« What Altman is describing is a world of creativity without craft. Will Manidis, a start-up founder and investor, convincingly argued in a Substack post earlier this year that “slop emerges when we eliminate not just toil (the burdensome aspects of work) but labor itself (the meaningful human engagement with creation).” It is, in other words, the removal of all friction, all agency, and, in turn, all humanity. In the case of a social network, like these SlopTok clones, frictionlessness is highly desirable. Human posters are the node of friction in any social network—they fight, behave erratically, produce content irregularly, and, once they develop enough of an audience, expect a cut of ad revenue. People are the asset, but also the liability. »

-Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic 10/21/25

David Brooks is worried that the U.S is in the midst of an authoritarian power grab. He thinks nobody is doing anything about it and he’s very upset.

David Brooks is very upset because he likes his stable, well-off, hyper educated, well-read and well-connected life, and he has begun to suspect that this is the real deal, and knows from history and from looking around the world that authoritarianism is bad for educated well-off people and their bank accounts, not to mention their ability to travel freely and be welcomed internationally. For someone like Brooks, the prospect of being denied the cosmopolitan perks you’ve been accustomed to for your whole cushy life is radicalizing. So now he demands that the people rise up and put an end to the authoritarian takeover.

To defend his lifestyle, and his position, and his self-concept- all the comforts he takes for granted.

I have a suggestion for David Brooks. I want him to take a 5 year break from publishing articles in reputable newspapers and magazines. I want him to go hang out with normal people who work for a living and mostly live check to check and don’t have a college education.  I want him to shut the fuck up and listen to people when they try to explain to him why the country and system he is so attached to and wants them to rise up and fight for looks very different for the majority who have never had access to the perks and luxuries he takes for granted. 

Which is not to say that we want authoritarianism. In fact,  we have been the main force of opposition to it from day one,  and ultimately it will fail because of us. Brooks can not see our pushback, our strategic actions, mutual aid, and resilient ground level organizing, because sadly, he can not see us.

His article in the Atlantic 10/12/25 is several thousand words of elite navel-gazing. It is written by, for, and about a panicked elite. Ironically, it is pieces like this one that drag out the same old neoliberal establishment patronizing party tricks- brainstorming how to explain better to Americans what they should want,  so they’ll vote the « right » way- that serve as the best and most salient explanation for why Donald Trump has once again been given power, despite his obvious inability to wield it responsibly. It is not, in most cases, because people are stupid. It is not, in most cases, because people are cruel. I think more than anything else, Trump’s appeal is in his willingness to shine a light on the smarmy, self-important elitism of David Brooks and his ilk. Americans are smart enough to see that there are haves and have nots, winners and losers in our society, and that increasingly the winners have distanced themselves from the losers to the point that they can tell themselves that 80% of the country either doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter. And people are justifiably angry at being disrespected or disappeared by elites, and then aggressively gaslit when voting time rolls around.

Is Donald Trump the answer? Obviously not, but many people experience catharsis when he aims venom at comfortable cosmopolitan elites like David Brooks on their behalf.

What is the answer? The answer lies where it always lies, in America and everywhere else- with the people. We know us, we respect us, we trust us, we empower us. I think we can all agree- left, right and everything in between- that we deserve a government of, by, and for the people. The culture war has been running cover for the class war for far too long.  We need a new generation of diverse working class voices to step up and grab both the spotlight and the scepter.

Oh, and one last note for David Brooks-

The best thing America ever came up with was the public library.  We read books, too. Some of the wisest and best-read Americans- some of our greatest thinkers- are poor. Maybe you should interrogate your assumption that the poor and the working class are stupid, and instead engage in a good- faith effort to find out what our lived experiences are and what we feel and think about the current state of the nation.

Keep in mind what Mark Twain said: « I never let school get in the way of my education ».

Fascists are suspicious and fearful of art and seek to censor and suppress it because they believe it is hostile to them and their project.  They’re right. It is.

Art is and encourages free expression of the individual unhindered by Authority and prescribed orthodoxy. Exposure to art makes the individual feel encouraged, connected, uplifted, inspired and empowered.

Fascism can only succeed when the individual is uprooted, contained, isolated, discouraged, surveilled, killed- if not in body than in spirit.

It is no exaggeration to say that making art and engaging with the art others make is the surest inoculation a society of free people has against the onslaught of fascism.

Make art for yourself and your friends and family, and if you can,  figure out ways to share it, too. Leave your drawing in a public place. Make stickers and pins and put them out in the world- even if they’re not explicitly political, they are a powerful defense against fascism. Go to galleries and museums and engage with the art that others are making and putting out into the world. make art with your children. Celebrate and nurture them as artists, and you will give them free thinking and the right to  individual expression as foundational values. They will not grow up to be fascists. They will be artists and free thinkers like you.

Our creativity is our birthright. And it has always kept those who would crush us at an insurmountable disadvantage. This time is no exception.

Dans ma famille, la langue était perdue parce que mon arrière-grand-père ne pensait pas qu’il était important pour ses enfants d’apprendre le français, alors il ne leur a pas enseigné. Quand j’ai commencé à apprendre à l’âge de 12 ans, j’avais un sentiment de « membre fantôme », comme si je redécouvrais un morceau manquant de mon corps. En fait, j’ai eu un sentiment similaire lorsque j’ai commencé à apprendre l’irlandais. D’être déplacé, d’être colonisé – ce sont des expériences qui, lorsqu’elles sont accompagnées de perte de langage, ont le pouvoir de détruire un lien avec la mémoire ancestrale, et donc avec le sens lui-même.

I have a new favorite creator with a great YouTube channel, who just happens to have some of the same obsessions as me. Please check out his videos- three of my favorites are embedded here, but there are lots more. Let’s start with crypto. Cryptocurrency is a Ponzi scheme which is entirely dependent on a constant inflow of dumb money- thus the aggressive marketing and advertising of crypto as a “safe” and ”smart” and “bold” investment, both from trading platforms and from your friends, relatives, coworkers, acquaintances who are already holding crypto. As in any Ponzi scheme, the only possible real value in crypto is that which can be realized for early investors who cash out real U.S dollars as they’re put in by late investors- the late investors being the marks, the dumb money, that supply the only real liquidity in a scheme that is almost entirely smoke being blown up asses/collective hallucination. Some cryptocurrencies- specifically Bitcoin- did go through a period when people were flush with cash from pandemic stimulus, when the ads were working and lots of dumb money was flowing in and driving up the on paper “value” of this inherently valueless thing. Those days are over. The only reason all cryptocurrencies including bitcoin haven’t crashed through the floor in 2025 is that the American president is a notorious grifter and crypto investor who has some ability to direct U.S taxpayer money into crypto investment, thus further driving up and keeping afloat the crypto. The dumb money is still us- us being the average working stiff- but under Trump’s strategic U.S crypto reserve scheme, we aren’t even permitted the basic agency of making a dumb choice to prop up a Ponzi scheme and enrich the Uber wealthy early investors. That choice is made for us by those same people who now have their hands deep in the U.S treasury. This late stage crypto corruption will prop up the price- at least of Bitcoin- for a while, who knows how long, but ultimately it will all come crashing down and crush the little guy, the latecomer, the dumb money, just like Ponzi schemes always do.

Okay, on to A.I.

Number one- A.I and the way it is being developed and launched by VCs and large corporations is a declaration of class warfare. The premise that every occupation that requires an ounce of intelligence, creativity, vision, curiosity- even genius- in short, the things that make us unique as human beings- can be done as well or better by A.I tools that are built on stolen human output and cannot continue to perform at any level without constantly scraping and stealing from us (unpaid) flesh bag humans is both wrong and deeply insulting. The companion assertion is that we flesh bag humans should all be happy to- what? Beg Sam Altman for a job scrubbing the toilets in his house for minimum wage? Ask Elon Musk if he’ll provide us a modest allowance if we agree to incubate and birth his 15th child? Just give up and kill ourselves?

But the strange thing is that even the internal logic from the creators and investors in these tools don’t hold up for long under scrutiny. See, all the venture capital pouring into these A.I startups has poured in believing that at some point A.I would be profitable. And the only way for A.I to become a profitable investment at the scale required for the billions in venture capital chips to have been wisely placed upon it is if a large and constantly growing number of consumers were willing to pay actual money to use A.I tools or purchase A.I enhanced products. That’s the Proles. The graphic designers and journalists and customer service specialists turned…toilet scrubbers in Sam Altman’s mansion, I guess? The short and long-term viability of A.I as an investment (and as The Future with a capital F), depends on you and me, baby. And guess what? With few exceptions, we fucking hate it.

If you watch a few of Pivot to A.I’s brilliant and very well-reported videos on the A.I industry, products, grifts, flops and just general shiftiness and contempt for, um…humans, it will be very clear why A.I is absolutely not the great and wonderful inevitability the (heavily invested) mainstream media would have you believe it is. Why would the MSM and all these “smart people” hoodwink us about A.I? Well, it’s because they’re all heavily invested in the stock market or through a venture capital firm or private equity fund in these A.I startups which are largely zombies, surviving only on regular rounds of venture capital and somehow never ever managing to cross the rainbow bridge to viable long term profitability that can only come from genuine consumer uptake of a product or service which holds water and can scale up. Most people hate A.I slop, A.I customer service bots, A.I ads, A.I generated op-Ed’s, A.I assistants and companions, A.I teachers, etc. etc. Because in many ways we are still monkeys, and we’re bioengineered to respond to other monkeys. Everybody wants to watch a human paint a picture- to see the human fallibility in the brushstroke. I have made friends in parts of the world where I was linguistically and culturally very out of place simply because I was sketching in a public place. A.I generated art misses the heartbeat of art and art creation which is that making art is a universal and holy human gift. It can, and I would argue does, reside in every human- but can not reside in anything that is not a human being. That’s why A.I generated art feels so meaningless, such a cardboard thing, just a bowl of empty calories. It doesn’t and can’t give you what you, as a human being, really need to thrive. The same is true of writing, of companionship, of sex (the fact that they’re idiotic enough to think a large number of humans will ever prefer having sex with an A.I enabled robot to fucking a cute if imperfect human with pheromones you can smell is peak tech bro insanity), of pedagogy and learning (there’s tons of peer-reviewed research showing that children always learn better from a teacher they feel personally connected to, and these guys are actually out here suggesting that all teachers should be replaced with A.I enabled robots. This is crazy shit)… I could go on but you get the point. We don’t want to scrub Sam Altman’s toilet if we’re so lucky as to get the job, and we don’t want to fuck A.I enabled hardware, watch A.I generated movies, or send our kids to schools where there are no people on site other than (maybe) the janitors. Nobody wants this shit, we collectively hate it, and we’re in the process of collectively rejecting it. A.I is a huge bubble, the stock market is sitting on top of it, and they’re trying with both brute strength and subterfuge to force it down our throats and make us pay for the privilege of choking, because these really really rich people really really don’t want to watch mountains of their stupidly invested money go up in flames. However, I’ll happily go on the record to predict that it will, indeed, go up in flames. I give it 18 months at the outside. The bubble crash and attendant market crash are coming.

Did you notice what the Crypto thing and the A.I thing have in common?

It is this: the super rich guys at the very top think we- the proles, the 70% or so working our asses off to make a living- are stupid. Crypto was built on the assumption that our dumb asses would always shovel our paychecks into the bottom of the pyramid so they’d have real money to pull out of the top. Wrong. The A.I thing is built on the assumption that we all have so little dignity and self-respect and wisdom that we will not only agree to a world in which we are robbed of all but the most base and humiliating functions, but (somehow) sign up for a monthly or annual subscription to eke out a dead existence in this joyless hellscape. Wrong again. They’re finding out, and will continue to find out- that we are wiser, smarter, prouder, more creative, and more powerful than they’re capable of imagining. Maybe Alexa+ can try to explain that to them.