Mark’s last day at work was like most of Mark’s other days at work. Despite it being his last day, he still had to do a lot of very normal things—

1. money from cash register to safe

2. toilet clean and sink clean

3. chip on left shelf.

4. candy right shelf.

5. fill promo cooler with energy drink.

Also, Mark didn’t know it was his last day. He had had other days that he thought felt like his last day at work, but he always ended up coming back.

The reason he came back was pretty simple. He came back because he wasn’t fired and he didn’t quit and so he ended up on the schedule.

Sometimes Mark would say “Man I’m so tired of this job, what I would do to not work it,” and depending on who he said that to, he would hear different things—

Girlfriend: “Mark! We need the money! Don’t you quit like a quitter would. Stay and work! I love you!”

Mom (supportive): “Good job Marky-poo, I love seeing you stand up for yourself. I hope you quit on exactly the exact day that you want to quit.”

Mom (scared): “Oh no please Mark don’t quit. You need the money from the job! Remember? You have bills to pay. You are an adult with a girlfriend!”

Coworker: “Yeah man, I agree. Working is tough. I am making the rich richer by doing this.”

Almost everyone in Mark’s life thought he should stay at work except for Mom (supportive). This is another reason Mark stayed. Because he really trusts his people.

II. Mark is Really Happy

One of the reasons for Mark’s strong convictions in life are his “people.” That’s what he calls his family and friends. When he’s only talking about one of them, he calls them his “person.” A typical exchange between Mark and one of his people would be something like this—

Mark: *walks into room*

Mark: “My person!”

Person: “Hi Mark! Still working that job?”

Mark: “Yeppers.”

And then the conversation would vary, depending on whether or not Mark was speaking to Mom (supportive) or not.

When Mark is in a group of his people, that’s when he’s feeling best. You could catch his smile from across the room, and you can tell that it is real.

For example, if Mark is at work with his coworker and they are standing out front getting ready to leave, Mark will be happy. But the times when he is really happy? That’s when his car isn’t working so his girlfriend picks him up from work. For a brief moment, while he’s standing there with his coworker, and his girlfriend has arrived in the parking lot, it doesn’t get better than that for Mark. Those are his people, and they are both there.

Still, a night like that can be tough for Mark, even though its filled with happiness. That’s because he’s always happier with his people. When he’s with his coworker, and then briefly with his coworker and girlfriend, and then with his girlfriend only? That is going from being happy, to really happy, to happy again.

For Mark, that mood swing can be tough. It had always been Mark’s opinion that humans were never meant to handle mood swings like that.

He talks about it in the car with his girlfriend—

“Man, that can be tough, going from being with my person, to my people, to my person.” Mark says.

Mark’s girlfriend says “I totally get it,” and they don’t really talk for the rest of the car ride because Mark is processing how he feels and his girlfriend has run out of good advice to give.

III - I. Mark’s Idea

Mark is about to go to bed but he has a really good idea. He is thinking about getting his people together—

1. His mom

2. His girlfriend

3. His coworker

The thought had barely formed, but he could feel it taking shape, like a puddle of mushy-goo using internal chemical reactions to form bone marrow and proteins and fats and little tiny bones. In Mark’s head he visualized it as green goo, and he laughed a little bit because it reminded him of the slime on Nickelodeon.

IV. Flashback

Mark is twelve years old and his mom (supportive) took him to Universal Studios and he got slimed for a theme park show they were doing. Mark laughed because he was going to have slime on him for the rest of the day. He wondered how he would go about normal activities like walking, eating, or walking to the car, while covered in slime. He wondered if anyone would look at him and say “What the heck happened to that kid!”

Mark thought it would be funny, if someone had happened to say that, if he just acted like nothing was wrong and pretended to be totally dry. Then he would say “What do you mean?” and walk away like nothing happened. However, Mark knew this would be impossible because he thought the slime was too funny. If anyone had said that to him, which no one did, he would have immediately burst out laughing. Even just walking, eating, and walking to the car was testing his limits of being able to hold in laughter.

III - II. Mark’s Idea (cont.)

So Mark is remembering the slime incident from Universal Studios, and has briefly forgotten about his idea, but then he remembers and is back on track. He’s thinking about getting his people together.

This would fix his problem where he has to go from happy to really happy then happy again. “Well,” he thinks to himself, but also says out loud. What follows is him realizing that this actually doesn’t fix his problem. The happy, really happy, happy sequence would still happen if everyone gathered, because he would be around before and after the gathering, since he’s him. He tries to think hard for a solution, so he sits in his chair.

V. Mark’s Chair

Mark’s chair is from Ikea. It used to be white but has been stained blue by his blue jeans. It creaks a little bit but has never caused any problems with sitting. It has fabric and padding on the backrest. It also has fabric and padding on the seat. The padding on the seat is very worn down, though.

III - III. Mark’s Idea (cont.)

Mark realizes that if he woke up to all of his people already there, and then fell asleep while they were still there, then he could have a full day of being with his people. Then this could be its own memory and he could think about it whenever he wants to smile.

He calls all three of his people and they all answer the phone except for mom (supportive). Instead, mom (scared) answers the phone and says “Who is this?” in a way that sounds like she doesn’t know who it is. After Mark says that it’s him, she becomes mom (supportive) and agrees to his plan.

Also, everyone else (girlfriend, coworker) agreed prior to the phone call with his mom.

VI. Mark Gets Ready

So now Mark needs to get ready. He told everyone that he would do this tomorrow, so he’s going to do it tomorrow. It’s night time and he is looking at his shirts.

“Not this one. Not this one. Not this one.”

He says this as he pushes each consecutive shirt down the clothing rod.

“This one’s perfect.” he says, because he found the perfect shirt. It’s a t-shirt, and he knows from experience that it’s comfortable enough to sleep in and also talk to his people in. Mark thinks its funny that he “knows this from experience” because wearing a shirt is a funny thing to claim to have experience with, because everyone has shirts and experiences wearing them.

He tells his girlfriend about this before they go to bed.

She says “That’s really funny!” and then turns off the TV and turns off the lights and they lay down to go to sleep.

Mark says “I’m so excited for the gathering tomorrow.” and his girlfriend says nothing because she is asleep. Mark is kept up for about fifteen more minutes because he is thinking about how funny it would have been if his girlfriend had replied while fast asleep, and if they had had a conversation in between her snoring. He imagined her waking up, and then he would say something like “Great conversation we had there,” and she would say “What do you mean?” or something like that like she always does, and Mark would laugh his head off explaining the situation to her. It would probably keep him smiling all through the next day if it happened.

VII. Some Things You Don’t Know Yet

There are two things you don’t know yet. One is that Mark hadn’t told anyone why he was having this gathering. This was because Mark didn’t have a particular occasion in mind. Mark knows his people, though, and he knows that his coworker would come with plenty of questions locked and loaded. His coworker was “as curious as a cat,” Mark often thought.

Mark also thought that if his coworker didn’t work at the mini-mart with Mark, then he would make a really good private investigator. One of the things that Mark really liked to do was imagine the stories that his coworker would tell him about his job as a private investigator. In one of the imaginary stories, a woman fell out of a window and into a bush trying to sneak out of a house where she was having an affair. Mark’s coworker would tell him something like “That woman—I couldn’t believe it. She fell right out of that window trying to sneak out of the house. Guess that’s what happens when you have an affair.” The thought of that just cracks Mark up, especially the way his coworker would have said it.

The second thing you did not know yet was that Mark and his coworker both had the day off from work because some contractors had to fix a leak in the main room. Mark even said “Are you sure I shouldn’t come in anyway?” and the contractor said “There’s no way you could work around us. The whole ceiling is gonna have to come down. It’s gonna be a mess.” So Mark handed him the keys and said “Alright, here’s the keys then. Don’t make too much of a mess.” and Mark laughed. The contractor laughed too and said “Just doin’ my job, Mark.”

This caught Mark off guard, being called by name by someone he didn’t know. Later that same night, Mark had told his girlfriend about it and she said “Some people have done that before to me.” then she turned off the TV and turned off the lights and went to sleep.

VIII. Mark’s Last Day of Work

Mark woke up and heard chatter in the main room. It sounded like his mom (supportive), girlfriend, and coworker. This all made sense to him since he had invited his mom, girlfriend, and coworker to his home that day.

He got out of bed and said “Great to see you all here!”

Everyone said “Good to see you too, Mark! Thanks for inviting us!”

Mark’s coworker patted him on the back and his mom pointed to a coffee table with chips on it and said “Chips!”

“Thanks mom!” said Mark, then he tried to think of a chip joke.

“Hopefully there’s enough for all of us!” he said because there were two bags of chips, and he figured they could probably only get through one of them.

It worked. All of his people laughed.

“So what’s the occasion, Mark?” said none other than his coworker.

Mark had a feeling this was going to happen. He thought about it before he went to bed the night before. His coworker is so curious and he’s definitely the type of guy who would wonder.

Mark grabs a chip and holds it to buy himself time.

He thinks to himself.

1. Maybe I could make a joke?

2. What if they don’t believe me?

3. What if I tell the truth and they think it’s a joke?

Mark realizes that his third thought is not realistic because there is no truth. There is actually no occasion at all. Mark wonders if that is a good enough reason to just not answer at all, but he’s now been standing with a chip in his hand for over thirty seconds, and he knows that he’s running out of time to keep this interaction believable, otherwise he will have to go with Option 1.

He looks at the clock which has now turned over to 9:43, when it had previously been at 9:42. He tries to remember if he also saw it turn from 9:41 to 9:42 since he picked up the chip.

He decides enough is enough, and says in his own head “Enough is enough.” and then says out loud “Enough is enough.” then he drops the chip, which surprises him because it seems that he had become so expressive that he forgot to continue holding the chip.

Mark sees everyone staring at him, and they’re definitely still happy and having a good time, but he knows he’s going to have to answer for his actions. He knows how out of hand this is.

He thinks back to Universal Studios and how funny he thought it would be to confuse people after he got slimed. He wondered why he felt so averse to sitting in that same discomfort from his youth, to allow others to shoulder the awkwardness rather than him. To simply say “I don’t feel awkward or weird at all right now, do you? That’s weird of you!” He wonders if the slime mindset is juvenile, something that he has grown out of. Why did he feel this gigantic burden to not only answer the question, but tell the truth?

But he knew. Deep down he knew.

It was because these were his people.

“I brought you here because I’m quitting my job.” Mark said.

IX. The Aftermath

Mark didn't actually mean to say that. In the background of all the noise in his own head, he had started a ten second countdown and promised to say something at the end of it. He hadn't realized that he was counting down until he hit two, at which point he knew he had to say something, because Mark wasn't a guy who broke promises with himself. He knew that whatever part of his brain had started this countdown had done it for a reason, and he knew he had to respect and honor it.

So with one and a half seconds left, he thought of the first thing that came to his head. That’s when he said “I brought you here because I’m quitting my job.”

The rest of the day was pretty amazing for Mark. All his people were there, and they stuck around until around lunch time, when Mark’s coworker had to meet up with his own girlfriend. Before his coworker left, Mark said “You should bring your girlfriend around sometime. I’d love to meet her.”

His coworker smiled and agreed. Mark knew that it was a great idea to ask even before he had said it. He had had a lot of fun, and he knew that he wanted more people. He thought of future opportunities to ask other people, people who may not be his people yet, to spend time with him and his people. He briefly imagined the contractor at his work, and wondered if he’d ever see him again. He decided that if he ever did see the contractor again, he would want to invite him to a future gathering.

Then, in his head, he thought “I only have so many jobs I can quit.” thinking that it would be funny if he only arranged gatherings to announce that he was quitting jobs. Then he thought “I’m going to need to make a really good resumé.” and laughed again, mostly to himself. A third part of the joke almost surfaced, but fizzled out. He didn’t want to take it too far, he already thought it was pretty funny as it was.

Mark got into his bed and closed his eyes. It was around 1PM but he wanted to fall asleep before his people left so that he could follow through on his original plan.

Mark isn’t the kind of guy who breaks promises with himself.

Mark had a passing thought before he fell asleep. He thought “What if I just got out of bed right now to go meet up with the contractor because otherwise I’ll never see him again?” He decided that it’s best not to tempt fate. Things would happen as they happen, and he still didn’t want to break a promise with himself. He figured “Hey, it’s okay to have a great day and just leave it at that. Not every day needs to be some big adventure.” Then he fell asleep thinking about getting slimed at Universal Studios. He thought about how getting slimed at Universal Studios and his gathering today were probably his top two best days. He thought about how he would tell his girlfriend this if she were there, but she wasn’t because she was eating chips with Mark’s mom (supportive) in the other room. He decided that he will tell her tomorrow and then fell asleep for real this time.

0. Pre-Intro / Instructions for the Reader

I promised myself I wouldn’t write anything online about Trump ever again unless I could do it in a way that doesn’t feel annoying or dramatic.1 This isn’t only about Trump. It’s also about the American Left, which I identify as, mostly, but I’m maybe more skeptical than I used to be. I’m sure you’ll be able to pick up on it without my explicit mention of it there.

Anyway—

I’ve now read over this a few times and probably made a lot of mistakes that I’m not catching. But I’m not cringing every time I look at it, so I feel pretty good about posting it online. This is usually a bad feeling to have, and leads to no good.

I’m choosing to heavily utilize footnotes. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in there, probably about half the essay. So if you’re interested in my actual opinion, I would prefer that you read the footnotes as you’re making your way through this. If you would rather only read half of my opinion that I sort of arbitrarily decided to not put behind tiny numbers, I have left that option open to you by simply avoiding the footnotes altogether. I made sure to choose a platform where you can click the footnote number in the footnotes section to return to where you were in the essay. I also think you can hover over the footnotes and they’ll eventually appear. That is how much I care about you reading the footnotes. But you still don’t have to if you’d rather not.

I didn’t say it beforehand, but the footnote thing is Rule #1.

Rule #2 is that if you’d like to engage on anything you read here, use the comment section at the bottom. I don’t expect many people will read this since I’m probably just going to post it on my Instagram story and call it a day, but I do think public discussion is more productive than private discussion. Any thoughts or gripes or comments or opinions you’ve got, they have a nice home in the comment section below this essay.

That’s it, here’s essay #49494903248230498209347293874209387409237409872340972 about something adjacent to American politics.

I. Intro

Trump is going to win probably.

For a long time I didn’t think that I support Trump. In some ways, I know that I don’t. I don’t align with his policies, have never donated to his campaign, attended his rallies, nor tried to convince anyone to vote for him. I don’t even think he was a good president, or would be a good president in his second term. His brand of politicking is something that I find equal parts of-the-times and divisive — the antithesis to how we could, in theory, strengthen our country. However, I’m not convinced that many left-leaning progressives have considered how much, and in what ways, they actually do support Trump’s path to his second term. I might be one among them.

Ignoring Trump’s policy, ideology, ‘family values’, all of that — and ignoring them because I don’t think they hold much of an impact on swaying voters at this point — Trump is exceptionally charismatic. I don’t mean that as a compliment as much as it is an observation. He inspires people, for or against him, to speak up and be loud. There’s a pretty high likelihood that a randomly-picked United States citizen would watch any arbitrarily-chosen soundbite of him speaking, laugh, and say “he’s kind of got a point, though;” an even greater chance of just the standalone laugh without any vague pseudo-endorsement.

I say this not to convince you that Trump is a master comedian or actually an amazing, misunderstood hero. I say it because it runs in stark contrast to his competition, whose image is spiraling out of control by the day, with journalists, and Biden himself, doing a magnificent job of portraying him as a dementia’d out old dude who should be allowed to live out his few remaining years peacefully2.

So, setting the stage, you have two candidates who are far too old to reasonably have a grasp on the hardships of the coming generations of Americans. One of them is loud, proud, and funny, the other is in a state of disrepair. To a lot of voters, it doesn’t seem like their choice between candidates is actually much of a choice. Speaking of not having a choice to vote for, let’s talk about the American Left.

II. The American Left

The American Left hate what they believe America stands for symbolically. You can observe an up-to-date example of this with the Israel/Palestine conflict. It could be argued that this conflict is so present in the American mind, not because of the conflict itself, but because of the Western flavor that’s been prescribed to it. You can take a look at this list of current genocide warnings and ask yourself how many you’ve heard anything about at all, let alone seen public demonstrations for. Before you barge into my DMs, I’m not bringing this up for any reason other than to examine what spurs the attention of the American Left. In this case, and many others, that attention is finely tuned to circumstances which can be condensed into a colonial-settler dyad3, maybe more specifically a Western colonial-settler dyad4.

This colonist framework is most present in the minds of the American Left because it is the most obvious truth about America’s far-from-perfect past. With leftists uniting under this common worldview, and humans being strong pattern finders,5 it makes sense that this is where leftists have naturally drawn parallels. Israel is an extremely westernized society, especially considering their geographical location, and this makes it an excellent in-point for new or returning leftists who have a desire to extend their worldview and politics outside of the United States.6

The flip side is that Israel’s geographic location predisposes it and its neighbors to a complex and messy history of Middle Eastern conflict. This is a factor that, to the American Left, is too clunky to do anything with other than toss aside in the greater conversation.7 This is all to say, the American Left tends to use a rigid good-versus-evil lens to frame most issues, as it serves as a major boon for messaging and mobilization.8

In a broken, divisive system, like what we have in the United States, the American Left does not provide or permit a vocabulary for gray areas or ethical relativism.9 The only option provided to a newcomer is to “get onboard or get run over.” Although this mental framework contributes to the left’s ability to organize large scale protests on short notice, it is also a direct route to political isolation and further ideological splintering. It doesn’t need to be explained how isolationism puts many goals, however noble, out of reach10.

Put simply, the American Left has outgrown their internal model of Western society, and have a collective feeling that the system cannot be worked with any longer, so must be worked against. Because leftist policy focuses solely on resolving the dysfunction of Western ideology by creating something entirely new, it stands to reason that anyone they’re able to convince to move to their side of the aisle is going to be another disimpassioned voter who feels that turning up to the polls is pointless. Why participate in a game that you don’t believe in?

Indeed, for the American Left it might actually be pointless, as the hubris that comes with being left-aligned today doesn’t make room for voting for what is perceived as “the lesser of two evils”, even if that “lesser of two evils” may lead to marginally better outcomes long-term11. For American Leftists, who function on concrete morals defined by the party itself, it’s simply not worth the character hit of voting for someone who you don’t fully believe in.

III. Some Math and a Mid-Essay Check In

So here’s the math-

Every theoretical Trump supporter equals a vote for Trump. Every theoretical person onboarded to the American Left, and every disimpassioned voter12 equals a potential, metaphorical vote for Trump by omission.

Somehow, the specific blend of Trump/Biden has created a supernatural voter vortex that sucks in everyone’s opinion on one side and spits out Trump votes on the other side. Even worse13, publicly hating on Trump makes Trump supporters want to vote for him even more! This is not the case for Biden supporters14, who seem to be walking a thin line between barely casting a vote and avoiding the polls altogether.

To make matters more confusing, it’s hard to conceptualize anything Biden could do to increase his chances of winning. He’s made bad situations worse in a lot of ways. He fumbled the student loan forgiveness, probably the most directly-affecting part of his platform that would have been an easy-to-point-to “great thing” that happened during his presidency. Instead we ended up with the policy equivalent of a soggy piece of bread15.

He also lost the far left on foreign policy, not through any explicit actions, but a definite fumble on messaging. When the youth voter base would have preferred Biden to walk out onto the nearest stage and say something to the effect of “Free Palestine,” which he was never going to do anyway, he never could find the right messaging to express support for Israel while still appealing to the hearts and minds of young left voters. It’s not like younger citizens tend to vote en-masse anyway, but in an election where every vote is going to matter, it’s not good business to be alienating your potential voter base.

IV. Vibe Shift in Tech

I am unfortunately very obsessed with the developments in AI. I know that others know this about me because now people scoot away from me when I bring it up. I have an optimistic take on the technology, and see it as a necessary step in our evolution as a species, but I do acknowledge that there are many ways this new future could go horribly wrong16. Because of AI’s massive energy needs, and Trump’s outspoken willingness to fire up national energy efforts on all cylinders, we are seeing a massive “don’t say it out loud” shift in tech away from the democratic party, who is more likely to have a heavier hand when regulating AI.

This push for energy is going to become the most cash-flush effort in world history, and Trump has been meeting with all the tech billionaires frequently to assuage their energy ambitions. By all measures he seems to be completely on board, and Silicon Valley is ready to use their corporatocratic17 abilities to manifest him into the presidency.

Tech is diverging from the left pretty noticeably here, a big move from an industry that has generally aligned with artists, who are generally associated with the American Left.18 I believe that this rift will grow larger as AI becomes even more of a hot button issue, and the perception of tech companies push further and further to the right. This is an important shift to monitor because these tech companies control a lot. To varying degrees19 they control what we see, what we buy, who we like and dislike, and our core beliefs. These companies also have tons of money to throw around, and that money goes toward high level research on how to convince you to think, say, and feel the things they want.

In case you haven’t realized over the past fifteen years, we live in a corporatocracy, and virtually everyone’s livelihoods now rely on the well-being of those corporations. The basic notion of money in politics is nothing new or notable, but the fact that this money is going to be flowing from Silicon Valley is notable, mainly because these companies control everything digital that passes in front of your eyes.

The truth is that these algorithms are designed to be opaque in the face of any questioning20. The companies making them know21 that the general public is suspicious of how their algorithms choose content, but the algorithms are also abstract enough for them to never have to worry that anyone will figure it out. That obfuscation serves as a departure from truth in online communication, and for the vast majority of those with internet access, online social networks are the primary source of news.22

There is strong justification to believe that any content we see is being served to us with dishonest intentions. The case could also be made that these apps are weaponizing American citizens against their own country by encouraging and incentivizing anti-American sentiments,23 which doesn’t sound too far fetched when you realize that these strategies have been front-of-mind in Russia and China’s playbook for over twenty years now.24

V - I. “Hello GoodHumans!”

I spent a few years directing videos for the YouTube channel Jubilee Media. Amongst other things, they’re known for their unscripted debate-style shows that bring people from opposite sides of an issue together, and seek to find the areas where their points of view intersect. At one point they called their fanbase “GoodHumans.”25 Working there was actually very interesting, mostly because the hundreds of people you had to interview going into a season of a show exposed you to a huge range of world views.26 Think the most conspiracy-minded people you could possibly imagine, contrasted against adult babies, contrasted against furries, contrasted against the most basic, non-argumentative college PR majors, and everything in between.

Directing those shows left me with two main impressions that don’t feel entirely formulated yet, but I’m just going to word-vomit it out. If I don’t agree with this tomorrow or the next day or after an old coworker from Jubilee texts me about this and provides a better take, then I’m vocalizing that I’m open to that possibility.

1. Almost anyone can sit down and have a polite conversation face-to-face, but there’s a pretty high chance that those same people go home and continue shitposting online immediately. In other words, it takes a lot to change someone’s mind. A big impactful one-off conversation tends to feel big but have a small overall impact long-term.27

2. Media, especially video, is naturally and unfixably biased toward people who want attention. It cannot be underestimated how much this devalues the actual journalistic or anthropological merit of most media28. This is a problem not because these strong-minded individuals’ opinions suck, but because their opinions are intrinsically attached to the goal of more attention29.

Why am I ruminating on my old job? One reason is because I never really unpacked any of my takeaways in a way that feels like I did my thoughts justice, but two is because media reminiscent of what Jubilee makes is very popular right now, and it’s worth wondering why.30

On one hand, Jubilee is very vocal about its unbiasedness. I can speak from experience that they really try to remove bias not only in their messaging, but internally throughout the production process as well. There were many, many conversations that would happen throughout the editing process where we’d have to faithfully consider whether or not we were representing someone’s opinions in the way they meant to express them.

Sometimes this worked as intended, making people proud of the way they represented their point of view. Other times, more so when opinions were more extreme, it led to anger or distrust.31

Because Jubilee is a company headquartered in Los Angeles, CA, there will always be a left-leaning slant to what they make. Not only because of the unconscious biases of the employees, but also because of their casting pool. It is much easier to find an outspoken liberal in Los Angeles, and when you do find the conservatives they tend to be so outspoken that they’re basically a caricature of conservatism itself. The outcome of these variables meant that when someone felt we did them wrong in the edit, it was usually a conservative cast member; the reason they felt wronged was typically because an army had mobilized against them in the comment section.

So you’ve got a bunch of angry leftists, laughing at an angry conservative who volunteered to drive down to a studio and shout his opinion onto the internet for free. He’s mad and letting me know over email, and the leftists32 are having a party in the comments making fun of the guy.

This all begs the question, who is all this content even made for? And I’m talking about everything. YouTube videos, TikToks, Reddit posts, Tweets, Reels, Threads, whatever. Everything from everyone, who’s the audience?

The best answer is probably “people who already agree with everything you’re saying.” I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s an unjust cause, making media for a social issue, or to bridge divides or promote understanding or whatever the corporate mission is at whatever media company, but I personally think it’s an extremely uphill battle to make affecting, opinion-changing media in the current cultural and technological climate.33

Algorithmically, we are now served only one of two things:

1. Content we hate, so that we can hate or make fun of it more.

2. Content we love, so that we can show our support and love.

Our consumption habits all boil down to maximizing engagement. Abstracted, soulless, backend-coded, obfuscated, machine-learned engagement34. Engagement that not only colors what you consume, but what you create, as our consumption contributes to our ever-evolving beliefs. We commit ourselves to noble causes because what option do we really have? You’re not a bad person are you? So why aren’t you saying anything? I noticed you’ve been doing self promo in the midst of this humanitarian crisis. Is that really how you’re going to use your platform? Did you really share that? That was a psyop to clog people’s feeds and distract everyone from what’s actually going on. POSTS ARE BEING SUPPRESSED. If you typ3 lik3 th15 th*n it will g37 p457 the f*173R5.35

If I had to choose one word to describe how I feel we are all acting now, it would be severe36.

V - II. Logan Paul

Have you listened to the Donald Trump episode of Impaulsive?

In it, he calls out Biden multiple times, saying he would never go on the Impaulsive podcast. It’s one of those “W Trump” moments where he’s undeniably totally right. It’s also worth noting how reasonable he comes off,37 and how many people are going to see this and think the same. Trump has seriously toned it down and honed it in since 2016. It appears that he’s very clued in to what demographics he needs to capture for the upcoming election.

A less exciting, but still notable podcast appearance by Trump. A lot of the fans of this podcast were reasonably upset about this appearance. I think it’s because of what I talked about in Section IV above. This appearance made a lot of people very aware that California tech money is going to be powering Trump’s election.

V - III. What Happened When Trump Was President Last Time?

There’s two categories of things that happened when Trump was president last time.

Actual Big Things

&

The Things That Made People Feel A Certain Way Every Day When They Woke Up In The Morning

“Actual Big Things” includes all the regressive policies, excessive culling of his administration, stacking of the supreme court. This is the actual badness that will have a lasting impact for a long time to come and will take a lot to reverse or fix.

“The Things That Made People Feel A Certain Way Every Day When They Woke Up In The Morning” includes when unemployed people were making $70k a year on unemployment and getting random checks in the mail that they could throw into an insanely bullish stock market. A lot of people walked away from Covid and Trump’s presidency feeling awesome about “The Things That Made People Feel A Certain Way Every Day When They Woke Up In The Morning” and much more exhaustedly about “Actual Big Things.”

Four years of a sleepy old man can make you forget how hectic things felt during the Trump years. But no one forgets having money in their pocket, buying a gaming PC with their stimulus money and getting to play Fortnite all day while Dogecoin surges. Those are seminal moments. If I had to guess, this probably helps Trump out in the upcoming election.

VI. Stupid Platitudes

There are two common relationship platitudes that are particularly relevant to the situation we have going on with the American Left. I am going to paraphrase them twice. Once from memory, and then once again to simplify the simplification, so I can use them to make a point.

“You have to love yourself before you can love someone else”, which I will oversimplify into “You can’t hate yourself into a better situation.”

and

"You can’t form a healthy relationship based off of mutual hatred”, from which I will again oversimplify a conclusion: “Misery breeds misery.”

These two statements do a better-than-average job at summarizing the current state of the American Left. I do identify as left, but I also happen to think that I’m in bad company. Amongst the roster of the American Left are people who argue in bad faith, perpetuate political isolationism, and do a wonderful job claiming an indisputable macro perspective without putting in the uncomfortable work of criticizing and challenging their own beliefs.38 The left is also inhabited by a large number of bullies39 who discourage critical thinking by passively forcing people into quarter-formed opinions on massive issues,40 for the sake of the good of the world.

This neurotic41 mentality is not good for anyone. It makes the left weaker as they can’t agree on or discuss effective, or even agreeable, policy without generating miscommunication and disagreement. The circles of the American Left do a lot to encourage in-group/out-group dynamics by rejecting anyone who doesn’t have a strong enough opinion on whatever’s hot at the moment. I did this myself, and probably still do.42 A story about me and my dad —

VII. Pre-Outro

If I was writing this eight years ago, I think this essay would have been very different. In fact, I know it would have been, because I can still see all the extreme, dramatic posts that my peers and I were posting online around that time. That whole period severely strained the relationship between my father and I, as I’m sure it did for a lot of families. My dad wasn’t even a Trump supporter, he was just a guy on the sidelines who was asking questions43 instead of being unabashedly upset like I expected anyone who actually cared about the things I cared about to be.

Looking back on that time, I find a lot of those posts extremely unrelatable, full of empty platitudes and calls to action that no one could or did reasonably follow up on. I cringe at the fact that I expected my seventy year old father to understand the plight of the young left in America, especially considering that those around me only had a puddle-depth, infographic fueled understanding of the situation. That’s not to say that I or anyone else were in the wrong for opposing Trump. I stand by the basic feeling of distaste that I had back then, and I still feel it now. But when I look back on that time period, when everyone was so quick to ready aim fire at their friends and family, I can more clearly see the complicity that being disagreeable, hopeless, angry, and inflammatory brought to the results of that election.

VIII. Fake Out - A Brief Set of Questions

So does Trump win?

Does friend #54 and friend #813 posting on their Instagram story that they’re no longer voting at all after Biden’s debate performance mean anything for the election results?

Is it better to have a selfish old man whose quick, or a generically-alright old man who’s slow in the White House?

Does it even matter?

I can attempt to answer these questions, but it will ultimately just be my opinion, which in reality probably doesn’t go for much.

Q: So does Trump win?

A: Probably. Trump supporters like Trump more than Biden supporters like Biden. Even the people who don’t like Trump find him funny, and even the people who don’t find him funny can admit that he has a fired up, charismatic fanbase. He’s also doing a lot of work to appeal to more moderate voters with his appearances on mainstream youth and left-presenting tech podcasts. I believe the effects of the above will be noticeable.

Q: Does friend #54 and friend #813 posting on their Instagram story that they’re no longer voting at all after Biden’s debate performance mean anything for the election results?

A: No, but they only posted that because a lot of people were discouraged by Biden’s debate performance, and that probably means something. I don’t think it could be overstated how many voters feel like there is truly no acceptable candidate, which is notable because of how many people already felt like their choice didn’t matter prior to the debate. It doesn’t help that the DNC’s “get out the vote” messaging is so desperately trying to come off as relatable and urgent.

Q: Is it better to have a selfish old man whose quick, or a generically-alright old man who’s slow in the White House?

A: Probably the latter. With the Chevron doctrine being overturned, it stands to reason that there is a lot of bad that a Trump administration could manage with four more years in the White House. Regulatory agencies may lose their ability to regulate entirely. Think EPA, NLRB, FDA, and regulators associated with healthcare, financial markets, transportation, consumer protection, education, immigration, and energy. This is a direct result of our previous Trump presidency, which stacked the Supreme Court against general human decency,44 for the foreseeable future.

I will re-use the above answer for question number four, “Does It Even Matter?”

IX. The Actual Outro

When considering your plans for the upcoming election, the question to be asking yourself is not “Who do I align with?” because there’s no answer to be found. It shouldn’t be “Who said the thing I wanted them to say?” or “Who is generally the most likable?” Unfortunately, the question can’t even be “Who do I kind of sort of like even a little bit and think is sort of capable?”

The only question to ask yourself, and the question I will be asking myself is:

“Four years from now, whose pieces do I want to be picking up?”45

Because you’re going to be picking up pieces no matter what.

If you feel some type of way after reading anything on this page, please leave a comment.

Leave a comment

If for some reason you enjoyed this, you can subscribe, although I make no promises as to whether or not I’ll ever write on this blog again.

10

A visual demonstration of what I believe is another barrier for progressive legislation in general. That is, when you’re conservative, you’re moving toward preserving or reinstating well-known concepts. This is easy to rally behind, and it’s easy to message.

When you’re progressive, you’re moving away from those known concepts, and out into uncharted territory. This makes rallying around a central message very hard, as everyone seems to have their own bright ideas on what should take precedence and how it should be accomplished. Then you end up with situations like this. I wonder how much they were able to accomplish that day.