The current state of America has many of us, I daresay most of us fighting moods from sadness, anger, futility and frustration.
And I’d say everyone I know also has some Trump supporter who is delighted with the deconstruction of the country, although they, of course view the erosion as an improvement. For those of us who abhor what is happening in this country, it’s a specialized kind of grief—watching the architecture of a society being dismantled and realizing the people holding the sledgehammers are convinced they’re “renovating.”
I struggle with how to voice my dissent both to society and large at to the people I care about who are Trump supporters.
The Outrage Algorithm: Feeding the Beast
I could post to social media any number of angry or snarky means or posts but for the most part I haven’t. I haven’t because it feels like it is feeding the Social Media Outrage algorithm which may help the social media channels but probably does little to move the needle on debate or introspection.
Feeding the algorithm is like throwing meat into a woodchipper; it doesn’t feed anyone, it just makes a mess and keeps the blades spinning. It generates “engagement” for the tech giants, but it almost certainly does zero to move the needle on actual human introspection. It’s performance art for an audience that has already decided on the review.
The Identity Moat
Then there’s the personal side—the people I actually care about. How do you voice dissent to someone you love when they’ve traded their logic for a red hat? Jonathan Swift said, “It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.” MAGA is a cult. Many who entered it initially may have been attracted by the contrarian desire to upend norms. But now I believe that it is their identity and not remotely a matter of reason.
Seeking the Signal
So, I struggle. I stay quiet on the feeds to keep my sanity, but I worry that silence looks like Whiteheadian “misplaced concreteness“—as if by not talking about the erosion, I’m pretending the cliff isn’t crumbling.
I’m still looking for the “third way”—a way to dissent that doesn’t involve screaming into the digital void or burning down my own living room. In the meantime, I’ll be here, analyzing the wreckage and trying to find a pun to make the sadness retreat, if only for a second.
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
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