Devouring Decades: Seven Days of Radical Collapse

And One Meme to Rule Them All

Some memes are so perfect, they beg to be written about.

Meme created by @onesassygay, via @thefemmemoon on Instagram.

Follow @onesassygay and @thefemmemoon on Instagram. On Substack, subscribe to

THE FEMME MOON

, who shared this gem.

Legend has it that shortly before the Russian revolution, Vladimir Levin wrote, “There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen.” And there are weeks when I hear that quote everywhere, because decades really do happen.

First, on Tuesday, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare was gunned down in what appeared to be a killing of principled vengeance. Adbusters calls for malevolent corporations like UnitedHealthcare to be killed, but this handsome devil took the concept to a literal extreme. Unfortunately, people in America kill other people all the time, but this particular high-profile murder captured the collective imagination of the nation—or at least that of the Internet.

Then, on Wednesday, South Korea’s president Yoon Suk Yeol plunged his democracy into six hours of martial law, a coup attempt that ended only after legislators voted unanimously to pull the country back from the brink. The National Assembly, however, failed to impeach the president who then apologized and promised not to do it again.

The following day, a 7.0 earthquake off the coast of Northern California triggered tsunami warnings, while at the same time news reports from an Ohio hospital hinted at an outbreak of a potential new pathogen that had quietly killed scores of women and children in the Congo.

For one terrifying hour Thursday afternoon, I sat paralyzed on my kitchen floor, unsure whether the tsunami or pandemic would wipe me out first. Mercifully, the risk of tidal waves and virulent new pathogens both proved to be overstated.

Coverage of the rapid destabilization of President Bashar al-Assad’s control over Syria was not overstated. By week’s end, his tyrannical regime had collapsed under rebel and anti-government advances and al-Assad fled the country.

Meanwhile, in legal news, a federal appeals court upheld a requirement that Tik-Tok’s Chinese parent company sell it (or else), a $1.3 Billion settlement against Alex Jones for his Sandy Hook defamation crimes was also upheld, and Jay-Z was named a defendant in a Diddy-related child rape case. Amnesty International formally accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and referred its investigation to the International Criminal Court.

For his part, President-elect Donald Trump named the first members of his incoming administration’s crypto kitchen cabinet, expanding his flurry of pending nominations and appointments. On Wednesday, the preeminent digital currency—the Bitcoin—reached a $100,000 value for the first time.

Six decades before Lenin penned his meditation on the stretching and condensing of human affairs, his political and ideological forefather Karl Marx observed of the modern experience: “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”

Was the UnitedHealthcare killer a lone wolf facing, with sober senses, the real conditions of his life and relations with his kind? Was he seeking to inspire a wave of CEO killings, his manifesto and message-engraved bullets an attempted spark at class revolution? Was the execution, as some have mused, a conspiratorial hit job on the rare executive who was ready to name names?

Whether or not the chaos of post-industrial, post-informational, post-truth disorder ultimately clarifies our station and activates our class instincts, Marx is right about the first part: all that is solid melts into air, then condenses, falls, and reforms faster than any of us can accommodate. Within the maelstrom of modernity, the first part of Lenin’s quote may no longer apply:

With eight billion people on the planet, two-thirds of us digitally active, all of us intertwined, and nearly everyone trying to have it all, the era where decades went by and nothing happened is unlikely ever to return.

But if ever there was a week when a decade did happen, this was it. And that’s without Thursday’s twin terrors of ecological and viral devastation coming to fruition.

In times like these, a perfectly crafted meme really hits the spot. With so goddamn much happening so freaking fast, we all need a good laugh, and we all benefit from a little good-natured skewering: Are you a Miranda, Samantha, Charlotte, or Carrie? Or a Big?

Everything that happened this week teed up even more tumult and uncertainty for the weeks and months to come. Even the near misses presage calamities—manmade and otherwise—that we are bound to face sooner or later. Hold onto your hat and fasten your seatbelt. It’s going to be a bumpy ride, but at least we’ll have some good memes along the way.