Chapter 9

“And in other news, the inauguration of new French President Marine Le Pen was marked by continued riots in large parts of Paris. France’s first female President is notorious for her nativist and xenophobic rhetoric, of course, and large sectors of the Parisian suburbs, heavily populated by North African and Middle Eastern immigrants, have broken out into civil disturbances.

“The most recent French presidential election, of course, coincided with the advent of the Mayhem, and the previous coalition’s failure to adequately address the consequent fertility issues linked to the Mayhem all but ensured its defeat by Madame Le Pen and her National Front party,” the newscaster with her distinctly French-Canadian accent tried to fight her discomfort over the recent takeover of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation by the Commissar of Information.

“Why not just call the Mayhem what it is ... a series of plagues including mass male sterility, zombie outbreaks, widespread insanity and hysteria, spikes in massacres, terrorism, solar EMP strikes, climate change, mass extinction, acid rain, fading coral reefs, weakened supply chains, several incidents of spontaneous human combustion, spikes in suicide rates, and general mental illness?

“The Mayhem is mankind in the grip of a collective death spiral! And that’s not counting the physiological ailments ... well, other than the mass male sterility and increased impotence in some quarters. It’s likely caused by environmental crises, that’s all. The worst global health crisis in recorded human history, with severe psychological, sociological, and physiological consequences, that’s the Mayhem,” Deputy Commissar William Hepburn smirked.

He found it odd that people had trouble acknowledging just how comprehensively destructive the Mayhem truly was.

“Or just Darwin waking up from his nap,” his wife Clarissa scoffed.

“That’s a distinct possibility,” Annette Chambers, their new lover, agreed with the missus.

“And Gaia ... Mother Nature, striking back,” William noted.

“Es verdad! Nothing but truth there,” his wife acknowledged.

“Marine Le Pen ... did anyone ever expect her to WIN this most recent round of elections? Last time, she lost to President Emmanuel Macron pretty handily,” Annette commented on the upset victory by the far-right French politician.

“It was pretty unlikely in the past, sure ... but the Mayhem cinched the election for her. That and the incompetence of the previous President and government, you know. Remember the Yellow Vests? Enough said. Maybe he should have spent less time instituting the Swedish Model regarding sex work and cracking down on wolf whistles, more time improving the everyday conditions of regular French folks.

“That’s just this man’s opinion, but this man happens to be Deputy Commissar of the Law Courts, so, well, it means something, doesn’t it?” William asserted, feeling nothing but scorn for Macron and his efforts at making neoliberalism so palatable toward the end of his term.

The truth was the centrist, neoliberal approach appealed to very few. It was the ideology of a small clique of jaded elites with just enough social justice and progress on their agenda to pat themselves on the back as “enlightened” and “progressive.” It was still better in marginal ways than the far-right social conservatives, but try convincing ordinary folks of that when neither system permitted anyone to grasp the rungs of the ladder on the middle tier of the class structure. This sort of problem was so exacerbated by the Mayhem that the cracks in the edifice led to the collapse of the old social, economic, and political order.

Democracy was dead, of course, and it was unlikely to make any kind of return, politically speaking. Between the various social injustices, ecological crises that lacked any political will to resolve them, bureaucratic inertia, and the widespread panic that threatened to put zealots in command of society, democracy was the god that failed. Most Western democracies had become failed states in a hurry, joining the Third World countries that had been there for a long time.