2024
America has elected a petty tyrant with no grasp of governance and even less understanding of government; an empty, spoiled, decrepit man-child completely untethered from the framework of society. A silver spoon despot, shaped from equal parts generational wealth, white male entitlement, hypocrisy, and cruelty. He is “failing upward” personified.
This was not some backdoor power grab enabled by exploiting an outdated electoral college; this was a majority of Americans across every statistical category (except Black women) seeing a serial rapist and unapologetic racist as a viable path to a better future.
Theocrats and tyrants will always happily exploit one another to suit their personal agendas. And make no mistake, America trails a close third behind Saudi Arabia and Iran in terms of theocratic government. Progressives will always be at a disadvantage in the political arena because of a general lack of willingness to weaponize fear and misinformation. That, and a pathological compulsion to stab one another in the back in order to flex their progressiver-than-thou bonafides. As disheartened and depressed as I am about the 70+ million people who voted for Trump, I find myself utterly devastated by the witlessness of the left.
The other day, an activist/musical colleague and friend of over 20 years said something to the effect of, I don’t dislike authority; I dislike power.
The few exercising power over the many is not governance, it’s totalitarianism. Unchecked capitalism begat authoritarian capitalism. Wealth is the only real power structure. The super wealthy are immune to market fluctuations or political upheaval and only stoop to society’s affairs when it suits them. When there are no more buildings, or yachts, or building-sized yachts to buy, the only challenge left for them is control; to mould and bend society to their whim. They don’t seek power for fear of beheading, they seek it out of boredom—at best. At worst, because they actually think they know better than the plebs who actually have to think about what a banana costs.
And since even the most reptilian brain understands this dynamic, and because natural law dictates that shit always rolls downhill, the power vacuums that develop on the way down will be filled, usually by men, and usually for the worst possible reasons. Sometimes because the powerless flail and grasp for power as a means of regaining some semblance of control of their lives; more often, it’s seen as a tool to exact vengeance.
All too often and throughout human history, the downtrodden look to the Zuckerbergs and Musks of the world—the strongmen, the oligarchs, the very people responsible for their circumstances—as saviors that will somehow personally lift them out of their hopeless lives. Blame the bureaucrats all you want, but our real overlords are now the Silicon Valley tech bros, predigesting information to suit whatever backwards, flavor-of-the-month agenda they deem appropriate.
This new paradigm is made possible by the one piece of common ground shared regardless of political affiliation: Our slavish reliance on social media has empowered the worst of the far right and defanged the left.
People always talk about their “bubble” but no one has the courage or the bandwidth to actually leave it. Would Trump have been able to succeed before social media? I very much doubt it. Because we were forced to hear sides and opinions that didn’t conform to our preconceived notions of reality. Whatever you thought was going to happen before November 5th was curated for you in order to keep you engaged and scrolling. You were shown polls that kept you docile, or news that got you enraged.
Social media was at its best when it was a platform to let people in your community know what you’re up to. It was almost immediately co-opted and exploited to be conduits mainlining misinformation, leading to apathy and a false sense of engagement. All the change you wish to see in the world, all your outrage, all your hand-wringing and pearl-clutching, pass harmlessly through an algorithm designed for consumerism, not social justice. No number of petitions, or rage-posts, or blacked-out squares you post will affect one solitary iota of the genocide, the misogyny, the overt racism, sexism, transphobia, and the wealth inequality until you choose to interact with the real world.
But the dopamine hit from that little red notification next to your avatar is very real.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter*, TikTok should never have been anyone’s source for news and information. Neither should they be the only way for artists to reach their audiences. But when one can’t exist without the other, a feedback loop is created where the actual basis of my survival relies on the very platform that eviscerates that way of life.
I have in the past deleted my Facebook page, only to watch audiences fall off precipitously, because independent artists don’t have publicity managers or indeed access to publicity. I’m forced to engage with this cesspool of deception and lies, all while making it appear that I’m DELIGHTED TO BE HERE TELLING YOU ALL ABOUT HOW DELIGHTFUL MY LIFE IS! (This is me answering if you hate social media so much why do you continue to use it? before you even ask.)
I am fortunate to have some very smart people in my bubble. Colleen Raney, for instance, routinely and on an almost daily basis helps me make sense of the world. She has given me the one very small, cold comfort in this waking nightmare. Trump lost 2020 with 74 million votes; he won with 72 million in 2024. That’s it. That’s the one bright spot.
The miserable, wretched human centipede of our existence will be inescapable unless we manage to divest ourselves from social media, plain and simple. It is the black hole in the center of society’s galaxy, with a gravitational pull so strong that not even the most inspirational poem can escape it.
More anon (maybe),
Hanz