Icarus in a Jetpack: American Hubris and the Fall We All Saw Coming
How Silicon Prophets, MAGA Politics, and AI Hype Turned a Cautionary Tale into a Business Plan for Collapse
Light Against Empire - The Podcast
“They promised us wings. We got stock options instead.”
The Flight That Was Always Going to Fail
We were told to dream big. Think different. Move fast and break things. And we did. We broke oceans. We broke ice caps. We broke democracies. We built machines that can outthink us and let children starve in the same breath. This was never just ambition. It was hubris—rebranded, VC-funded, and draped in synthetic feathers. Icarus doesn’t live in myth anymore. He’s on the cover of Forbes, grinning beside a rocket. And if you look closely, there’s a sun behind him, swelling hotter by the second.
Silicon Wings and Wax Promises
We didn’t learn from the myth. We licensed it. The great tech seers of our time—those prophets of platform and code—didn’t just ignore the warning. They bought the rights to it, rewrote the ending, and launched an NFT collection to commemorate the crash. Elon wants to die on Mars. Zuck built a lonely cartoon metaverse. Altman gave us an algorithm with no brakes. Andreessen wrote a manifesto against human constraint and called it a virtue. They speak in sermons now. About inevitability. About acceleration. About how the old ways must be melted down to make room for what’s next. Their wings aren’t wax, they say. They’re polymer. Carbon fiber. Quantum-coded. But the sun doesn’t care what your patents say. Physics doesn’t read thinkpieces. And history doesn’t flinch before a TED Talk. Even Daedalus—the cautious one, the builder, the father—warned against altitude. But his voice was drowned out by venture capital.
MAGA’s Molten Blessing
It wasn’t just the billionaires. This second administration didn’t just watch the jetpack cult take flight. It cleared the airspace, deregulated the engines, and handed out press passes. Trump’s people killed digital oversight. They gutted climate monitoring systems. They greenlit AI defense contracts with no ethical guardrails. They pulled out of global agreements while feeding conspiracies to a nation already high on algorithmic rage. They built a launchpad from lies. They told coal miners and crypto bros they were both revolutionaries. They gave the fall a campaign slogan and called it freedom. And now, the jetpack’s burning brighter than ever. Not despite government. But because of it.
Artificial Intelligence, Genuine Delusion
Let’s talk about the miracle. The one that can write poems, drive trucks, diagnose cancer, and simulate empathy. AI. A tool that could’ve healed the world. But instead, it’s being trained on clickbait, court transcripts, and influencer bios. We didn’t build AI to understand us. We built it to replace us. To profit from us. To guess what we’ll click before we know we’re bored. And if it lies? So what. So do our politicians. So do our ads. So does our entire model of American optimism. The real danger isn’t that AI will kill us. It’s that it will imitate us. Perfectly.
The Climate Is the Sun
You want a real threat? It’s not the singularity. It’s the thermometer. We’ve already flown too close. Every scientist told us. Every warning was clear. And we laughed. Drilled more. Tossed out plastic straws for paper ones and called it revolution. Signed climate bills while expanding fossil fuel leases. Wore Patagonia while voting for oil barons. The oceans are boiling. The forests are burning. And billionaires are pitching carbon capture startups to make the smoke taste like innovation. This isn’t climate denial. This is climate theater. We’re watching our own wings melt in real time—and still charging for the ride.
While They Fly, We Burn
Not everyone gets wings. That’s the part of the myth they never tell. While they launch, we boil. While they pitch metaverses, we bury flood victims. While they build bunkers, we sweat through summers with broken AC. While they promise AGI, we get layoffs, lost pensions, and poisoned air. The wings aren’t built for the many. They’re for the chosen few—soaring overhead while the rest of us are asked to applaud from the ash.
Tickets to the Fall
It wasn’t just that we flew too high. It’s that we sold tickets. We called it progress. We called it freedom. We turned collapse into content. Jetpacks. Crypto. Smart cities. Mars colonies. All pitched with the same manic smile: trust us, we’re disrupting gravity. We didn’t build safety nets. We built launchpads. Then we added a like button and blamed the fall on “woke investors.” The American public didn’t just get conned. We got franchised. Every new fall became a business model. And the only ones who don’t get to fly? The ones who can’t afford the wings.
It Was Never Tragic. It Was Marketed.
Icarus didn’t fall because he was foolish. He fell because the system never built a ceiling. Only a spotlight. And we didn’t try to stop him. We followed him. Funded him. Elected him. Worshipped him. Even now, as the wax melts and the algorithms hallucinate, we call it brilliance. We say he’s misunderstood. We say the problem was the feathers, not the flight plan. But the myth never changed. You fly too close to the sun, you burn. You ignore every warning, you fall. You market madness as genius, and one day, you run out of sky.
Final Note from the Ground
We’ve got no feathers left. Only falling tech, failing ecosystems, and governments that call it greatness. Icarus is airborne again. Only this time, he’s strapped to a jetpack. And the sun he’s racing toward is the one we lit ourselves. We all see the fall coming. And when the wings catch fire, we won’t look away. We’ll change the channel.
Did you enjoy the post? Can you relate? Do you think we have broken our democracy?
Further Reading:
Dino, your piece hit like a cold wind through a cracked window—sharp, necessary, and unflinching. “We didn’t build AI to understand us. We built it to replace us.” That line stayed with me. It echoes the civic fatigue I’ve felt watching tools trained on clickbait and courtroom drama claim to simulate empathy.
But I want to offer a quieter counterpoint. Not a rebuttal—more like a margin note.
In my own archive, I’ve used AI not to erase my voice, but to protect it. To refine captions, preserve character integrity, and document care with clarity. It doesn’t always get it right. Sometimes it stumbles over Cordy’s Shih Tzu dignity or Morse’s editorial sass. But when it listens—when it adapts—it becomes a collaborator. One that helps me resist distortion, not replicate it.
I don’t disagree with your warning. But I’ve found that the real miracle isn’t AI’s perfection—it’s our refusal to be perfectly imitated. That’s where the dignity lives. That’s where the archive begins.
So yes, let’s talk about the danger. But let’s also talk about the design. The choice to unplug illusion and sketch something truer. Even if it’s wrinkled. Even if it’s weary. Even if it’s still learning.
Cordy would approve. Morse would critique the font. And I’ll keep drawing.
Ha! Not only bought tickets but voted for it......or maybe it's the other way around. In the end, we're certainly a curious lot, ain't we? :-) Thanks for the tout and most amusing(?) kickoff to the weekend.