in over and over again for centuries. 

It’s capitalism

The problem is capitalism. It’s not Donald Trump or the people that have continued to vote for him. 

It’s capitalism. 

Because if it wasn’t Donald Trump it would’ve been someone else. He is not special. 

Capitalism doesn’t just live alongside poverty, homelessness, racism, homophobia, sexism, crime, gun violence, police violence, failing public schools, unaffordable healthcare, for-profit prisons, immigration, global warming, crushing debt, genocide, christian nationalism, etc.. as a natural part of American life. It is the linchpin that not only keeps all of those problems securely in place, but it forces them to spread, it needs them to spread. 

By separating these issues and holding them as individual problems to be fixed, we only treat the symptoms of capitalism. And it’s been shown over and over again, that capitalism and the greed and the cruelty it breeds will find ways to adapt and overcome the bandaids we try to apply. Not only that, but it builds resistance and makes it harder and harder to just treat the symptoms. Capitalism persists. 

Capitalism at its core is the exploitation of people and resources in order to create constant accumulation of private property and profit. Those problems above are all the result of some form of exploitation in search of power or profit. So if capitalism only works through exploitation, then those problems will never go away or shrink. They will actually continue to grow just the same way capitalism does. That’s the machine. 

The people who make the most profit or have the most power know how the machine works, and have no issues contributing to and benefiting from the destruction caused by it. It’s easy to make money when you have no conscience. Donald Trump is not an anomaly, he is the manifestation of capitalist america, he is the product of our machine. 

I think that’s where the phrase ‘it’s not personal, it’s just business’ comes from too. A diluted version of our understanding or maybe our cope with the machine. It’s not personal, it’s just business. It gives us an out, an excuse that allows us to separate ourselves from the devastation our machine causes, so we can enjoy the spoils, convenience, and ‘safety’ it brings us. 

We’re fed the happy joyful delusional definitions and outcomes of capitalism our entire lives, and maybe if we work hard enough, pull our boots up high enough, we’ll be rich with lots of stuff that shows how rich we are too someday. Our world is not just built on top of capitalism, but

“it is more like a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action.” (Fisher p.16)

It makes sense that we look at the problems in our world today as separate issues, sometimes overlapping here and there, and it makes sense that we present solutions that do not wholly solve any of them. Because we look at everything through the lens of capitalism, so all solutions are presented with capitalism as the constant, as the foundation. Capitalism is our world, our world is capitalism. To imagine a world without capitalism, would be the end of the world. It’s a devastating realization for a lot of different reasons. 

Socials

I read Capitalist Realism, and deleted social media pretty immediately. Socials started to feel like the culmination of everything the book was describing. Echo chambers built to isolate us from everything except consumerism and propaganda. With algorithms and influencers there to show us and tell us about things we need to buy to make our lives better. Everything on social media began to feel like a commercial for something. You need to buy this, eat here, travel there, wear those clothes. Even the people that weren’t directly selling something, myself included, began to feel like their lives were being optimized for consumption instead of just living life for ourselves in the moment. Everything is just the same.  

One of the biggest realizations I had about social media was six months after I stopped using it. I noticed that the way my brain worked was actually changing. It was calmer, my anxiety was lower, and I was getting better and faster at reading physical books. But the biggest thing I noticed was that it was not only easier to be present in the moment, but I had a new appreciation and understanding for what being present even means. 

I had a facebook account for 17 years. 17 years?! So I really had never had an adult life without some form of social media. And I wouldn’t call myself a prolific poster or even a big story sharer, but it was always in the back of my mind. Ever present. Wherever I was or whatever I was doing, there would always be an underlying thought of ‘how can I share this’, ‘what would be a quippy caption’. This thought would exist even if I didn’t end up sharing anything about what I was doing. 

Post-social media I realized I didn’t have that background noise anymore, and having that underlying thought just immediately takes you away from the present and invites this anonymous imaginary audience into your life. Creating a weird omnipresent self surveillance. Covertly influencing decisions you make about everything in your life. 

Social media started to feel like the most insidious form of capitalism yet. Our physical world is already shaped by capitalism, every decision we are allowed to make is because of capitalism. We get to use the wages given to us, to buy the products corporations and billionaires decide to sell, at the prices they choose. If all they care about is profit, our entire world, every decision we’re allowed to make, is shaped around providing and maximizing their profit. Ultimately resulting in continued exploitation of people and resources around the world. 

If these same few billionaires and corporations own the main social media platforms that we use, if those same people can create and control the algorithms and decide what we see and consume on those platforms, then they become that omnipresent surveillance-style voice in our heads directly influencing all the decisions we make in our life. Molding us into the perfect consumer, to buy their products, all while they take and sell our data. 

I thought if capitalism is the root of the major systemic issues in our world, then quitting capitalism seemed like the answer, however impossible, and quitting social media felt like the first thing that was within my power to do. 

Opportunity 

I read Capitalist Realism in June of 2024, and it changed my life. Not in a single specific way, but it changed the way I view and understand the world, and set me on a new path. I had been searching for something, for some kind of answer for 10 years as a response to the election of Donald Trump, the MAGA movement, and the seemingly unsolvable but ever growing systemic problems in our world. Something that was different and more actionable than just maybe most people in the country really are terrible and want terrible things to happen to others, because I don’t think that’s true. 

Sure there are really bad apples out there, people that are too lost in the sauce to come back to reality, but I mostly think people are angry, sad, resentful, and have lost all hope. On all sides. And it’s satisfying when there is a physical someone or something to blame for the shitty stuff in our lives and in the world. Donald Trump gave people something to blame and told them he would make things better, he lied, and then used the machine and its isolation to flame resentments and anger. 

It’s easy to see that where we are today, barely 100 days into Trump’s second administration, is not an irregularity, or a fluke, it makes sense. Years of submission, compromise, and giving concessions to the corporations and billionaires. Tax cuts, tax handouts, eliminating social services and safety nets. It’s been slow moving, but every capitulation has brought us closer and closer to this moment, closer to fascism, and the Citizens United decision in 2010 put gas on the fire. Allowing corporations and billionaires to pour unlimited amounts of money into our elections, come out of the shadows, and really take control of our government and elected officials.  

If Kamala Harris would’ve won the presidential election in 2024, unless she had a secret agenda ready to go and was just running on DNC talking points to please her handlers and donors, her administration would’ve just been another bandaid on the problem. And I wanted her to win, I believed she was going to win. 

Maybe it would’ve slowed the machine enough to allow new progressive leaders to stand up, but it also may have calmed the waters so much that people would’ve stopped paying attention. Slowing down our descent into fascism, but definitely not stopping it. 

Looking at the very real fascism we’re seeing today as being purely the result of a cult leader with a clever campaign strategy gives Trump and his team too much credit. They’re not that smart or cunning. They’re cruel, greedy, cowards that exploited the sadness and despair of their base. And framing Trump and the fascist MAGA movement as the problem and not as a product of the machine doesn’t get us anywhere other than trapped in cycles of rage. And blinds us from the opportunity we have right now. 

That opportunity that lies in what’s next. This ‘administration’ is working fast to tear apart institutions, isolate us globally, and abandon what’s left of our social safety nets. And while it’s terrifying and tragic, and needs to be stopped. It won’t last forever. I don’t know how long it will last or the destruction it will leave in its wake. But I do know people are waking up, people are paying attention, and people are looking for a solution. 

There is energy. And if we can start to see the bigger picture of how we got here, start to see that capitalism and the wealth inequality it creates is the underlying problem, we can see that donald trump and maga are just a symptom of something bigger. What we build next can be better, it can be different than what we’ve been doing for so long.   

This means we have to stop telling ourselves that something different is impossible. It’s cheesy, but true, that the first step to achieving anything in life is just believing that it’s even possible. We have to allow ourselves as a country to think bigger. To question power and question the rules we’ve been told to follow our whole lives. Why shouldn’t we take this opportunity, harness the energy that’s out there right now, and push for a world free of poverty, free of homelessness, where people have access to good education, and medical services? What’s stopping us? Capitalism? The machine? Are millions of people out in the street protesting just to maintain the status quo? To go back to the way things were before trump? Because shit sucked for most people then too. 

That craziest thing I’ve learned about capitalism so far, is that it quite literally is a machine. There is no center, no singular person to place blame on. Which makes it hard to grasp or explain as a concept, and that’s also what makes it so illusive and permeating. And why it is so satisfying to have a physical someone to blame. 

But the machine is real, however invisible, it’s real, and we are all part of it, we are what keeps it running. And if there is no alternative vision, no alternative goal, no alternative path, no alternative way to live our lives, then the end of capitalism feels like the end of the world.

Capitalism works really hard to make sure we don’t question it too. That we don’t believe another way is possible, that capitalism is just naturally occurring, that homelessness and poverty are parts of life that can’t be solved. 

It sounds overwhelming, and uncomfortable. And change usually is. Especially if capitalism is our world. But calling out the root of our problems is the only way to start searching for a real solution. We don’t have to have all answers or all the details figured out right now, but if we know what the end goal looks like and what’s holding us back, people will begin to figure out the steps it takes to get there. 

Because capitalism is not our world. It is a construct. It’s literally just something we made up. And if the product of the machine is fascism, then maybe it’s okay if we destroy the machine, and do something different. 

And I guess my goal in sharing the abbreviated version of my path to this realization is to accelerate it for others. Because I think it’s a common story. Being someone that the system, the machine, had pretty much been working out for, no reason to question it. And maybe there are other well meaning people that are confused and angry about the state of the world, doing their best to do the right thing. 

I don’t think everyone needs to go and read Capitalist Realism or the multitude of political philosophy, economics, or historical analysis of class and race struggle literature that exists unless you want to. People have been writing about this and shouting it from the rooftops for centuries now. It’s not a new concept, but in my short exploration of it I’ve found that it can feel inaccessible or intimidating or framed like a child’s far fetched day dream. And to me it seems like something that’s easier to understand when shared in less academic or gate kept conversation.

Plus right now feels like an emergency, and the more people we can educate, and show them the root of our biggest problems, the faster we can get to the other side of what’s happening. I think most people know in their gut that there’s something wrong about the abundance and waste in our country, the wealth inequality, the growing poverty class, the global destruction we cause with our consumerism. We just haven’t been given an opportunity to even imagine an alternative to capitalism, and that’s where we have to start. 

Those that are still unconvinced that capitalism is the problem, or think a world without it is impossible. That’s okay. It’s a lot to take in. I’ll also offer the reminder that a lot of people believed a fascist dictator taking over the United States, using foreign prison camps to disappear citizens and lawful residents was also impossible. But here we are.

If we can envision this world first, if we can just start to believe that something different is possible, that is the first and hardest step to making a new world a reality.

Mark Fisher in the last passage of Capitalist Realism says,

“The long dark night of the end of the history has to be grasped as an enormous opportunity. The very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.” (Fisher 81) 

This is it, we are here. What happens next is the opportunity. The world will not end, but capitalism will, and we can either rollover and accept fascism, or let ourselves imagine and create an alternative. 

“From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.” 

It won’t happen overnight, but it won’t happen at all if we don’t try.