Welcome to the era of the Neo-Victorian American Dream, where the only thing 'surging' faster than the price of a kilowatt-hour is the sheer, unadulterated hubris of the people running this dumpster fire of a civilization. The latest dispatches from the crumbling ramparts of the West inform us that American families are now spending half a year in the dark, rediscovering the quaint charm of hypothermia and the soft, flickering glow of existential dread. It is a marvel of modern capitalism: an economy so sophisticated it has successfully priced the sun’s substitutes out of the reach of the very people who built the grid. The news that thousands of citizens are living without electricity for six months at a time isn’t just a tragedy; it’s the logical conclusion of a society that treats basic survival like a premium subscription service.

The headlines scream about 'soaring energy prices' as if the cost of electricity is a sentient bird of prey, rather than a calculated extraction strategy by utility monopolies that possess the moral compass of a parasitic wasp. While families sit in the dark, contemplating whether to eat the cat or burn the IKEA furniture for warmth, our political overlords are engaged in their favorite pastime: competitive finger-pointing and performative outrage. To be a 'public servant' in this day and age is to watch a house burn down while debating the carbon footprint of the fire truck.

On the Left, we have the performative environmentalists, the kind of people who think a 'Green New Deal' is something you order at a boutique salad bar. They will tell you that the solution to your $600 electric bill is a $40,000 solar array and a sense of moral superiority. They view the freezing poor as a necessary sacrifice on the altar of carbon neutrality, conveniently ignoring the fact that the lithium for their 'clean' batteries is mined by children in the Congo who have never even seen a lightbulb. To these high-priests of progress, your darkness isn't a systemic failure; it’s an involuntary 'low-carbon lifestyle choice.' They tweet their solidarity from solar-powered Teslas, oblivious to the fact that you can't cook a hot meal on a hashtag.

Meanwhile, on the Right, the intellectual titans are busy licking the boots of Big Oil and gasping about the imaginary 'war on coal.' They will tell you that if we just frack every square inch of the Midwest until the tap water catches fire, the prices will drop. Spoiler alert: they won't. The prices stay high because the markets are rigged, and the only 'trickle-down' effect the American public is feeling is the cold sweat running down their backs when they open the utility bill. These defenders of the 'free market' champion the right of a utility company to cut off a family’s heat in the dead of winter because, in their warped worldview, poverty is a character flaw that can only be cured by a lack of refrigeration. To them, the grid is a holy instrument of capital, and if you can't pay the toll, you don't deserve the light.

The reality is far more pathetic than either side cares to admit. We live in a country that spends trillions on invisible stealth bombers and digital currencies that don't exist, yet we cannot figure out how to move a few volts from a power plant to a trailer park without bankrupting the tenant. The utility companies act like feudal lords, granting the 'gift' of light only to those who can appease the quarterly earnings reports. They operate with the blessing of state regulatory commissions that are about as effective as a screen door on a submarine. It is a beautiful, symbiotic relationship of greed and incompetence, where the only thing being 'regulated' is the public's access to modern life.

We are told this is a 'cost-of-living' crisis. That’s a charming euphemism. It’s not a crisis; it’s a feature. If you can’t afford the cost of living, the system is more than happy to facilitate the cost of disappearing. The fact that American citizens are spending six months in the dark in 2024 is the ultimate indictment of a society that has confused 'growth' with 'pillage.' We have all the technology of the gods and the social organization of a pack of hyenas fighting over a carcass.

So, light a candle, America. Not for 'hope' or 'solidarity'—those are the cheap drugs of the perpetually optimistic—but because you literally have no other choice. While the mansions of the donor class glow bright enough to be seen from the moon, the rest of the country is slowly fading into a pre-industrial gloom. The American Century is ending not with a bang, but with the soft, metallic 'click' of a circuit breaker being flipped by a guy in a corporate polo shirt who’s just following orders. Welcome back to the 1700s. The only difference is, this time, we don't even have the decency to have a revolution; we're too busy trying to find a place to charge our phones so we can watch the world end in high definition.