This one made it into the book. I wrote it in 2014, in a period when the full shape of what the 21st century was becoming was starting to be visible. It aged exactly as the title predicted.
The essay opens with a concession: the bad news first. We’re all fucked. No good news to follow. This is not despair — it’s inventory. The point is to name what’s actually happening before spending energy on responses that address the wrong problem.
What’s actually happening: the infrastructure of daily life has been optimized for monetization in ways that systematically reduce actual freedom while maintaining the appearance of it. You can have an iPhone or an Android. Both track you. You can buy land, technically — but to build on it you need permits from six different agencies and compliance with codes written by people who’ve never seen your specific situation. You’re free to fill out forms for the right to use something you own. That’s the texture of freedom in 2014 America, and it’s gotten more textured since.
None of this is a conspiracy. That’s actually the more disturbing part. It’s the accumulated output of systems designed to reduce liability, extract revenue, and route around friction — each individually defensible, collectively suffocating. The planning department isn’t evil. The QR-coded bus system isn’t evil. The loss of cash payment as an option isn’t evil. The aggregate is a society in which participation requires increasingly specialized compliance, and non-compliance increasingly means exclusion.
The essay is not an argument for libertarianism. It’s an argument for clear eyes. Before you can resist something, you have to be honest about what it is. In 2014 I watched a lot of Americans convinced they had freedoms they’d quietly already traded away. The trade had happened incrementally enough that no single transaction was worth fighting. By the time the full picture was visible, it was already the landscape.
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*This piece was expanded and collected in [Not My America: A Stranger in a Strange Land](https://www.amazon.com/Not-My-America-Stranger-Strange-ebook/dp/B0G3C44X7D/) — essays about America observed from the outside, by someone who left and couldn’t quite believe what he found when he looked back. Available in Kindle and paperback.*
**[Get Not My America on Amazon →](https://www.amazon.com/Not-My-America-Stranger-Strange-ebook/dp/B0G3C44X7D/)**
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**You might also like:** [Anarchy as Religion – Religious Anarchy in Social Context](https://www.vagobond.com/anarchy-as-religion-religious-anarchy-in-social-context/), [The Internet Isn’t What We Thought It Would Be….](https://www.vagobond.com/the-internet-isnt-what-we-thought-it-would-be/), [Using Religion to Save the Environment](https://www.vagobond.com/using-religion-to-save-the-environment/)
*Browse the full CD Damitio catalog at [indignified.com/books](https://indignified.com/books)*
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My books don’t fit in any neat box — because they’re about people who feel something huge is missing… and actually go look for it. Some even find it.
Dive into the full catalog and see which story hits you hardest. CD Damitio on Amazon.
CD Damitio writes at indignified.substack.com — essays on utopias, dystopias, and the spaces between. Free to read. No algorithm, no sponsored content. His books can be found on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/stores/CD-Damitio/author/B001JP7NWA
CD Damitio writes INDIGNIFIED — utopias and dystopias explored. Free to read.
