Splinterlands

Brian Tanguay
3 min readAug 1, 2022

There are some people who prefer to look their destiny straight in the eye.” Albert Camus

The signs are everywhere. Cracks, fissures, fragments. From Sri Lanka to Argentina. Inflation. Poor nations drowning in debt owed to banks headquartered in rich nations. Commodity speculation and corporate profiteering. Food shortages exacerbated by record high temperatures across much of the planet, and Putin’s war against Ukraine. Governments rendered impotent by oligarchs or tyrants or rampant corruption. Deadly flooding in Kentucky, wildfires in California. A perfect storm, but instead of passing over, this storm appears like it is here to stay.

In his short and chilling novel, Splinterlands, the playwright and novelist John Feffer imagines a dystopian world that hasn’t entirely collapsed, but has rather splintered into smaller and smaller fragments. China and Russia are no more, the European Union is as good as dissolved, and Washington D.C. has been decimated by Hurricane Donald and forced to relocate to Kansas City. The Ogallala Aquifer has run dry and the American midwest is experiencing the kind of megadrought that decimated agriculture in California. The US dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency and the government is in receivership. In a line that closely describes our time Feffer writes: “Meanwhile, domestic politics remained divided as Congress and the executive branch congealed like two pots of cold oatmeal.” Neither federal or state governments have any capacity to re-start the economy or revive even a semblance of the national interest. All the government can manage to operate is the military and immigration control. “Compromise” is a dirty word; extremism is the order of the day. The world grapples with what Feffer calls the Four Evils: extreme weather, hunger, splittism, and war.

What disturbed me as I read Splinterlands was the plausibility of its central premise. I mentioned earlier that the signs are everywhere, but what is the world doing to mitigate its grim and likely violent future? Not enough, not nearly enough to meet the magnitude of the moment. Global oil exploration continues and the behemoth oil companies rake in enormous profits. In the US, fossil fuel interests dominate the legislative branch and kill any attempts to decouple the economy from oil and gas. The situation demands bold, imaginative action — yesterday — but Big Oil allows only feeble tinkering around the margins. Profit is all, even as thousands across the world die from extreme heat.

Like an opium addict, we can’t kick the thing that is killing us. Our “leaders” assure us that the same tools and habits that created the conflagration burning all around us can put it out.

“The fracturing of the international community,” Feffer writes, “did not happen with one momentous crack.” It’s not a single cataclysm that breaks the structure, but a series of seemingly unconnected events that share common roots that over time weaken the structure, like a wooden house being devoured from within by termites. Our attention is constantly yanked away from the signs of decay, away from the rotted floorboards and the creaky stairs, the expanding cracks in the walls. By the time we pay enough attention, it is too late.

I find that anger is easier to come by than hope. The probability of the human race suddenly realizing the error of its ways and radically changing course is low. That’s just not how the human species rolls. Greed, fear, violence and intolerance are too hard-wired. Our collective denial and stupidity angers me. Mindless greed angers me. In vain I seek an outlet for my anger.

--

--

Brian Tanguay

I write these screeds because it's cheaper than therapy.