Signs of the Apocalypse
America 2022-2023: a photo-essay
I live in Berlin but return to the US often to see family and friends and attend courses, conferences, and residencies. I am shocked by how much changes each time. Some themes, like inflation, I notice every time and call it ‘sticker shock’ ($9 for a dozen organic eggs in Denver?!), but the overall downward trajectory is what breaks my heart.
This is a little video I took on the train from Denver Airport to downtown in the summer of 2022. The road and tracks were lined with people living in tents, cars, and trailers.
Every time I return, I’m struck by the ubiquitous homelessness, broken roads and infrastructure, the obvious wealth gaps, and the total lack of investment in non-car living options. When I was an undergrad, Al Gore was fighting to raise awareness of climate change, and the future of America might have included walkable cities and improved public transport. Now, vehicles are even larger than ever, and a phenomenon such as petro-masculinity is a thing. Either you’re living in your car, or you’re making a political statement with it. Times have changed, and those dreams probably died along with Gore’s hopes of becoming president.
Despite America branding itself still as the great land of opportunity, as evidenced by this airport shop called America!, the coin shortage in 2022 was evident during my visit to Pennsylvania. I no longer hold many truths about America to be self-evident: the pursuit of life and liberty is not guaranteed, as the US has the highest rate of incarceration of any democracy. Also, who uses coins anyway, seeing as everyone pays with cards now? I tried using coins to buy a frozen custard in the middle of Pennsylvania a few years ago, and the poor young cashier was put on the spot. He didn’t know how to count them. My mother was quick to pick up on what was happening, seeing his bewildered look, and did a gracious counting/showing move that helped everyone save face.
In Denver last summer (2022), the downtown area was a sad combination of homeless and/or mentally ill people, and many stores had guards at the entrances. There were signs like this for missing children on some storefronts. The sign on the right was in north Atlanta at a shopping mall. What is it about America and its children? The hypocrisy of views and actions is infuriating. Unborn children are valued more than those that already exist—unless their potential harm can be used for political purposes. Programs that help families with children are cut, even as inflation increases, making life for the majority of Americans who are not wealthy more expensive. America is not a child-friendly place from any angle.
People are so despairing of domestic politics that they’re willing to put their money on the Messiah… fundamentalism and literalism are alive and well.
I was in Atlantia, Georgia, in January, and I stopped by a shooting range for old times’ sake. I hadn’t touched a gun since about 2009, so it was a fun little trip down memory lane. The range master told me that everyone has guns now. “Even the libs” I jokingly added. But seriously. Though there are more guns than people in the US, those guns are mostly in the hands of right-leaning men, to simplify the statistics. Even as people of all political persuasions buy more guns, there is an increase in people acting out; we all have a story for the phenomenon of people acting crazy in the past couple years. In my prior life, when I had a concealed carry permit and lived in Texas in 2005-07, I learned to always treat people with cautious respect—because you never knew who had a gun in their glove compartment or purse. It seems like a deadly combination: people losing their shit, feeling helpless against a broken system, and everyone having guns. Did a sign saying ‘no weapons on premises’ ever stop a mass shooter? This isn’t going well.
This sign on the left, about sexual slavery and trafficking, was on the door of my hotel room in Atlanta. Just a few hundred meters away, this sign on the right was at the entrance to a business park. America’s got a fraught relationship with sex work. When was the last time a sign prevented a crime? Maybe America needs to reconsider who the real criminal is in the ‘crime of solicitation.’ Meanwhile, the most horrific of sex crimes are being monetized as porn online, and the customers don’t need to be driving through dark office parks to get off. I have mixed feelings/thoughts about whether sex work should be legalized in the US and under what circumstances, but putting a sign up is not the answer. People are gonna do and want sex, whether you legislate or not. Just like people will be homeless—because the current capitalist economic system is ‘effed up—so making homelessness a crime isn’t going to solve the issue.
On the right is a photo of a book for sale in an airport shop. We used to have libraries which, as a reminder, is where you can borrow a book for free; now, you can ‘rent’ a book for half its cover price, then give it back to the company that will keep renting it out to other readers to increase profits with lower material costs.
*Here’s a friendly public service announcement: these two apps, Libby and Hoopla, are great for audiobooks, e-books, and movies. Just get any library card and log in!
On the left is a photo of a for-profit plasma donation center in Atlanta. The tagline was “Donate plasma. Save lives. Make money.” This reminded me of the egg donation ads I saw and considered 20+ years ago in my college newspaper. They target the young and poor who don’t know to ask about medical side effects. I was a bit slow to learn about my own anatomy, and it wasn’t until years later, for example, that I realized a woman is born with a limited number of eggs. How can she know at the age of 18 whether she wants to give many away—effectively selling them—where she has no control over how many eggs are actually removed during each procedure because she is anesthetized? At least with plasma, it’s a ‘renewable’ resource, and you can see it filling the bag from your arm.
The fact that Americans can’t earn a living wage makes selling their own body, in the form of plasma, eggs, sperm—or sex—attractive and a viable business model for those who would exploit them. After all, it does say in the Book of Revelation that the end times will be preceded by the merchants of earth selling everything from precious stones…to human lives.