Ever since the election, I’ve been consumed by following the news – mostly political/cultural/American news. Ever since the election I’ve been wondering, like many Americans, what’s next? How does this play out? How bad could this get?
It is a confusing time. I have days when I think the left and the progressives are being alarmists who border on conspiracy theorists… but then I see and read quotes in which the right very clearly states that their aim is to dismantle the government, deport lots of people, strip away the rights of women and gay people and trans people, etc. The right has blatantly said they will punish their opposition and reward their loyalists. If they struggle to executing their plans it will most likely be because the few remaining guardrails in place combined with their own incompetence and in-fighting will have thwarted them.
I also have days when I think that all I want is a normal and quiet life – I don’t want to worry about grievance politics and retribution or how the economy might tank. I don’t want to think about how when these things happen, demand for nonprofit services (the space where I’ve made my career) go up and funding goes down. I don’t want to think about how rolling back environmental protections might catapult us over the cliff’s edge towards climate disaster.
And then I flip back again… keeping a low profile as leaders amass power is precisely how dictators come to power. Being quiet and hoping it will go away is probably how thousands and hundreds of thousands of Germans felt as the Nazis rose to power. It’s hard to know the scale of what’s on the horizon. It’s hard to know where one should put their energies. That uncertainty, coupled with an unhealthy diet of news that is littered with propaganda and misinformation can cause paralysis. Which I suspect is part one of the plan – sow distrust in institutions (fake news), call into question the very nature of reality. It’s a form of shock and awe. It’s an attempt to move fast and break things.
That’s where I’ve been these past few weeks: trying not to panic about the stability of our institutions in a post-truth world… trying to weigh my future personal well-being against the future well-being of the country and those people who will most certainly have it tougher than I will… trying to determine which pieces of paranoia are appropriate, which pieces are overblown, and which ones have yet to hit my radar.
There are aspects to this moment in history that feel like a perfect storm. Tech barons have aligned themselves with the incoming administration. We have collectively surrendered our privacy to big data through our use of everything from credit cards to online shopping to social media. Modern life is beholden to these technologies. Let’s face it, none of us read what’s in the multi-page, small font “user agreement” that says by using their product, they have the right to track our movements, purchases, and proclivities. AI can easily exploit all of that data. A surveillance state, once the fodder for science fiction and dystopian novels, feels eerily close to becoming a reality and with an administration that has promised to root out the “enemy within” I worry about how far they will take their purge.
And perhaps mild panic is appropriate. Just this past week, John Oliver did an episode on how the proposed TikTok ban could be an attempt to give US tech companies an advantage in this surveillance economy. Also this past week, The Guardian ran an article on how to survive the broligarchy (though broman empire would have been funnier) which includes statements and tips like:
–“Journalists are first, but everyone else is next. Trump has announced multibillion-dollar lawsuits against ‘the enemy camp’: newspapers and publishers.”
–“This is McMuskism: it’s McCarthyism on steroids, political persecution + Trump + Musk + Silicon Valley surveillance tools.”
–“Protect your private life… Surveillance Authoritarianism is next…Act as if you are now living in East Germany and Meta/Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp is the Stasi.”
–“Think of your personal data as nude selfies.”
–“Pay in cash… In the broligarchy, every data point is a weapon.”
As someone who wants to believe in the more positive aspects of humanity, as someone who is skeptical of anything that sounds remotely conspiratorial, I struggle with these tips and the alarm bells that are being sounded. But there is a long history of corporations doing bad things to people in service of profits and there is a short but intense history of tech companies lying to the public on how tech is being used. I have no reason to trust the broligarchy and until we build platforms free of their control, until we build institutions not beholden to capitalists, we will not have access to credible information or communication tools free from manipulation.
Twitter (I refuse to call it by Melon Tusk’s preferred name) once an innovative tool for breaking news on the national and local scene has become a cesspool of misinformation and hate speech – misinformation that is frequently promoted and boosted by its narcissistic buffoon owner. And it’s not just the Space Karen owner of twitter. Quite famously, Facebook has been involved in multiple scandals involving user data and political manipulation. It’s owner, whose name is way to easy to bastardize by simply replacing a z with an f, has repeatedly apologized for mishandling data usage… but it would be good to remember one of his earliest statements on the issue was to say he didn’t know why people just handed their data over to him – saying “they just trust me” and calling them “dumb fucks.”
A year ago, I started a new social media account on Bluesky. It was easy to see what shriveled husk’s plans were for free speech in the town square that was Twitter. Hate speech was allowed back on, misinformation was ramping up. I never made the full switch over for the reasons Cory Doctorow points out in enshittification – essentially, switching requires everyone to switch in order for it to work. After the election and after it became apparent that husk was very clearly trying to weaponize his platform, people started to switch. Bluesky has seen millions of people sign up for accounts… but this leaves me wondering what to do with my legacy accounts and what to do if yet another tech product sells out to data harvesting and user manipulation.
This leaves me returning to an old debate for me – is the answer to disappear into one’s own bubble or to stay and become a more active participant? I avoid being overly political on social media. One of the few times I made a statement critical of the former guy (who will once again be the guy in office), someone tried to get me fired. The republican party has become a gang of bullies – the broligarchy feels even more emboldened. They say things like “your body, my choice.” And at this point, I think it’s fair to label the entire Republican Party – those in the party who disagree with what’s going on are not speaking up. The entire part (for the most part) has gotten in line behind their chosen leader. They are enablers and need to be painted with the same broad brush that calls out authoritarianism.
Ever since the election, I’ve been following way too much news and have felt powerless to do anything about it. I’ve been frozen between fight or flight. I’ve wanted to delete my entire digital footprint. I’ve wanted to find ways to work for organizations committed to fighting authoritarianism. I’ve wanted to just sit on a bench by the water and forget the whole thing.