Cory Doctorow

It's thirty years from now and we're making progress, mitigating climate change, slowly but surely. But what about all the angry people who can't let go? For young Americans a generation from now, climate change isn't controversial, it's just an overwhelming fact of life. But so are the great efforts to contain and mitigate it. Entire cities are being moved inland from the rising seas. Vast clean-energy projects are springing up everywhere. Disaster relief, the mitigation of floods and superstorms, has become a skill for which tens of millions of people are trained every year. The effort is global. It employs everyone who wants to work. Even when national politics oscillates back to right-wing leaders, the momentum is too great; these vast programmes cannot be stopped in their tracks. But there are still those Americans who cling to their red trucker caps, their grievances, their anger, their nostalgia for the golden age of assault rifles. Their 'alternative' news sources reassure them their resentment is right and pure and 'climate change' is a con. They're your grandfather, your uncle, your great-aunt. They're not going anywhere. And they're armed to the teeth.

The Lost Cause

Katheryn

The maga club were really feeling their oats. With Bennett in the White House, they were convinced their long time nightmare was ending and with it, the obligation to look after one another and acknowledge that the world is a shared space full of living, breathing humans who deserved the same happiness and comfort that you did. They just hated that idea. 

The thing about cross burnings is that they're historic. I hadn't ever seen a cross burning before. I don't think anyone I knew had ever seen one, or even met someone who'd seen one. 

Dave, on seeing a cross burning, aimed at him

I just took one look at that thing and it was was like someone had, you know, punched me in the gut. No, I take it back, it's like they punched me in the heart. 

I put mushrooms in only half because there are some objectively decent people who don't love mushrooms, though I don't claim to be able to reconcile those two facts.

The only thing worse than losing all those beautiful places and all their treasures is not learning anything from those losses so that other people have to lose their treasures too

So there's a whole short and punctuated monologue by Phuong that deserves to be highlighted, this is just the start and what a great start it is

It's the same as every shitty fantasy novel: you're part of a group of naturally superior people, held back by a bunch of mud-people and haters who don't want to admit that everything would be better of their social betters were just allowed to get on being in charge of everything. 

This is the foundational belief of 'conservatism'. Ever wonder how white nationalists, American imperialists, misogynists, Christian fundamentalists, and finance bros could all fit into one political category? What do all those ideas have in common?

They all believe that some people should be in charge of other people. 

Our side believes that no one was born to rule over others. Their side thinks that some were born to rule and others to be ruled over. That's the difference. 

Well that wraps it up into a nice bow. Perfect phrasing, 10/10

People have different abilities, and they can improve them to different degrees, but no one is born to rule and no one is born to be ruled.

I can't claim I thought of any of this stuff-just heard it from other people. And now I'm telling you, and then you can tell other people, too. It's how stuff changes, one conversation at a time. 

The idea that this was a polite battle of political viewpoints was over. The mask was finally off. Magas were accelerationists, accelerationists were separatists separatists were fascists, fascists wanted to murder us all.

"If all of this is going to get anywhere, it's going to have to go through them"

"Fine, maybe we'll run over them. Why don't we see if we can get them to lie down to make it easier?"

The Lost Cause quotes

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