Since 2009 the primary cultural -- not to be confused with official -- narrative has been dystopian, exemplified by the popularity of all things zombie, such as the eight-season television series The Walking Dead.
But Western civilization is now experiencing dystopia fatigue. The problem, as Naomi Klein perceptively identified in No is Not Enough, is that we have lost the ability to conceptualize utopias. Decades of neoliberal triumphalism -- TINA, "there is no alternative" -- has left us intellectually blinkered.
So right when the neoliberal zombie appears headed for a fall -- Catalonia, Kurdistan, Dixiecrat absorption of the entire GOP, the construction of a Great Firewall in the West -- we are clueless what to do. Maybe Catalans will show us the way.
Which means that the zombie will probably find its feet and stumble on, only to fall again, until its head bursts apart.
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