Saved

His worlds can be isolated, smothering, grating, haunting, bleak, warm, familiar, alien, all at once. They are never dull and they are never someone else’s. Never sacrificing his weirdness, his staunch outlooks on life, or his vision, you can feel his fingerprints on everything he made, because nobody else possibly could have. Sometimes annoying with how opaquely abstract they can be, but never in a cynical way. He had a laser precise understanding of his control over an audience, and explored all the extremes that come with that. He wove dark, brutal, sometimes cruel tapestries of our own psyches and displayed them back to us with white glove care.

Despite being viewed as abstract or avant garde, there is an inescapable Americana to his work, with all of its horrific blemishes and stunning beauty, hand in hand just like the country itself.

Lynch’s art is uncomfortable, uncompromising, but never uncaring. Frigid surreality that could only be a product of warm humanity. Darkness will always coupled with light. After all, nightmares are still dreams.

I would argue that the core tenets of the average American consumer mindset in 2025, the perfect encapsulations of the noxious attitudes that led us to where we are now, come in the form of two particular phrases that have been parroted ad nauseam the last few years.

The first of which is the classic, “Let people enjoy things.” Deconstructing it, it really defines the entire first half of the decade in more ways than one. An invisible straw-man evil big Other that somehow controls whether or not people can “have fun”, a childish temper tantrum thrown by people still getting what they want caused by having to face any form of critical thinking for doing so, a shrieking demand for more pacification, it really has it all. Is it fine for people to have hobbies and interests and passions that don’t align with yours? Absolutely.

There is a large, crucial difference between “letting someone” enjoy something, and negligently allowing something toxic to fester and gradually spread untreated like ignored black mold. Our modern narcissism and individualism have made people so entrenched in their demands for consumption, that it’s hard to imagine who even is not letting people enjoy things at this point.

The all-but-hedonistic behavior of our modern day certainly doesn’t reflect a culture of people not being allowed to enjoy things, but rather one that wants to be able to enjoy things without having to think about it. Any sort of opposing belief, or conscious step back from the raging maw of consumption is met with complete indignation, as if their right to slop is being infringed upon.

Alternatively, chances for maturation or growth get flippantly put off for some other time that never comes, a complete refusal to actually analyze our relationship to the way we operate.

This brings us to the second defining phrase of the times that I’d like to break down, one that is constantly coupled with the former, the oft-repeated, aggressively vapid, “It’s not that deep.”

Part reaction to the supposed “intellectualism” and woke-ism of the 2010s, part rejection of personal responsibility for one’s own habits and actions, it most succinctly sums up the prevailing attitudes that have dictated the course of the Biden and now Trump 2.0 years. If our beautiful and twisted history has taught us anything, it’s that things are usually always that deep, but somehow we’ve began plugging our ears to that fact. It is a frankly dangerous indicator of the median population’s attitude towards growth or challenging oneself in any way.

In the realm of media, this rejection of the inherent depth of things has completely altered people’s understanding about those things. If one’s own scope of something is minimized, anything outside of that scope is easier to be written off as antagonistic, foreign, pretentious, or any other label that leads to dismissal. Valid, formal criticism, (sometimes even from a place of love!), gets brushed off as “hating” because the idea that someone thought about something in a deeper way and wasn’t pleased with what they found is abrasive to those unwilling to explore that same level of depth.

Additionally, this phrase has been the perfect excuse as evil rhetorics are unconsciously spread through seemingly innocuous or lighthearted means. “It’s just a meme, it’s not that deep.” quickly turns to “How did this propaganda spread so fast?”. Through the first 5 years of our decade, we have gradually let it become defined by half gestures and “meh” reactions, a drab grey monocultural sludge, and then have the audacity to wonder how it got that way. We let it slip away ourselves through embracing memetic psyops, “gotta hand it to ‘em”s and "letting people have fun”. Well now they’re having their fun, the question is, do you think they’ll return that favor to you?

Giant swaths of the population have both figuratively and literally thrown their masks away, and are perfectly dumbed down and pacified to be absolutely steamrolled by a whole new wave of regression and recession.

At the time of writing this, Tiktok has been banned and subsequently hours later unbanned, all with Donald Trump’s name fully plastered over the entire ordeal, in what can only come across as a very obvious ploy to swing more gullible idiots into supporting him. The problem with this blatant grab to try and become a hero of a ban that he initially pushed for however, is that it’s working scarily well. The tectonic shift that has been building steadily throughout the course of the failure of the Biden era has finally come for its biggest payoff yet. Capitalizing on people’s COVID fried, goldfish sized memories in order to continue to innocuously shift people right into submission.

The biggest takeaway from the election and gradual Vibe Shift is the powers that be realizing they had more numbers than they thought, that the middle of the bell curve is infinitely more manipulatable than expected. Either directly through propaganda, or indirectly through desensitization via prolonged exposure to the most concentrated, hallucinogenic stupidity available.

If a gun were being pointed in our face, why would we argue that it’s only harmful if someone pulled the trigger.

Another noticeable symptom of this mode of behavior we have fallen into is the warping of what used to be considered “playing devil’s advocate”, and how it has impacted the way we digest and talk about art.

Similar to the attitudes surrounding fast fashion, somewhere along the line people stopped caring about trying to be better than the Mall, even going so far as to fight on the Mall’s behalf out of pure, empty contrarianism. Popularity took the reins as the de-facto measurement of quality, the belief was planted that the mainstream has our artistic best interests in mind, and people militantly ride for that belief despite decades of proof of the opposite. Not knowing nor caring that they’re secretly advocating for overall worse quality of experiences for themselves.

Too many people want to play devil’s advocate but don’t possess the depth of knowledge, the insight, or nuance to do so, so they wind up just playing devil instead, blindly defending degradation rather than express a bit of concern for the way things are going.

It has brought us to where we are now, a legion of people ready to die on the hill of slop, so as not to make any ripples, without even wanting to know if there can be anything better than the lowest common denominator what was shoved down their throats. Taking the sides of the rich people and giant brands that want to give the consumer nothing above mediocrity. These people and places don’t deserve our benefit of the doubt, because they’ve already won.

Vehemently and vocally rejecting that mainstream and embracing what we know to actually be cool. The time for passivity is over, because this continued sliding by the mainstream is active. We know we can be smarter, more conscious consumers, aware of what’s better than the mall or the radio or the pointed propagandized memes on tiktok. We know there’s more rich experiences to be had, art to discover, statements to make, ways to expand our thought that will not be presented to us on a silver platter by giant corporations or industry machines. We can speak with our eyes, ears, voices, and most importantly wallets. If something sucks, say it and stand on it, because it is far too easy now to succumb to the “well everybody’s doing it” mentality.

My tolerance for bad faith devil’s advocate arguments that only contribute to spin the wheels of progress in place is gone. We have only a short amount of time on this earth and I don’t intend to waste it watching that window of opportunity be pissed away by someone else.

Every time you open your mouth is an opportunity to say something new, something of worth, and I do not want to waste even one moment. It’s time to get serious and realize yes it is that deep. It always has been. I can’t say for certain exactly what this counter-culture will manifest as or even look like specifically, but I do have faith that something can and will emerge. There is far too much talent, energy, emotion, conviction, and spirit out there to not.

Pre-Trump American conservatism was dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: limited government, cultural traditionalism, antiabortion politics, fiscal rectitude and free market economics. Now, I’m the first to concede the right often fell short of its ideals, but showing rhetorical fealty to the ideals was the binding firmament of conservatism. Those commitments still get some lip-service, but there’s no denying that on all of these fronts, loyalty to Trump is the more pressing litmus test. This has freed up Trump to move leftward on abortion, entitlements and economic policy generally.

Trump didn’t merely shatter the consensus on the right, he shattered the political consensus generally. Or maybe social media and those other trends were the battering rams and Trump merely benefited from the new landscape.

the bedrock assumptions about how politics “works” and the rules for what a politician can or can’t do, no longer seem operative. We’re all familiar with how his behavior has demonstrated that, but it’s also illuminated that the electorate itself is just different today. The FDR coalition is gone, the white working class is now operationally conservative, and the Latino and Black working classes are now seen as gettable by Republicans. The assumption that they are “natural Democrats” was obliterated in this election. Republicans have figured out how to talk to those constituencies.

Here’s a warning and an admonition written in January 2019 by author and organizer Jonathan Smucker: “If the Dem Party establishment succeeds in beating down the fresh leadership and bold vision that's stepping up, it will effectively enable the continued rise of authoritarianism. But they will not wake up and suddenly grasp this. It's on us to outmaneuver them and win.”

There are a million surface-level reasons for Kamala Harris’s loss and systematic underperformance in pretty much every county and among nearly every demographic group. She is part of a deeply unpopular administration. Voters believe the economy is bad and that the country is on the wrong track. She is a woman and we still have some work to do as a nation to overcome long-held biases.  But the real problems for the Democrats go much deeper and require a dramatic course correction of a sort that, I suspect, Democrats are unlikely to embark upon. The bottom line is this: Democrats are still trying to run a neoliberal campaign in a post-neoliberal era. In other words, 2016 Bernie was right.

The lie that fueled the Iraq war destroyed confidence in the institutions that were the bedrock of this neoliberal order and in the idea that the U.S. could or should remake the world in our image. Even more devastating, the financial crisis left home owners destitute while banks were bailed out, revealing that there was something deeply unjust in a system that placed capital over people.

These events sparked social movements on both the right and the left. The Tea Party churned out populist-sounding politicians like Sarah Palin and birtherist conspiracies about Barack Obama, paving the way for the rise of Donald Trump. The Tea Party and Trumpism are not identical, of course, but they share a cast of villains: The corrupt bureaucrats or deep state. The immigrants supposedly changing your community. The cultural elites telling you your beliefs are toxic. Trump’s version of this program is also explicitly authoritarian. This authoritarianism is a feature not a bug for some portion of the Trump coalition which has been persuaded that democracy left to its own devices could pose an existential threat to their way of life.

On the left, the organic response to the financial crisis was Occupy Wall Street, which directly fueled the Bernie Sanders movement. Here, too, the villains were clear. In the language of Occupy it was the 1% or as Bernie put it the millionaires and billionaires. It was the economic elite and unfettered capitalism that had made it so hard to get by. Turning homes into assets of financial speculation. Wildly profiteering off of every element of our healthcare system. Busting unions so that working people had no collective power. This movement was, in contrast to the right, was explicitly pro-democracy, with a foundational view that in a contest between the 99% and the 1%, the 99% would prevail. And that a win would lead to universal programs like Medicare for All, free college, workplace democracy, and a significant hike in the minimum wage.

On the Republican side, Donald Trump emerged as a political juggernaut at a time when the party was devastated and rudderless, having lost to Obama twice in a row. This weakened state—and the fact that the Trump alternatives were uncharismatic drips like Jeb Bush—created a path for Trump to successfully execute a hostile takeover of the party.

Plus, right-wing populism embraces capital, and so it posed no real threat to the monied interests that are so influential within the party structures.

The Republican donor class was not thrilled with Trump’s chaos and lack of decorum but they did not view him as an existential threat to their class interests

The difference was that Bernie’s party takeover did pose an existential threat—both to party elites who he openly antagonized and to the party’s big money backers. The bottom line of the Wall Street financiers and corporate titans was explicitly threatened. His rise would simply not be allowed. Not in 2016 and not in 2020.

What’s more, Hillary Clinton and her allies launched a propaganda campaign to posture as if they were actually to the left of Bernie by labeling him and his supporters sexist and racist for centering class politics over identity politics. This in turn spawned a hell cycle of woke word-policing and demographic slicing and dicing and antagonism towards working class whites that only made the Democratic party more repugnant to basically everyone.

The path not taken in 2016 looms larger than ever. Bernie’s coalition was filled with the exact type of voters who are now flocking to Donald Trump: Working class voters of all races, young people, and, critically, the much-derided bros. The top contributors to Bernie’s campaign often held jobs at places like Amazon and Walmart. The unions loved him. And—never forget—he earned the coveted Joe Rogan endorsement that Trump also received the day before the election this year. It turns out, the Bernie-to-Trump pipeline is real! While that has always been used as an epithet to smear Bernie and his movement, with the implication that social democracy is just a cover for or gateway drug to right wing authoritarianism, the truth is that this pipeline speaks to the power and appeal of Bernie’s vision as an effective antidote to Trumpism. When these voters had a choice between Trump and Bernie, they chose Bernie. For many of them now that the choice is between Trump and the dried out husk of neoliberalism, they’re going Trump.

Maybe I will be just as wrong as I was about the election but it is my sense that with this Trump victory, authoritarian right politics have won the ideological battle for what will replace the neoliberal order in America. And yes, I think it will be ugly, mean, and harmful—because it already is.

“The important thing is that you’re informed on issues you care about.” Of course, finding good information is increasingly difficult. Decades ago, there were just a few channels on television; the Internet has broadened the choices and lowered the standards. “Now people might seek out information about a particular candidate on a particular policy and think they have genuine info, but they’re being misinformed or misled,” Kalla said. The decline of newspapers has led to a decrease in split-ticket voting: voters know less about the candidates in their districts, so they simply vote along party lines. This has helped to nationalize politics. Cable news, which voters increasingly rely on, “carries a lot less information than the New York Times,” Schleicher said.

This is all build-up to my proposal for what Musk — or any other bidder for Twitter, for that matter — ought to do with a newly private Twitter. First, Twitter’s current fully integrated model is a financial failure. Second, Twitter’s social graph is extremely valuable. Third, Twitter’s cultural impact is very large, and very controversial. Given this, Musk (who I will use as a stand-in for any future CEO of Twitter) should start by splitting Twitter into two companies. One company would be the core Twitter service, including the social graph. The other company would be all of the Twitter apps and the advertising business.

TwitterServiceCo would open up its API to any other company that might be interested in building their own client experience; each company would: Pay for the right to get access to the Twitter service and social graph. Monetize in whatever way they see fit (i.e. they could pursue a subscription model). Implement their own moderation policy. This last point would cut a whole host of Gordian Knots:

A truly open TwitterServiceCo has the potential to be a new protocol for the Internet — the notifications and identity protocol; unlike every other protocol, though, this one would be owned by a private company. That would be insanely valuable, but it is a value that will never be realized as long as Twitter is a public company led by a weak CEO and ineffective board driving an integrated business predicated on a business model that doesn’t work. Twitter’s Reluctance