The Enshittification of History

(This blog essay is overdue because I'm still waiting for new prescription glasses and writing while cross-eyed with text zoomed to 250% is tedious. They should be here later this week. Meanwhile ...) Back in January 2022 I wrote an essay revisiting my predictions for 2017. My review of 2017's stab in the dark began, "it spanned three blog posts and ended happily in a nuclear barbecue to put us all out of our misery: start here, continue with this, and finale: and the Rabid Nazi Raccoons shall inherit the Earth." I'll actually stand by those 2017 predictions, which were weirdly not that far off the mark although Queen Elizabeth II outlasted my prediction by several years. But my 2022 predictions? Oh boy. Look, for an amateur futurologist writing in January of 2022 it was arguably forgivable to miss the US electorate being so boneheadedly stupid that they'd re-elect the most corrupt president in their nation's history, at the head of a Gish gallop of barkingly ignorant and destructive…