Apologies in advance for the length of this reply.
I don’t know if the United States is going to go down the full 1930s Germany path. Nobody does. But I think intelligent people better be damn well prepared for the possibility of it. This includes some things in actual life choices, but let’s face it, if WW3 is coming there’s not much you can really do. The bigger preparation is mental: to not let yourself be the “boiled frog”, to set red lines where you’ll blow up your life and leave the country for good, to be mentally ready for when the day comes that peaceful opposition is no longer allowed, and the choice becomes acquiescence, armed resistance (ie suicide in competent powerful dictatorships), or emigration.
I’m thinking a lot lately about the parts that don’t make the main grade-school history books on the 1930s. How did business in other European countries deal with Germany changing from a trade partner to a threat? How did all the treaties governing things like use of rivers on the border with neighbouring countries change through that period? And, for our author here: what did comedians and cultural figures do?
I’m a big believer in studying the past. They were no different than from us today, Internet aside. Americans may be facing the same awful choices that good Germans did in 1933-1938, pretty soon. What do the comedians and writers do? When did they resist and when did they make people laugh? When did they leave?
(Studying history on this is not comforting for a Canadian, btw. We are Austria in more ways than one in this scenario. Including the fifth column of business leaders who are currently waging a campaign of surrender to the richer hegemon. Carney gave this defiant speech last week but I’m not sure we’re ready to “eat bitterness” here to pay the price of defiance.)
The last time a school shooting felt like a surprise was Sandy Hook. I'm not ready to feel about immigration enforcement shootings the way I feel about school shootings.
I'd read about Roblox, but for today I wanted this instead.
Absolutely Jeremiah. ICE discourse is hardly in short supply - frankly one additional voice saying the same things as a million others is not going to sway anybody. On the other hand, being able to laugh at low-stakes bullshit is one of the few things that can provide relief and unity in these dark times.
Thank you so much for this article. I appreciate you sharing your internal conflict with us. In my opinion, one thing that's extremely helpful about the apolitical content that you do is that it helps remind me that there are still places where Trump has not infected the discourse. As you said, he's trying to make every single thing a political arena and it's exhausting. So having spaces that have no political valence whatsoever really does help recharge my batteries before wading back into the fray.
Thanks for writing this. It echoes a lot of what I feel - "am I doing enough?" is a frequent thought for the last decade. Other comments are very good, and echo most of what I'd like to say.
In your case, Jeremiah, with this blog alone I think you are doing more than your fair share to help. Even with posts that aren't explicitly political. A significant portion of the nonsense and internet bullshit you write about has the same root causes as what's tearing the world apart right now. The internet and social media have normalized and popularized extremism. I don't think that Trump would have become president in a pre-social media era.
Yes, there have always been demagogues and strongmen, but they typically need something to fuel their rise to power. Often, they capitalize on a crisis. Though the US had big societal problems pre-Trump, it was not in crisis in any way. Every human society has big societal problems, it's what we do. 2016 or even 2024 USA was not in any way comparable to post-WW1 Italy or Germany, for prominent examples. But even though things were mostly good, we had a lot of people thinking that things were the worst they had ever been, whether economically, societally, and/or politically. Social media was not the only contributor to that, but it was one of the biggest contributors. Social media and the internet are always about "biggest X," "craziest Y," "you won't believe Z!"
Sometimes a silly meme is just a silly meme. But a lot of the time when you write about crazy internet and social media stuff, you're raising awareness of what causes a lot of political extremism too. You get people to stop and think about the environment we live in, instead of normalizing it. That's valuable, and I wouldn't discount it.
I appreciated it this as I was reading everything else in my email inbox this morning. Most orgs try to do their catchup or their lighthearted stuff on Sundays. Who cares about the rest of the news from the week? The NYT has the most evident juxtaposition, the killing upended their latest on their games.
Powerful wrestling with Arendt's point about totalitarinism consuming even frivolous culture. The internal dialogue format captures something real - that nagging sense that any non-political content is fiddling while Rome burns. But the Frankl counter-argument matters too. I found myself in similar spirals during 2020, feeling guilty for watching dumb shows when everything seemed to be collapsing. Turns out sustained outrage without breaks leads to burnout not activism.
If you believe that politics is downstream of culture, then it is absolutely important to write about culture. Writing only about politics puts the cart before the horse.
And if the cultural item is both illustrative and funny? Gosh!
I've had inner conflicts like yours plenty of times. But today I can confidently say the voice in bold is a complete asshole who just loves to scold and throw its weight around.
Sorry to see you’re feeling this way. I think you’re striking a great balance, not least because your work is rarely “trivial entertainment” - it’s cultural anthropology, but sometimes culture contains silly elements.
The example about South Africa would be better if it wasn't true that almost everything proponents of apartheid said would happen without it, has happened.
Jeremiah, your writing helps people to make sense of internet trends and culture, and internet culture increasingly has real-world impacts. So even your writing which isn't specifically political helps people to better understand society and politics. And you're good at it. Better to be the best Substacker writing about internet culture than the 200th best straight politics writer.
If you can’t make a meaningful impact with serious writing, but you can make money with frivolous writing, make money with the frivolous writing and make an impact with the money. Or use the money to fund your needs and make an impact with your time. The impact and your job don’t need to be the same thing; plenty of people on the streets in Minneapolis are off the clock baristas and uber drivers.
Apologies in advance for the length of this reply.
I don’t know if the United States is going to go down the full 1930s Germany path. Nobody does. But I think intelligent people better be damn well prepared for the possibility of it. This includes some things in actual life choices, but let’s face it, if WW3 is coming there’s not much you can really do. The bigger preparation is mental: to not let yourself be the “boiled frog”, to set red lines where you’ll blow up your life and leave the country for good, to be mentally ready for when the day comes that peaceful opposition is no longer allowed, and the choice becomes acquiescence, armed resistance (ie suicide in competent powerful dictatorships), or emigration.
I’m thinking a lot lately about the parts that don’t make the main grade-school history books on the 1930s. How did business in other European countries deal with Germany changing from a trade partner to a threat? How did all the treaties governing things like use of rivers on the border with neighbouring countries change through that period? And, for our author here: what did comedians and cultural figures do?
I’m a big believer in studying the past. They were no different than from us today, Internet aside. Americans may be facing the same awful choices that good Germans did in 1933-1938, pretty soon. What do the comedians and writers do? When did they resist and when did they make people laugh? When did they leave?
(Studying history on this is not comforting for a Canadian, btw. We are Austria in more ways than one in this scenario. Including the fifth column of business leaders who are currently waging a campaign of surrender to the richer hegemon. Carney gave this defiant speech last week but I’m not sure we’re ready to “eat bitterness” here to pay the price of defiance.)
The last time a school shooting felt like a surprise was Sandy Hook. I'm not ready to feel about immigration enforcement shootings the way I feel about school shootings.
I'd read about Roblox, but for today I wanted this instead.
Absolutely Jeremiah. ICE discourse is hardly in short supply - frankly one additional voice saying the same things as a million others is not going to sway anybody. On the other hand, being able to laugh at low-stakes bullshit is one of the few things that can provide relief and unity in these dark times.
Thank you so much for this article. I appreciate you sharing your internal conflict with us. In my opinion, one thing that's extremely helpful about the apolitical content that you do is that it helps remind me that there are still places where Trump has not infected the discourse. As you said, he's trying to make every single thing a political arena and it's exhausting. So having spaces that have no political valence whatsoever really does help recharge my batteries before wading back into the fray.
Thanks for writing this. It echoes a lot of what I feel - "am I doing enough?" is a frequent thought for the last decade. Other comments are very good, and echo most of what I'd like to say.
In your case, Jeremiah, with this blog alone I think you are doing more than your fair share to help. Even with posts that aren't explicitly political. A significant portion of the nonsense and internet bullshit you write about has the same root causes as what's tearing the world apart right now. The internet and social media have normalized and popularized extremism. I don't think that Trump would have become president in a pre-social media era.
Yes, there have always been demagogues and strongmen, but they typically need something to fuel their rise to power. Often, they capitalize on a crisis. Though the US had big societal problems pre-Trump, it was not in crisis in any way. Every human society has big societal problems, it's what we do. 2016 or even 2024 USA was not in any way comparable to post-WW1 Italy or Germany, for prominent examples. But even though things were mostly good, we had a lot of people thinking that things were the worst they had ever been, whether economically, societally, and/or politically. Social media was not the only contributor to that, but it was one of the biggest contributors. Social media and the internet are always about "biggest X," "craziest Y," "you won't believe Z!"
Sometimes a silly meme is just a silly meme. But a lot of the time when you write about crazy internet and social media stuff, you're raising awareness of what causes a lot of political extremism too. You get people to stop and think about the environment we live in, instead of normalizing it. That's valuable, and I wouldn't discount it.
I appreciated it this as I was reading everything else in my email inbox this morning. Most orgs try to do their catchup or their lighthearted stuff on Sundays. Who cares about the rest of the news from the week? The NYT has the most evident juxtaposition, the killing upended their latest on their games.
Powerful wrestling with Arendt's point about totalitarinism consuming even frivolous culture. The internal dialogue format captures something real - that nagging sense that any non-political content is fiddling while Rome burns. But the Frankl counter-argument matters too. I found myself in similar spirals during 2020, feeling guilty for watching dumb shows when everything seemed to be collapsing. Turns out sustained outrage without breaks leads to burnout not activism.
If you believe that politics is downstream of culture, then it is absolutely important to write about culture. Writing only about politics puts the cart before the horse.
And if the cultural item is both illustrative and funny? Gosh!
I've had inner conflicts like yours plenty of times. But today I can confidently say the voice in bold is a complete asshole who just loves to scold and throw its weight around.
Along these lines, I liked the satirical start up ‘Condemnr’ in this Bay Area House Party post:
https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/sources-say-bay-area-house-party
Sorry to see you’re feeling this way. I think you’re striking a great balance, not least because your work is rarely “trivial entertainment” - it’s cultural anthropology, but sometimes culture contains silly elements.
The example about South Africa would be better if it wasn't true that almost everything proponents of apartheid said would happen without it, has happened.
Jeremiah, your writing helps people to make sense of internet trends and culture, and internet culture increasingly has real-world impacts. So even your writing which isn't specifically political helps people to better understand society and politics. And you're good at it. Better to be the best Substacker writing about internet culture than the 200th best straight politics writer.
If you can’t make a meaningful impact with serious writing, but you can make money with frivolous writing, make money with the frivolous writing and make an impact with the money. Or use the money to fund your needs and make an impact with your time. The impact and your job don’t need to be the same thing; plenty of people on the streets in Minneapolis are off the clock baristas and uber drivers.