The enduring success of humankind is predicated on our ability to work together. “Society” is possibly our most successful invention, but it comes with the requirement to govern. The United States is lucky enough to be a republic and passion around the governance of a democracy is essential to its health, even when it’s painful. Sometimes that passion is contained to an election cycle. Sometimes it consumes entire lives.

Politicians, the solicitors of attention and mania, are also essential, unfortunately. The altar needs souls, and they keep lining up. So, here we are on this day in January, a day where American society looks a little different.

The irony is that the new President’s campaign stumped on traditionalism and a return to former glory. This isn’t an isolated occurrence, though it’s the largest signal amid the virulent rise of societal fears pushing counties backward. “Western traditionalism” has become prominent in the global political arena since the arrival of COVID. While economies have struggled to regain their footing (except the American economy, which was cruising), savvy political strategists have directed the voting people of the world to look inward. It’s the kind of identity politics “The Right” used to harpoon “The Left” for on a daily basis: for having special needs that were specific to an exceptional identity.

Identity used to be defined on clearer terms. These days most people get their information third-hand through influencers and video clips that last thirty seconds. Minds whir and reality bends as we reach light speed. Identity is shaped by the affiliation people have with the personalities that insert themselves into their feeds. Meanwhile, prices stay high (or at least in the collective conscious), borders buckle under the weight of desperate immigrants, and free markets that are indifferent to any anthem, religion, or national heroes render whole towns obsolete.

What a country WAS doesn’t look the same in 2025, and while everyone is crafting and protecting their identity, the condensed re-memory of a bygone age fits pretty well. It fits into a thirty second clip and also into a narrative about why yesterday was better than today. It also fits nicely between yourself and the freedoms you enjoy today– especially if you identify with any marginalized people, which is, apparently, everyone.

Eight years ago was different. A similar dynamic catapulted Donald J. then, though the dynamic hadn’t been honed my social media to the extent that it has now. I chalked it up to the downstream affects of capitalism finally displacing enough people that they attached them self to a charismatic pariah– ironically, a gratuitously rich man who’d made a career trampling contractors and small businesses. I realize now that these people are more than financial refugees– they’re identity refugees, and there’s enough of them that they’ve reshaped a party in their image.

What’s my point? This outpouring is my point. Nurture the need to spelunker the darker depths. Look the monster in the eye, don’t just slap it with buzzy jargon and hide (leave that to the fearmongerers). Eight years ago I didn’t sound this reasonable, instead I dove into the most vicious and cynical of my concepts. I dove into stories that plumbed the imagined dark conscious of people who desire vicious things, MEN who desire vicious things.

I didn’t realize how masculine the disaffected were at the time. I obviously had a hunch, because I collected three very angry stories, all with a male perspective in a collection called Society Brutal– but I didn’t connect this to reality. With the rise of influencers, the seemingly unthinkable voices that I thought lived in the margins, and in my fiction, found life in the society we depend on.

In this way, the American identity has fundamentally changed: in 2025 it’s acceptable to have an insurrection and the guiding documents are more open to interpretation than ever. It’s like the country is young again, unstable and trying to find its moorings in a world where information is rapid fire and seldom true. The only thing that holds a voter together is what they think makes them American. It reminds me of the rules of usage, if you don’t read the documents and the style guides, they don’t matter– it’s what you say, and how often, that matters.

We’re always shaping our society, just like language, that’s why the culture wars overshadowed the tangible needs of the nation these last few years. It was a designed strategy, but it’s been potent at a time where identities feel threatened. In my mind, the best society, the best government, is the system that benefits the most people, consistently– what’s scary is that fundamental well-being might not be enough (not that it’s fully addressed), but the angriest people aren’t necessarily people with significant needs.

So what’s next? For me, more writing– but not the angry stuff (yet). Art can shape how we view the possibilities for our society, but my stories from 2016 didn’t. They were cathartic exercises that spilled out with the ichor of a deep rooted anger. Some of the concepts were years old, but they didn’t cede a draft of any kind until the 2016 election and what unfolded after.

The archived stories include:

• An Hour at the Meatfist Mixer, where we spend an hour at a clandestine event with a fund manager who has it all figured out.
• Rage Baby, where a violent man who lives outside the margins goes in pursuit of his irredeemable lost brother.
• Life as a Rat, where a boy hunts down his bully in the wake of a zombie apocolypse.

I’m not currently editing these. I know I’d rewrite them and I’m heads down on an even older project, one that’s in the final stages of editing (finally). I may come back to these if things get bad enough. In the epoch of Memetics I think it’s important to dive all the way in. No masks or false names should be enough. Look at things in as stark a light as possible, even if you have to write a vicious story– but don’t let the angry narrative win.

Reducing people, cultures, and services to buzzwords serves politicians who want to corral as much fear as possible with carefully crafted abstractions. What is “woke” anyway, or the “lame-stream media”? There’s a reason the attention peddlers and vote-hungry vampires of the political sphere don’t use real words: facts are hard to place, they require an understanding of our context, of some “whole”, and most of us feel like we’re moving too fast to place ourselves. It seems counter intuitive, but stories can help ground us… at least in my case. I will survive by slowing down and writing about it, here or in fantastical terms.

Here’s a few other ideas, if you need an activity to get you through:

• Eat
• Vote in everything you can find that has voting
• Watch “Teeth”
• Run a marathon
• Get sober
• Vote
• Read
• Write
• Write a budget
• Find a hole in the sand and hold your breath
• Find your allies and talk till you’re blue
• Vote
• Get that raise
• Write, read, and write again
• Go for a walk
• Volunteer for a four-year long isolation study and hope it doesn’t lose funding
• Scream into the void
• Scream in public
• Watch Scream 1-6, then scream into the phone
• Watch the entire Criterion Collection
• Hide in an art museum and live there for four years
• Eat unprocessed, whole, fruits, vegetables, and grains
• Teach someone something
• Learn cricket… or even pickle ball, I guess
• Write
• Prick your finger on a loom
• Take up knitting
• Decorate the same room 600 times
• Name a Jack Russell Terrier “Crypto” and take bets on which way it will run next
• Mystery podcasts
• Watch old Robin Williams stand up, or Mitch Hedberg
• Don’t forget to vote
• Read
• Write
• Be heard

If I don’t see you, I hope you’re enjoying the isolation study– I’ll keep an eye out on GoFundMe. I may also be back with Society Brutal, but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Until then, watch the wavelengths for my dark fairy tale collection (over fifteen years in the making) and my take on the latest iteration of Nosferatu.

There, I feel better.

Keep the torch lit!

RM