As self-parody consumes inept billionnaires playing games with society, and as I read about the horrors of colonialism, my brain has found solace in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

I’m reading Amitav Ghosh’s book ‘The Nutmeg’s Curse’ (Parables for a Planet in Crisis) at the moment. In talking of the War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, Ghosh sees a reversal of the collonial perspective – “the metropolitan heartland of the world’s biggest terrestrial empire is itself threatened with colonization by an advanced race of aliens, whose intention is to do to the inhabitants of the planet Earth what the British have done to countless others – wipe them out, seize their land, and adapt it for their own use”.

He goes on to quote historian Christopher M. Clark: “The shock effect of Well’s fiction derived not from the novelty of such destruction, which was already familiar from the European colonial past, but from its unexpected relocation to a white metropolitan setting”.

Such reading is a sobering but refreshing reprieve from the drudgery of the tech billionaire show currently screening in The Matrix that is our air-brushed society with its media circus. I must, however, credit Google for the increasingly specific way it allows me to ‘pick topics that you’re not interested in’ for my news feed – bye bye DT, bye bye EM, bye bye JB, bye bye NF. It help takes the edge off concerns about fascism and a failing system.

I also take Monty Python-like comfort in now thinking about the Hitckhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and imaginging how just as profit, politics and power are riding rough-shod over decency, compassion and inclusivity, the progatonists in this unfolding mess will pale into insignificance as Earth is destroyed (‘Always look on the bright side of life, da nah, da nah, da nah, da nah’).

In the opening episode of the 1980s TV series of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Arthur Dent is in his dressing gown faced with a bulldozer on his lawn “as someone is trying to drive a bypass through his home”. He is advised that the plans for the bypass had been available in the planning office for several months with the chance for him to object. But he needn’t worry, because in just over five hours Eath is going to be destroyed.

When the Vogon constructor fleet arrives to do just that, the Vogon representative of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council reminds earthlings that “the plans for the outlying regions of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy require a hyperspace express route to be built through your star system, and, regrettably, your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition”. We are reminded that “All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 Earth years, and so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any complaints…”.

So if your brain is currently short-circuiting with maga-madness, why not take some comfort by unplugging yourself from it all?