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<h1 class="css-twhgrd">If Life Feels Bleak, It’s Because Our
Civilization is Beginning to Collapse</h1>
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<div class="css-7kp13n">By</div>
<div class="css-7ol5x1"><span class="css-fgeroe">umair haque</span></div>
<div class="css-8rl9b7">eand.co</div>
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<h2>2030 Will Be Even Worse than 2020. And 2040
Will Be Even Worse than That. Unless.</h2>
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<div><span><a rel="noopener"
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haque</a></span></div>
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rel="noopener">Jul 4</a> · 11 min
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<p>There’s an old line from a movie
called Office Space — do you remember
that one? — that I’ve always loved: “<a
rel="noopener"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9eSOMWRmAw">Every
day since I began work is worse than
the day before it.</a>” That’s kind
of an apt summary for…everything…at
the moment.</p>
<p><strong>Life isn’t a happy thing
right about now. </strong>It’s
stressful, strange, upside-down. I’m
weary with boredom, exhausted by
isolation, tired of all the
nothing…and I bet you are, too. So.</p>
<p>Is it just me, or living through the
end of human civilization kind
of…sucks?</p>
<p>There’s not — or there <a
href="https://eand.co/three-decades-three-revolutions-or-our-civilization-will-collapse-de2758d94f63?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">shouldn’t be, by now</a>
— any real debate on the point that we
are now living through <a
href="https://eand.co/the-future-sucks-can-we-fix-it-7ac322f6a90f?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">the probable end of
human civilization</a>.</p>
<p><strong>The end of human civilization
is now </strong><a
href="https://eand.co/catastrophe-is-the-new-normal-are-we-ready-f1d72b265c91?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener"><strong>easy enough
to see</strong></a><strong>, over
the </strong><a
href="https://eand.co/the-world-as-we-know-it-is-over-what-happens-next-12cb1036e21a?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener"><strong>next three to
five decades</strong></a><strong>.</strong>
It’s made of climate change, mass
extinction, ecological collapse, and
the economic depressions, financial
implosions, political upheavals,
pandemics, plagues, floods, fires, and
social breakdowns <a
href="https://eand.co/the-age-of-self-inflicted-catastrophe-504e36437b0b?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">all those will ignite</a>.</p>
<p><a
href="https://eand.co/how-coronavirus-is-a-small-taste-of-the-dystopian-future-3c22f574e40?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener"><strong>Coronavirus
is a foreshadowing</strong></a><strong>,
a taste of a dismal future, a
warning, and a portrait, too.</strong>
Life as we know it is falling apart.
Life as we know it will continue to
fall apart, for the rest of our lives.
How do you live through that?</p>
<p>I’m not your therapist, sadly — or
luckily. I’m just an economist. So let
me paint you a picture.</p>
<p><strong>What did Coronavirus rupture?</strong>
A sense of easy normality, of
stability, of placidity. That things
could just go on as before. Now, at
least, we know how quickly life can
simply…<a
href="https://eand.co/the-month-the-world-stood-still-85688c80f7a4?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">come to a screeching
halt</a>. How fast everything can
change. True, in some countries, <a
href="https://eand.co/a-baffled-world-thinks-americans-are-idiots-is-it-right-4422085dbf67?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">like America</a>,
things had been on <a
href="https://eand.co/im-not-that-i-m-negative-america-really-is-screwed-13b47653e4ed?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">a steady downward
trajectory anyways</a>. But don’t
mistake the crucial lesson of the
pandemic: life as we know it has now
come to an end.</p>
<p><strong>That’s not to say lockdowns
and so forth will last forever. </strong>But
they won’t end — like we all secretly
hope — overnight, either. They’ll be
with us, in fits and starts, as the
virus ebbs and flows, for years. Or at
least until a vaccine’s ready. It
takes about five to ten years to
develop one, usually. So Corona will
probably define this decade — <a
href="https://eand.co/whose-economy-will-the-coronavirus-depression-hit-hardest-e0a388d45730?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">sapping the life from
economies</a>, causing a depression
here, a stagnation there, another one
here, <a
href="https://eand.co/the-american-economy-is-still-imploding-4c8a1c369a51?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">yet again there</a>,
draining the cohesion from societies,
as people grow tired of yet another
lockdown, <a
href="https://eand.co/is-this-the-american-spring-ff1ffebb145b?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">redefining politics</a>,
shifting power to <a
href="https://eand.co/america-cant-take-another-four-years-of-this-lethal-idiot-db511affbc29?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">authoritarians and
nationalists</a>, ripping a
connected, cooperative world apart.</p>
<p>But that’s just a tiny, tiny taste of
what’s to come.</p>
<p><a
href="https://eand.co/the-month-the-world-stood-still-85688c80f7a4?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener"><strong>Corona caused
our lives to come to a standstill</strong></a><strong>.
But by and large, our systems still
work. </strong>That’s not to say we
have great and magnificent systems, or
even really good ones — but mostly,
they were kept functioning. Systems,
meaning: social, economic, and
financial systems, from healthcare to
banks to jobs to wages and pensions
and so on.</p>
<p><strong>Those are what I’ll call in
this tiny essay “superficial” or
“secondary” systems. </strong>That’s
not to say that they’re unimportant —
it’s to say that they depend on other,
deeper systems. But I’ll come to that.</p>
<p>What’s going to be different next
time around is that these superficial
systems will simply stop working.</p>
<p><strong>A decade from now, by the
2030s, </strong><a
href="https://eand.co/three-decades-three-revolutions-or-our-civilization-will-collapse-de2758d94f63?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener"><strong>climate
change is going to go nuclear</strong></a><strong>.
</strong>From relatively mild —
although already badly disruptive — to
catastrophic. And as it does, where it
does, when it does, so too, all those
systems we depend on will simply
rupture and break. Suddenly. Bang!
Just like Coronavirus did to our lives
— but not our systems — today.
Tomorrow, the difference will be that
those systems will come to a halt, not
just our temporary access to them.
They will be “offline”, crashed,
broken, devastated, wrecked, depleted,
bankrupt, and paralyzed.</p>
<p><strong>What happens when a continent
burns? </strong>Take the example of
America, or Australia. Both have
already had an experience of “<a
rel="noopener"
href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjb6_jpn7LqAhVRQxUIHdrcAQ8QFjAJegQIBBAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2020%2Ffeb%2F07%2Fclimate-fire-leaders-disaster-australian-government&usg=AOvVaw0xGIgSN0k3hAGBYVFwKv3o">megafires</a>.”
Luckily, they’ve been managed to be
controlled — or have burned themselves
out. By the 2030s, though, we won’t be
so lucky. <a rel="noopener"
href="https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs_other/rmrs_2014_stephens_s001.pdf">Megafires
will be a regular seasonal event</a>,
and they will just go on raging
through canyons and hills and plains.
What then? Well, then financial
systems simply break. Who’s going to
pay for the costs of repairing
millions of incinerated homes,
schools, offices, universities,
clinics? The answer is: nobody.</p>
<p><strong>Just like we have Rust Belt
towns today — places that are being
abandoned by deindustrialization —
so too we’ll have Fire Belt and
Flood Belt towns and cities and
villages tomorrow. </strong>And as
those places are destroyed, they’re
going to take financial systems,
healthcare systems, jobs, incomes,
pensions, wages, and so forth with
them. Not temporarily — like now, <a
href="https://eand.co/trumps-america-is-in-freefall-f1cafbb93461?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">during the pandemic</a>
— but <em>for good</em>. Just like
Rust Belt towns have been abandoned,
so tomorrow’s Fire and Flood Belt will
be uninhabitable. And the exodus
fleeing from it will break most of our
superficial systems. Banks won’t be
able to cope with the costs of
insuring all that, healthcare systems
with the costs of treating all the
ill, employment systems with providing
for all those people, energy grids
with the wreckage, and so on.</p>
<p><strong>Bang! There go a
civilization’s superficial systems.
</strong>Of course, some places will
be lucky — and they’ll escape much of
this damage. Canada, Scandinavia —
just some of the beneficiaries. But
they are a tiny relative proportion of
humanity. The losers will be immense
in number, and our systems simply
don’t have the capability to cope, to
provide, to offer them income,
shelter, housing, medicine, food, even
in rich countries. What happens then?</p>
<p><strong>A </strong><a
href="https://eand.co/does-america-have-a-future-8716383b2c43?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener"><strong>depression</strong></a><strong>
does. Welcome to the Climate
Depression of the 2030s. </strong>It’s
much, much worse than the Great
Depression — so-called — of the 1930s.
Since huge chunks of the planet are
now the Fire and Flood Belt, huge
portions of humanity have nowhere to
live, nothing to subsist on, and no
way to earn a living, either. Demand
falls through the floor, and the
vicious cycle of falling incomes and
lower employment sets in, with a
vengeance.</p>
<p><strong>How much does that kind of
life suck? </strong><a
href="https://eand.co/the-future-sucks-can-we-fix-it-7ac322f6a90f?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener"><strong>A lot more
than now</strong></a><strong>.</strong>
That’s not to say today is fun. But
tomorrow is going to make it look like
a fond memory. What are you going to
do when banking systems, healthcare
systems, pension systems, all break
down?</p>
<p><strong>It’s OK. You’ll make it. </strong>It
won’t be fun, but you’ll probably
survive — you’re <a
href="https://eand.co/we-dont-just-live-in-racist-countries-we-live-in-a-racist-world-20a5f78a2e54?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">well off enough to be
reading this</a>, right? It’s the
next decade you really have to worry
about.</p>
<p><strong>By the 2040s, </strong><a
rel="noopener"
href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwihqLnWoLLqAhVBt3EKHRdmBukQFjADegQIDBAG&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.studyfinds.org%2Fbiologists-say-mass-extinction-event-is-accelerating-more-than-500-species-could-disappear-by-2040%2F&usg=AOvVaw3xa1VTe5Y1H26SN6RXJvWj"><strong>mass
extinction will finally begin to
bite</strong></a><strong>. </strong>Climate
change will have destabilized
temperatures and seasons enough that
the current rate of mass extinction —
which is <a rel="noopener"
href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwihqLnWoLLqAhVBt3EKHRdmBukQFjAMegQIBBAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2018%2F10%2F07%2Fclimate%2Fipcc-climate-report-2040.html&usg=AOvVaw3jOmaBDIOpQjmLME_eqVli">already
horrifically high</a> — will
explode. Did you know <a
rel="noopener"
href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj8543toLLqAhVkSRUIHbgJDo4QFjAJegQIAhAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.publish.csiro.au%2Fmf%2Fpdf%2FMF10269&usg=AOvVaw1Pj7PORdjquT6YtmJNOK9A">fish
can’t spawn when water are too warm</a>?
That’s OK, we’re <a rel="noopener"
href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjh_O_6oLLqAhUcRhUIHf6CD-AQFjAIegQIAxAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.worldwildlife.org%2Fthreats%2Foverfishing&usg=AOvVaw1ThGHHqESH30Du2r8AbV56">overfishing
them to death</a>, anyways.</p>
<p><strong>Life on planet earth will, by
the 2040s, begin to keel over from
the bottom. </strong>It’s <a
rel="noopener"
href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjqlKSMobLqAhWeQhUIHfhyDc8QFjAAegQIBRAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nrdc.org%2Fstories%2Freport-million-extinctions-and-ecological-collapse-are-way&usg=AOvVaw0mCzfU61oYPvAnQ1nZJMDr">great
towers and chains of life will crash
and topple</a>, having had the roots
and foundations ripped out from under
them. All the little things are dying
off fastest and first — insects, bees,
fish, worms, and so forth. But all
those chains and ladders of
subsistence — right up to us — depend
on them.</p>
<p><strong>Who’s going to turn the soil
when the worms are gone?</strong>
Who’s going to clean the rivers from
turning to mud, when the fish are
gone? Who’s going to nourish the
plants that keep the forests healthy
when the insects are gone?</p>
<p>The answer is: nothing is. Bang. <a
rel="noopener"
href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjqlKSMobLqAhWeQhUIHfhyDc8QFjAAegQIBRAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nrdc.org%2Fstories%2Freport-million-extinctions-and-ecological-collapse-are-way&usg=AOvVaw0mCzfU61oYPvAnQ1nZJMDr">Life
on planet earth begins to die off</a>.</p>
<p>Oops. We’re part of that, too.</p>
<p><strong>Now the real fireworks begin.
I talked about our superficial, or
secondary, systems. </strong>Now
our primary systems — the most
fundamental ones — begin to break, go
bankrupt, end up depleted, crash,
burn. Energy, air, food, water,
medicine. The things which keep us
clean, nourished, fed, watered, alive
in the most basic ways.</p>
<p><strong>Those systems now begin to
break down. The soil turns to dust,
no harvest, no food.</strong> Now
you have to compete bitterly just for
food. The rivers turn to mud, because
the fish are gone. Now clean water
becomes a luxury. Raw materials become
inaccessible. The basic compounds
medicines are made of become scarce.
And so forth.</p>
<p><strong>What happens then? Right
about now, you pay maybe 25% of your
income for these basics — water,
food, energy, air, and so on. </strong>Maybe
more, if you’re relatively poor. But
by then? Most of your income — easily
upwards of 50% — will go these basics.
The price of all these things will
skyrocket, because there <a
href="https://eand.co/three-decades-three-revolutions-or-our-civilization-will-collapse-de2758d94f63?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">simply won’t be
enough to go around</a>. And having
a steady supply of them will seem like
a luxury.</p>
<p><strong>Now you — </strong><a
href="https://eand.co/we-dont-just-live-in-racist-countries-we-live-in-a-racist-world-20a5f78a2e54?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener"><strong>the rich
person of the world, back then, in
the 2020s</strong></a><strong> —
are learning what it is to live like
a poor person globally always did. </strong>They
always had to carefully ration their
food, water, energy, medicine. Do I
wash dishes today, or do I bathe? Do I
eat — or do I treat my sick kid? Those
are the decision the poor 80% of
humanity always lived with. You were
lucky not to — maybe you didn’t know
it. Now you live like them, too,
making just those choices. Between the
very basics. Over and over again,
every day. Rationing, squeezing,
cutting out every last morsel of
waste, trying to conserve.</p>
<p><strong>Don’t worry. You’ll probably
succeed at that. You’re resourceful
enough.</strong> The problem is that
when you’re spending most of your
income on the basics — then what do
you save? And what do you have left
over to invest in? Never mind having
fun — you’re living like one of the <a
href="https://eand.co/we-dont-just-live-in-racist-countries-we-live-in-a-racist-world-20a5f78a2e54?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">global poor</a> now,
which is what climate change and mass
extinction will make nearly everyone.
It’s not that they don’t have fun —
but they don’t spend a lot of money on
it. For you, now, subsistence has
become the daily project, mission,
goal.</p>
<p><strong>The old goals of saving,
investing, maybe splurging — all
those are distant, distant memories.
</strong>What’s that kind of life
like? It’s not pleasant, that’s for
sure. It has its moments of happiness
and even abandon and joy. But by and
large, it’s what it sounds like: a
bitter, desperate struggle for mere
subsistence.</p>
<p><strong>You’ll get through it.</strong>
Maybe you’ll learn something new,
about the value of human connection,
of warmth, of simpler things.</p>
<p>It’s the next decade that you really
have to worry about.</p>
<p><strong>The 2050s will be the age of
the </strong><a
href="https://eand.co/three-decades-three-revolutions-or-our-civilization-will-collapse-de2758d94f63?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener"><strong>Final Goodbye</strong></a><strong>.
</strong>By now, earth’s great
ecosystems will be in irreversible and
catastrophic decline. The ocean
currents, the reefs, what little is
left of the polar ice. The forests
which are the earth’s lungs will be
charred, the rivers which are its
veins will have turned to dust, the
prairies which are its limbs will be
made of floodwater, the oceans which
are its organs will be bitter with
acid.</p>
<p><strong>The Final Goodbye, as in:
there’s no coming back from this. </strong>Sure,
life on earth will survive, in some
form. But not as we know it, and not
in the way that we depend on it.</p>
<p><strong>It will be very, very
different.</strong> Maybe jellyfish
— the inedible kind — will roam the
seas. Maybe bacteria that thrive in
heat will live in the embers of the
permanent megafires. Who knows? What’s
for certain is this.</p>
<p><strong>Now the collapse of our
civilization’s primary systems — of
energy, air, food, water, and
medicine — goes permanent, and goes
nuclear. </strong>Do you know how
to put an ocean back together? A rain
forest? A prairie? Neither do I. Once
they’re gone, they’re gone. And having
gone, so are the most basic of things
they nourish us with, energy, air,
water, food, medicine, and so on.</p>
<p><strong>As those critical resources
begin to depleted for good, </strong><a
href="https://eand.co/if-the-future-is-like-the-present-our-civilization-will-collapse-f05b2bce2d3e?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener"><strong>our systems
will crash</strong></a><strong>. </strong>How
do you “price” food or water when
there’s not enough to go around — for
good? The answer is: you don’t. You
take it, if you can, and if you can’t,
you die. Our carefully planned
technocratic systems — from the
technical end, markets, prices,
algorithms, currencies, options, to
the practical end, stockpiles, pipes,
reservoirs, and so forth — all simply
crash, break, fall apart. They are no
good anymore. What good is a “price”
for the last antibiotic in a country?
What good is a healthcare system full
of finely educated and trained
managers and accountants and CEOs for
allocating antibiotics or operations
when…there aren’t going to be many
more?</p>
<p><strong>Maybe you see my point. </strong>Nobody
cares now even if you have “money,”
because money is just the <a
href="https://eand.co/why-youre-going-broke-while-the-rich-get-richer-8b6cfab22f9f?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">polite and agreeable
fiction of a civilized society</a>.
Now all that matters is power, and the
will to use it.</p>
<p><strong>Now things break down in big,
big ways. </strong><a
href="https://eand.co/does-america-have-a-future-8716383b2c43?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener"><strong>Nations fall
apart</strong></a><strong>, as
cities and towns turn on one
another. </strong>The idea of
democracy comes to an end, and
tribalism, factionalism, every kind of
stupid and backwards superstition from
the depths of history replaces it. All
that’s left is everyone against
everyone else — each tribe for
themselves — in a desperate, doomed,
idiotic battle for the last few
morsels of life-giving stuff left on a
planet that’s turning to dust, fire,
and death.</p>
<p>Think of <a
href="https://eand.co/american-collapse-is-going-to-go-global-7f71e2fb92e2?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">America, right about
now </a>— how it’s become this <a
href="https://eand.co/america-is-burning-c01bd2818428?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">stupid, desperate,
never-ending battle for
self-preservation </a>— only
everywhere.</p>
<p><strong>Corona, in its own way, </strong><a
href="https://eand.co/the-age-of-shock-81e56c7a7699?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener"><strong>is trying to
prepare us for that</strong></a><strong>.
It’s trying to teach us how not to
end as a civilization. </strong>By
taking care of one another. Not in
some meaningless, Hallmark-card kind
of way. But in a razor-sharp one. <a
href="https://eand.co/dying-alone-in-a-broken-system-77baea48f539?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">Invest, now, in the
things you will need tomorrow.</a>
All of you. Food, water, air, energy,
medicine. Where do they come from?
From the lungs, limbs, organs, blood,
of the earth, the forests, skies,
oceans, rivers. From the creatures,
the animals, beginning with the
smallest, which feed and nourish the
bigger, right up to us. <a
href="https://eand.co/without-social-investment-we-die-c5bcd55d563c?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">Invest in all that.
Do it now.</a> Do it like never
before in history. Put aside your
stupid squabbles, and your pointless
pursuits. Put down the remote control,
the phone, the drug, the fix. You are
here on planet earth. Are you really
here on planet earth?</p>
<p><a
href="https://eand.co/will-coronavirus-really-change-the-world-77d16e860996?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener"><strong>Corona is a
warning</strong></a><strong> from
the end of human civilization,
backwards in time. </strong>To the
beginning of the end of human
civilization. It teaches us how you
can see the end from here. You can see
the lights going out. The lights of
civilization — prosperity, democracy,
freedom, justice, truth, beauty,
goodness. All gone, incinerated by the
fire, drowned by the flood, and all
that’s left is a desperate, stupid,
terrible, idiotic struggle, through
the mud and ashes, for
self-preservation, each against each
other, all against all. I take your
water, you take my energy, they take
our food, we take their medicine.
Around and around the maypole we go,
ashes, ashes, we all fall down.</p>
<p><a
href="https://eand.co/this-is-how-our-civilization-ends-53fe3f13fe3a?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">That is how our
civilization ends.</a></p>
<p><strong>Does it suck to live at the
end of human civilization? Of course
it does. </strong>Not just because
life is wearying, boring, draining, or
tense. But because <em>you know</em>.
<a
href="https://eand.co/without-social-investment-we-die-c5bcd55d563c?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">It doesn’t have to be
like this</a>. And yet it is. Maybe,
then, it always did have to be like
this. Maybe this is the only way. We
have to fail so they can learn.</p>
<p>I take consolation, I suppose, in the
fact that the next civilization will
be — will have to be — wiser, gentler,
truer, better than us. It’s a shame,
though, that the rest of our lives are
going to, well…you know. <a
href="https://eand.co/three-decades-three-revolutions-or-our-civilization-will-collapse-de2758d94f63?source=your_stories_page---------------------------"
rel="noopener">Suck.</a></p>
<p>Umair <br>
July 2020</p>
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