Hope is always the only rational position
Author Alan Moore speaking in February 2025 to fan site ALANMOOREWORLD (and what a rich world that is):
Q: What do you think of the current political situation in the world? Can we reasonably have hope, or is the scenario inevitably gloomy for Humanity?
Alan Moore: My answer is both. Hope is always the only rational position, in that to give up hope of success is to guarantee failure and, in the event that the worst happens, it is surely better to go out knowing that you resisted it and struggled your very best to prevent it from happening. So, yes, there is always hope. But, yes, I fear that the world is inevitably in for a gloomy period, and the hope is that we can survive it and build something better from it.
If we wish to have an inhabitable future for us and our children and their children, then might I quietly suggest we stop electing and tolerating obvious fascist buffoons because we think they’re entertaining characters, as if they were housemates on Big Brother. This isn’t reality TV. This is reality, or what’s left of it. Let us instead protest and rail at these dribbling Nazi idiots to our last breath, rather than beam stupidly as Elon Musk ‘sends his heart out to us’ Nuremberg style. Let us point out that they are suicidal cretins when they insist that climate change is a Chinese hoax. Let us not give these witless fuckers an inch.
And, more important than condemning the forces driving this multi-faceted disaster, let us take responsibility for ourselves and our communities. Let us for God’s sake stop relying on these leaders and their self-serving social structures that lead us nowhere save into the abyss. If we want things to exist – things like proper education, health and welfare services – then let us give our energies, our time, our money, our art, to the numerous community projects that are springing up of necessity and attempting to counteract these privations of the state or the toxic world it has created. Support environmental movements and protests, stand up for the rights of minorities and women at a moment when those rights are being clawed away from them by the horror story/laughing stock currently in the White House, form Arts Labs or start fanzines in recognition of the fact that we should probably think about providing our own art and entertainment too, and do something, some little or big thing to make the world around you more like the world you want to live in.
Good luck.
(h/t Tony Wolf on Bluesky.)