I spent a bunch of the day crying over what has become of this country, and what will become of my family. It is hard to pay attention to what is going on in the world without becoming a total basketcase. I've lost friends and have been broken-hearted about how easily people I thought were smart just fell for the most obvious lies or accepted most ridiculous assertions. Sometimes it makes me want to give up. This essay gave me some reassurance that it is worthwhile to try to maintain a search for understanding. I wish it wasn't such a lonely endeavor.
Your tears, far from being weakness, are the natural response of a mind that refuses comfortable delusions. The search for truth is worthwhile precisely because it's difficult. Throughout history, the moments that seemed darkest were often when the tide was about to turn—not through inevitable progress, but through people exactly like you who felt the full weight of what was being lost and nevertheless stood firm. You are not alone in this endeavor, though it often feels that way. There are others who refuse to surrender to epistemic chaos; find them, build connections with them, create islands of sanity in this rising sea of nonsense. The struggle to maintain a foothold in reality isn't separate from the struggle to maintain your humanity—they are one and the same.
I am sorry you feel this way and my heart is next to you and other Americans like you ❤ please don't judge yourself or your fellow citizens so harsh. You were played by the kgb textbook using algorithms more powerful than any human brain. It is hard to compete against that and even harder not to fall for that.
It took me a very long time to forgive my people for accepting communism for such a long time. I never understood "why" it took them 45 years to do something. It is horrible if you think about it and an oversimplified answer like "you were not strong enough" or, as Vance put it the other days, "your democracy is not that strong after all" perhaps would look appealing. It is not.
Each human being has a dark side. I believe we are all natively good and kind but under the right influence we can turn into despicable beings. It is what it is. In my times of doubt or whenever my friends/ family feel sliding down the slope of the "media narrative" I tell myself/ them: when you don't know what to think, think with your heart. Ask the question "does it feel right?". "Do I feel ok with this?".
In example, the immigrant subject (that all Europe is debating). I go for personal examples like: If this guy on the street would be persecuted, would you help him?
First answer is: I don't know. Why would I care for him?
I go deeper: if you would see somebody beating him or harassing him, would you do something?
The reply is always "yes, of course".
And that is where we have our common ground for discussion. That is where we can start the debate and that is where I can let them tell me their side of the "truth" while I listen and present them the other side of the "truth".
Stay strong and know that you are not alone! Millions if people (both in US and outside US) are with you 🙏❤
Good post. I think this highlights the role that institutions play in shaping the epistemic environment. Individuals can’t make as easy sense of situations that are far removed from the senses compared to those at the local level which make us face reality and take responsibility. Our political institutions have facilitated this breakdown in searching for truth by placing power at the federal level and so far removed from the individual. This is the level in which the main epistemic battles are occurring at and for the average person, there are numerous layers “or shadows” shown to us that hardly give a glimpse of the real situation.
Well, this concept is very depressing for me. I hear Trump say Ukraine caused the Ukraine - Russia war and I know he's not only blown up reality. He's blown the topic right out of the realm of discussion. Fox & company will somehow dance around the lie to the point where it's not being called a lie. Other mainstream media may mention the real fact that Russia invaded Ukraine without provocation, but that's about it. There won't be a call for all news agencies to call Trump out, which is about the only way I see of getting the truth out to Americans. And I've already heard GOP legislators make Trump's dissection of Zelensky the start of a reasonable discussion. If he gets away with this as he did calling USAID a corrupt agency, I'm not sure there are tools in the shed that are going to help us, at least in any normal political conversational way. Maybe if the Democrats win in the next midterm . . .
Thank you for this thoughtful response. Your frustration reflects exactly what I'm trying to articulate about our current epistemic crisis. When Trump claims "Ukraine caused the war," he's not making a false statement in the traditional sense—he's creating what I call a "not even wrong" assertion that's designed to resist correction through normal means.
What makes this particularly dangerous is how it exploits the machinery of our discourse. As you've observed, much of the media ecosystem isn't equipped to handle this kind of epistemic vandalism. Fox and similar outlets won't call it a lie—they'll treat it as a perspective deserving consideration. Meanwhile, mainstream outlets might counter with the basic fact that "Russia invaded Ukraine unprovoked," but this framing inadvertently places both statements on a continuum of legitimate debate, when one is factually grounded and the other is designed to dissolve factuality itself.
This is precisely why waiting for the next election cycle—hoping Democrats win the midterms—isn't sufficient. The damage being done operates at a deeper level than policy. When we can no longer maintain a shared understanding of basic reality, the very foundation that makes democratic deliberation possible begins to crumble.
What we need isn't just electoral victory, but a fundamental reassertion of epistemic standards. This means refusing to treat "not even wrong" statements as legitimate positions, establishing clear boundaries between good-faith disagreement and epistemic sabotage, and rebuilding institutions that can adjudicate truth claims based on evidence rather than power.
I share your concern about our available tools. The old methods of fact-checking and civil debate assume good-faith actors operating within a shared reality. We need new approaches that recognize the strategic deployment of epistemic chaos for what it is—not misinformation to be corrected, but an assault on the very possibility of correction.
This isn't just about Trump or Ukraine—it's about preserving the conditions where truth can be pursued collectively. Without that, even electoral victories become hollow, as the ground beneath democracy itself gives way.
You're right, Ukraine didn't cause the war, NATO did. Ukraine was merely the proxy used by people enamoured by their board games. It's time to stop the killing.
My “American” capacity to read through Brock’s posts are limited. I have to look up words, reread a sentence or paragraph - or the entire post, and still wonder if I understand the meaning. I look forward to being disturbed, and further educated and informed by Brock. Thank you
When reading your piece, I couldn't help but think that what is really going on is that people have not been formally trained how to think...CRITICALLY. Or, some of those who have, make use of that knowledge and weaponize it, hitting the masses over the head with garbage arguments so that people have no means to suss out the truth because they haven't been trained to recognize the faulty reasoning and the fallacies within. I mean, many of the examples you gave of other people's "arguments" are layered with fallacies, one on top of the next on top of the next.
I have always thought that courses in critical thinking should be required, not just in college, but in both middle school (introduction) and again in high school (more advanced). I know it's a pipe dream, given the lack of money placed into US education and educators, but would that not be a good place to start to help stem future tides from the waves of bullshit, or at least provide people with the skills to recognize why a bullshit argument IS a bullshit argument?
“We must cultivate the ability to hold complexity, to remain open to new information while critically evaluating its validity, to recognize the difference between genuine uncertainty and manufactured confusion.”
You are 100% correct. Speaking of percentages, the number of Americans that have this capacity, and would expect to behave as described, decreases each year. This is a primary influencer to the problem ( plan?) that needs consideration before expecting the population to engage in critical evaluation at the necessary scale.
Our online lives have enabled this transformation to ignorant masses that have no time for complexity and nuance. What we see, think, and feel are increasingly out of our control. Not everyone, but enough and growing to pose significant risk to the chances of mounting a defense against manufactured alternate realities.
Take any sample size of average Americans today and then apply some critical thinking to the likelihood that a majority of Americans will reverse the trend line of short, simple, and not very sophisticated.
A true defense requires a plan to live and organize outside the current technological ecosystems.
I also didn't realise this was a philosophy blog and was drawn by the long piece about the neoreactionaries, who I only found out about via an anonymous memo posted on BlueSky about three weeks. If the news hadn't been so poorly reflecting the moment, I probably wouldn't even have given it a second look. But it made sense of things far better than the lack or business-as-usual tenor of the "news."
It grapples with many of the same issues with which you wrestle, but draws some radically different conclusions. In a nutshell, that the advances of our now quantum communications technologies have pushed us from the information society brought about by the printing press, with all of its authority of the written word, into what he calls a dream society, based on words but also images, video--multimedia. The people spinning or controlling these narratives he dubs dreamweavers, and he names several, of which Trump is the "paragon."
What I wonder, as someone who still cares about truth--for surely humanity's continued existence still depends on it--is how might a compelling narrative be woven about truth and facts itself. Is there the possibility of a dreamweaving champion who can influence others, with the power of their schtick, as Dator might put it, to stay firmly moored in reality.
Sounds contradictory, but it may be essential? Even if you disagree, it provides a lot of food for thought.
This is something I've been thinking about for a while. Mike doesn't touch on this, but I believe that these "not even wrong" narratives are successful not only because they destroy our abilities to combat them, but because they function like truly fictional narratives. They are exciting, they build mythologies, create heroes, villains and plots. Reality can't compete, because complexity, nuance, critical thought are simply not as engaging or entertaining as an epic fictional narrative.
So then, like you point out, the question arises: shouldn't we build a competing narrative that can battle this fiction, even if it is itself "not even wrong" but at least works to avoid the dystopia we're rushing towards? Can't we have our own "dreamweavers", as you put it, to weave a better dream? I would guess Mike might say no, although he can correct me if I'm wrong on that.
I'm a pragmatist. I'm not fully certain, but I'm leaning towards yes. We can build such a narrative, and I think we have it already: billionaire oligarchs, in a plot stretching back decades, took over the economy, then they took over the media and means of communication, and now they have taken over the levers of government, in an effort to finalize their plan of transferring the remaining wealth and assets of the working class into their own hands. As I said to someone else in a different comment section, I think this narrative beats theirs because it's much closer to the truth.
It might not be as nuanced as reality is, especially if you tell this story as a "plot of planned corruption" (scary and exciting) instead of a complex web of competing interests and flawed systems helped along by many, but not really directed by anyone (complicated and boring). But many of our fellow citizens want to be entertained by a narrative of reality on par with fiction, and I feel this one is as close to the truth as I've seen. I'll happily flood the zone with it, because it's the kind of shit that makes the flowers grow, as opposed to the manufactured toxic fascist chemical sludge of the crypto-christian oligarchy.
Thanks for the reply. I'm a pragmatist too. In terms of "not even wrong" narratives triumphing, as you imply at least in part due to their entertainment value, I think what this represents is in fact the triumph of emotion over reason. So stories are central, and what's a little (or a lot) of poetic license when what seems to matter more than a strict adherence to the truth is who you can influence. Dator in his book traces several strands that have contributed to "the erosion of literal truth," and advertising, gaming and sports spectacles, music and even fiction and several other contributors are discussed.
There's a solid narrative you've described, but I don't see a hero. Trump of course is nothing if not the hero of his dreams, even if sometimes an anti-hero of sorts bent on vengeance, as well as sometimes a messiah-like figure and also a symbol of the common man. He's a shame shifter who allows so many different projections on to him, garnering various supporters who see different promises.
For the evil oligarch narrative to work, it would need to be flipped around, and have a main character who's rising to rally the masses against that corrupt system, I think. Perhaps Navalny is Russia had some of thus about him. Even Bernie Sanders could've done pretty well with it almost a decade ago, if he were that way inclined, and not excluded.
I'm sure these ideas will be anathema to Mike and others here, because I completely understand wanting to defend truth and reason. But I also agree with Dator's assessment, that in our time, this time, the wordy people who take the time to read long comments like this instead of TLDR; swipe, are a dwindling breed who inevitably will dwindle further and even more, will struggle to have influence and even relevance in a society where most people are looking at memes, watching videos, singing songs and practicing their shtick. I'm not saying this is good. Just that it's the current media/communication technologies that must be used to reach and move the masses. I mean, you might be the only person to read this whole comment, if I'm lucky.
As a pragmatist, it makes me wish I'd studied advertising, not just English (also counseling, teaching, and computer science, in that order).
I guess this long ramble boils down to: do we need an anti-trump? I'm not sure if a movement of people without a central figure can create the compelling narrative we seem to need, for a better dream to motivate people to come together against the trumpian, broligarchic, techno-monarchist, fascist nightmare.
What do you think?
I'm liking JB Pritzker a lot lately in his willingness to speak out and plainly, grounded in history. But 2028 feels remote and inadequate, and I'm not sure he's a dreamweaver. Just a fine human. I'll stop there.
I did read the whole comment! I don't think you're wrong, we probably need a central figure to fight the oligarchy. One who can be something for everyone who is suffering under their ever shrinking economic mobility, one who's flaws become virtues in the eye of the narrative. The danger, as I'd imagine Mike might point out, is that this person can easily just become a tool for the oligarchy once they achieve that mythical status and answer to no one. Much like Obama in a way, and much like Trump (I remember he ran on taxing the rich in 2016, although he probably lied, so who knows). I don't know. Maybe.
What I do know, is that figure hasn't emerged yet, and I think, or hope, that they are only part of the equation. I think that, because the narrative that, and I paraphrase, "your enemy is the coastal elite, immigrants, college students, liberals, Democrats, people on welfare, and trans people, and your only friend and salvation is the private business sector and it's CEOs whose wealth makes them the primary candidates to run our nation and defeat these domestic enemies," has been around way before Trump. That narrative was blared into the brains of the masses for nearly 2 decades before Trump capitalized on it and galvanized it into a political success.
All of that to say, the relative truth that the oligarchy is robbing us blind, that our enemies are the richest people among us and not any cultural faction of the working class, not even the ones plugged into the Fox Universe, is a narrative that should be built, regardless of a central political figure. That figure perhaps is needed to take that narrative to reclaim the levers of the government, but I'm not sure they're needed to tell the story.
I look at it as overwhelming access to disparate ideas that we cannot, do not, or are time constrained, to properly critic. This is due to the multitude of various sources of record. For example, take a simple chemistry problem, in the past, if you did not have the time to test & evaluate in the lab you would go to a source of record & see what others observed & how it was interpreted, leading to a theorem, etc. and you could feel fairly confident the information was correct. Today, you can easily find multiple explanations, each one appearing to make initial logical sense, but as you start to dive deeper, they are different, leading to mistrust of the source. It’s not that we cannot ascertain truth, or reality, but given the overwhelming information availability we end up questioning our very foundational understanding, thus invalidating all sources of record & perceptions.
I think postmodernism is overrated, Mike, it's a lot of scholarly bullshit. We are headed into a new time of a high tech, AI dominated world. We have little choice at this point. But are you willing to subject yourself to social media consensus, a world of the government-controlled media propaganda machine? Or do you choose to fight the administrative media, and break the chains of a neo-Marxist promise of utopia? Socrates indulged in sophism, where an educated man can convince an uneducated man, with the right questions, to believe anything. That does mean the uneducated man has less intellect, or social value. It's kind of like in the Senate hearings they insist on your answer being either yes, or no; Do you enjoy molesting children? On that point, I would have to disagree with Socrates.
Mike, I didn't realize this was a philosophy blog; I just liked your piece on libertarianism in Silicon Valley and ended up here. In terms of your current post, might I suggest the value of thinking about Nihilism? As a social worker and sociologist I've written 27,000 words for a review essay of Wendy Brown's Nihilistic Times: Thinking with Weber and Jonathan Foiles' Reading Arendt in the Waiting Room. I wrote it last November and December when I was recovering from eye surgery, but had to re-read Weber and try to think the election results through, using the concept of nihilism. I have no idea what to do with this other than to cut it in half somehow.
1. The GOP back to W Bush was making shit up as they went along, mocking those of us the reality-based community,
2. Timothy Snyder, in The Road to Unfreedom, makes point similar to yours when he argues that Putin spewed obvious lies not because he thought they were persuasive, but because he knew the Western, especially US press, would dutifully note his responses/denials without challenging them, thus creating the effect of dispute.
3. Arithmetic is objective, shared reality isn't except in the physical sense. The purpose of a real, participatory democracy comprised of people of good will is constantly to be creating that reality by accounting for not only the "facts" of what happens and its measurable effects are, but also for how those events and effects are perceived by various constituencies. Justice as fairness comes about from that more difficult reckoning.
I spent a bunch of the day crying over what has become of this country, and what will become of my family. It is hard to pay attention to what is going on in the world without becoming a total basketcase. I've lost friends and have been broken-hearted about how easily people I thought were smart just fell for the most obvious lies or accepted most ridiculous assertions. Sometimes it makes me want to give up. This essay gave me some reassurance that it is worthwhile to try to maintain a search for understanding. I wish it wasn't such a lonely endeavor.
Your tears, far from being weakness, are the natural response of a mind that refuses comfortable delusions. The search for truth is worthwhile precisely because it's difficult. Throughout history, the moments that seemed darkest were often when the tide was about to turn—not through inevitable progress, but through people exactly like you who felt the full weight of what was being lost and nevertheless stood firm. You are not alone in this endeavor, though it often feels that way. There are others who refuse to surrender to epistemic chaos; find them, build connections with them, create islands of sanity in this rising sea of nonsense. The struggle to maintain a foothold in reality isn't separate from the struggle to maintain your humanity—they are one and the same.
I am sorry you feel this way and my heart is next to you and other Americans like you ❤ please don't judge yourself or your fellow citizens so harsh. You were played by the kgb textbook using algorithms more powerful than any human brain. It is hard to compete against that and even harder not to fall for that.
It took me a very long time to forgive my people for accepting communism for such a long time. I never understood "why" it took them 45 years to do something. It is horrible if you think about it and an oversimplified answer like "you were not strong enough" or, as Vance put it the other days, "your democracy is not that strong after all" perhaps would look appealing. It is not.
Each human being has a dark side. I believe we are all natively good and kind but under the right influence we can turn into despicable beings. It is what it is. In my times of doubt or whenever my friends/ family feel sliding down the slope of the "media narrative" I tell myself/ them: when you don't know what to think, think with your heart. Ask the question "does it feel right?". "Do I feel ok with this?".
In example, the immigrant subject (that all Europe is debating). I go for personal examples like: If this guy on the street would be persecuted, would you help him?
First answer is: I don't know. Why would I care for him?
I go deeper: if you would see somebody beating him or harassing him, would you do something?
The reply is always "yes, of course".
And that is where we have our common ground for discussion. That is where we can start the debate and that is where I can let them tell me their side of the "truth" while I listen and present them the other side of the "truth".
Stay strong and know that you are not alone! Millions if people (both in US and outside US) are with you 🙏❤
Sending lots of hugs from Romania!
More on point analysis. Thank you, Mr. Brock.
Grow food, surf waves,
They do not lie.
Good post. I think this highlights the role that institutions play in shaping the epistemic environment. Individuals can’t make as easy sense of situations that are far removed from the senses compared to those at the local level which make us face reality and take responsibility. Our political institutions have facilitated this breakdown in searching for truth by placing power at the federal level and so far removed from the individual. This is the level in which the main epistemic battles are occurring at and for the average person, there are numerous layers “or shadows” shown to us that hardly give a glimpse of the real situation.
Well, this concept is very depressing for me. I hear Trump say Ukraine caused the Ukraine - Russia war and I know he's not only blown up reality. He's blown the topic right out of the realm of discussion. Fox & company will somehow dance around the lie to the point where it's not being called a lie. Other mainstream media may mention the real fact that Russia invaded Ukraine without provocation, but that's about it. There won't be a call for all news agencies to call Trump out, which is about the only way I see of getting the truth out to Americans. And I've already heard GOP legislators make Trump's dissection of Zelensky the start of a reasonable discussion. If he gets away with this as he did calling USAID a corrupt agency, I'm not sure there are tools in the shed that are going to help us, at least in any normal political conversational way. Maybe if the Democrats win in the next midterm . . .
Thank you for this thoughtful response. Your frustration reflects exactly what I'm trying to articulate about our current epistemic crisis. When Trump claims "Ukraine caused the war," he's not making a false statement in the traditional sense—he's creating what I call a "not even wrong" assertion that's designed to resist correction through normal means.
What makes this particularly dangerous is how it exploits the machinery of our discourse. As you've observed, much of the media ecosystem isn't equipped to handle this kind of epistemic vandalism. Fox and similar outlets won't call it a lie—they'll treat it as a perspective deserving consideration. Meanwhile, mainstream outlets might counter with the basic fact that "Russia invaded Ukraine unprovoked," but this framing inadvertently places both statements on a continuum of legitimate debate, when one is factually grounded and the other is designed to dissolve factuality itself.
This is precisely why waiting for the next election cycle—hoping Democrats win the midterms—isn't sufficient. The damage being done operates at a deeper level than policy. When we can no longer maintain a shared understanding of basic reality, the very foundation that makes democratic deliberation possible begins to crumble.
What we need isn't just electoral victory, but a fundamental reassertion of epistemic standards. This means refusing to treat "not even wrong" statements as legitimate positions, establishing clear boundaries between good-faith disagreement and epistemic sabotage, and rebuilding institutions that can adjudicate truth claims based on evidence rather than power.
I share your concern about our available tools. The old methods of fact-checking and civil debate assume good-faith actors operating within a shared reality. We need new approaches that recognize the strategic deployment of epistemic chaos for what it is—not misinformation to be corrected, but an assault on the very possibility of correction.
This isn't just about Trump or Ukraine—it's about preserving the conditions where truth can be pursued collectively. Without that, even electoral victories become hollow, as the ground beneath democracy itself gives way.
You're right, Ukraine didn't cause the war, NATO did. Ukraine was merely the proxy used by people enamoured by their board games. It's time to stop the killing.
My “American” capacity to read through Brock’s posts are limited. I have to look up words, reread a sentence or paragraph - or the entire post, and still wonder if I understand the meaning. I look forward to being disturbed, and further educated and informed by Brock. Thank you
Excellent!
Excellent. Along these lines: https://childrenbewareofidols.substack.com/p/my-new-book
When reading your piece, I couldn't help but think that what is really going on is that people have not been formally trained how to think...CRITICALLY. Or, some of those who have, make use of that knowledge and weaponize it, hitting the masses over the head with garbage arguments so that people have no means to suss out the truth because they haven't been trained to recognize the faulty reasoning and the fallacies within. I mean, many of the examples you gave of other people's "arguments" are layered with fallacies, one on top of the next on top of the next.
I have always thought that courses in critical thinking should be required, not just in college, but in both middle school (introduction) and again in high school (more advanced). I know it's a pipe dream, given the lack of money placed into US education and educators, but would that not be a good place to start to help stem future tides from the waves of bullshit, or at least provide people with the skills to recognize why a bullshit argument IS a bullshit argument?
“We must cultivate the ability to hold complexity, to remain open to new information while critically evaluating its validity, to recognize the difference between genuine uncertainty and manufactured confusion.”
You are 100% correct. Speaking of percentages, the number of Americans that have this capacity, and would expect to behave as described, decreases each year. This is a primary influencer to the problem ( plan?) that needs consideration before expecting the population to engage in critical evaluation at the necessary scale.
Our online lives have enabled this transformation to ignorant masses that have no time for complexity and nuance. What we see, think, and feel are increasingly out of our control. Not everyone, but enough and growing to pose significant risk to the chances of mounting a defense against manufactured alternate realities.
Take any sample size of average Americans today and then apply some critical thinking to the likelihood that a majority of Americans will reverse the trend line of short, simple, and not very sophisticated.
A true defense requires a plan to live and organize outside the current technological ecosystems.
Hi Mike,
I also didn't realise this was a philosophy blog and was drawn by the long piece about the neoreactionaries, who I only found out about via an anonymous memo posted on BlueSky about three weeks. If the news hadn't been so poorly reflecting the moment, I probably wouldn't even have given it a second look. But it made sense of things far better than the lack or business-as-usual tenor of the "news."
I've recently read this book by a prof I took a futures studies course or two with. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-61294-7
It grapples with many of the same issues with which you wrestle, but draws some radically different conclusions. In a nutshell, that the advances of our now quantum communications technologies have pushed us from the information society brought about by the printing press, with all of its authority of the written word, into what he calls a dream society, based on words but also images, video--multimedia. The people spinning or controlling these narratives he dubs dreamweavers, and he names several, of which Trump is the "paragon."
What I wonder, as someone who still cares about truth--for surely humanity's continued existence still depends on it--is how might a compelling narrative be woven about truth and facts itself. Is there the possibility of a dreamweaving champion who can influence others, with the power of their schtick, as Dator might put it, to stay firmly moored in reality.
Sounds contradictory, but it may be essential? Even if you disagree, it provides a lot of food for thought.
Cheers
This is something I've been thinking about for a while. Mike doesn't touch on this, but I believe that these "not even wrong" narratives are successful not only because they destroy our abilities to combat them, but because they function like truly fictional narratives. They are exciting, they build mythologies, create heroes, villains and plots. Reality can't compete, because complexity, nuance, critical thought are simply not as engaging or entertaining as an epic fictional narrative.
So then, like you point out, the question arises: shouldn't we build a competing narrative that can battle this fiction, even if it is itself "not even wrong" but at least works to avoid the dystopia we're rushing towards? Can't we have our own "dreamweavers", as you put it, to weave a better dream? I would guess Mike might say no, although he can correct me if I'm wrong on that.
I'm a pragmatist. I'm not fully certain, but I'm leaning towards yes. We can build such a narrative, and I think we have it already: billionaire oligarchs, in a plot stretching back decades, took over the economy, then they took over the media and means of communication, and now they have taken over the levers of government, in an effort to finalize their plan of transferring the remaining wealth and assets of the working class into their own hands. As I said to someone else in a different comment section, I think this narrative beats theirs because it's much closer to the truth.
It might not be as nuanced as reality is, especially if you tell this story as a "plot of planned corruption" (scary and exciting) instead of a complex web of competing interests and flawed systems helped along by many, but not really directed by anyone (complicated and boring). But many of our fellow citizens want to be entertained by a narrative of reality on par with fiction, and I feel this one is as close to the truth as I've seen. I'll happily flood the zone with it, because it's the kind of shit that makes the flowers grow, as opposed to the manufactured toxic fascist chemical sludge of the crypto-christian oligarchy.
Thanks for the reply. I'm a pragmatist too. In terms of "not even wrong" narratives triumphing, as you imply at least in part due to their entertainment value, I think what this represents is in fact the triumph of emotion over reason. So stories are central, and what's a little (or a lot) of poetic license when what seems to matter more than a strict adherence to the truth is who you can influence. Dator in his book traces several strands that have contributed to "the erosion of literal truth," and advertising, gaming and sports spectacles, music and even fiction and several other contributors are discussed.
There's a solid narrative you've described, but I don't see a hero. Trump of course is nothing if not the hero of his dreams, even if sometimes an anti-hero of sorts bent on vengeance, as well as sometimes a messiah-like figure and also a symbol of the common man. He's a shame shifter who allows so many different projections on to him, garnering various supporters who see different promises.
For the evil oligarch narrative to work, it would need to be flipped around, and have a main character who's rising to rally the masses against that corrupt system, I think. Perhaps Navalny is Russia had some of thus about him. Even Bernie Sanders could've done pretty well with it almost a decade ago, if he were that way inclined, and not excluded.
I'm sure these ideas will be anathema to Mike and others here, because I completely understand wanting to defend truth and reason. But I also agree with Dator's assessment, that in our time, this time, the wordy people who take the time to read long comments like this instead of TLDR; swipe, are a dwindling breed who inevitably will dwindle further and even more, will struggle to have influence and even relevance in a society where most people are looking at memes, watching videos, singing songs and practicing their shtick. I'm not saying this is good. Just that it's the current media/communication technologies that must be used to reach and move the masses. I mean, you might be the only person to read this whole comment, if I'm lucky.
As a pragmatist, it makes me wish I'd studied advertising, not just English (also counseling, teaching, and computer science, in that order).
I guess this long ramble boils down to: do we need an anti-trump? I'm not sure if a movement of people without a central figure can create the compelling narrative we seem to need, for a better dream to motivate people to come together against the trumpian, broligarchic, techno-monarchist, fascist nightmare.
What do you think?
I'm liking JB Pritzker a lot lately in his willingness to speak out and plainly, grounded in history. But 2028 feels remote and inadequate, and I'm not sure he's a dreamweaver. Just a fine human. I'll stop there.
I did read the whole comment! I don't think you're wrong, we probably need a central figure to fight the oligarchy. One who can be something for everyone who is suffering under their ever shrinking economic mobility, one who's flaws become virtues in the eye of the narrative. The danger, as I'd imagine Mike might point out, is that this person can easily just become a tool for the oligarchy once they achieve that mythical status and answer to no one. Much like Obama in a way, and much like Trump (I remember he ran on taxing the rich in 2016, although he probably lied, so who knows). I don't know. Maybe.
What I do know, is that figure hasn't emerged yet, and I think, or hope, that they are only part of the equation. I think that, because the narrative that, and I paraphrase, "your enemy is the coastal elite, immigrants, college students, liberals, Democrats, people on welfare, and trans people, and your only friend and salvation is the private business sector and it's CEOs whose wealth makes them the primary candidates to run our nation and defeat these domestic enemies," has been around way before Trump. That narrative was blared into the brains of the masses for nearly 2 decades before Trump capitalized on it and galvanized it into a political success.
All of that to say, the relative truth that the oligarchy is robbing us blind, that our enemies are the richest people among us and not any cultural faction of the working class, not even the ones plugged into the Fox Universe, is a narrative that should be built, regardless of a central political figure. That figure perhaps is needed to take that narrative to reclaim the levers of the government, but I'm not sure they're needed to tell the story.
I like it. We are in the identity the problems head-on phase of troubleshooting our shared reality.
I look at it as overwhelming access to disparate ideas that we cannot, do not, or are time constrained, to properly critic. This is due to the multitude of various sources of record. For example, take a simple chemistry problem, in the past, if you did not have the time to test & evaluate in the lab you would go to a source of record & see what others observed & how it was interpreted, leading to a theorem, etc. and you could feel fairly confident the information was correct. Today, you can easily find multiple explanations, each one appearing to make initial logical sense, but as you start to dive deeper, they are different, leading to mistrust of the source. It’s not that we cannot ascertain truth, or reality, but given the overwhelming information availability we end up questioning our very foundational understanding, thus invalidating all sources of record & perceptions.
I think postmodernism is overrated, Mike, it's a lot of scholarly bullshit. We are headed into a new time of a high tech, AI dominated world. We have little choice at this point. But are you willing to subject yourself to social media consensus, a world of the government-controlled media propaganda machine? Or do you choose to fight the administrative media, and break the chains of a neo-Marxist promise of utopia? Socrates indulged in sophism, where an educated man can convince an uneducated man, with the right questions, to believe anything. That does mean the uneducated man has less intellect, or social value. It's kind of like in the Senate hearings they insist on your answer being either yes, or no; Do you enjoy molesting children? On that point, I would have to disagree with Socrates.
Mike, I didn't realize this was a philosophy blog; I just liked your piece on libertarianism in Silicon Valley and ended up here. In terms of your current post, might I suggest the value of thinking about Nihilism? As a social worker and sociologist I've written 27,000 words for a review essay of Wendy Brown's Nihilistic Times: Thinking with Weber and Jonathan Foiles' Reading Arendt in the Waiting Room. I wrote it last November and December when I was recovering from eye surgery, but had to re-read Weber and try to think the election results through, using the concept of nihilism. I have no idea what to do with this other than to cut it in half somehow.
A trio of thoughts,
1. The GOP back to W Bush was making shit up as they went along, mocking those of us the reality-based community,
2. Timothy Snyder, in The Road to Unfreedom, makes point similar to yours when he argues that Putin spewed obvious lies not because he thought they were persuasive, but because he knew the Western, especially US press, would dutifully note his responses/denials without challenging them, thus creating the effect of dispute.
3. Arithmetic is objective, shared reality isn't except in the physical sense. The purpose of a real, participatory democracy comprised of people of good will is constantly to be creating that reality by accounting for not only the "facts" of what happens and its measurable effects are, but also for how those events and effects are perceived by various constituencies. Justice as fairness comes about from that more difficult reckoning.
Cheers.