ReportWire

Tag: Capitalism

  • The Dangerous Paradox of A.I. Abundance

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    Even if A.I. doesn’t greatly accelerate economic growth, there’s the issue of how it affects employment and wages. The key issue here is whether A.I. primarily complements or substitutes for human labor. If it enables office workers to carry out their tasks more quickly and effectively, for example, it could raise their wages, preserve many existing jobs, and create well-paid new positions for people who are adept at working with A.I. agents. In a recent article, Séb Krier, a manager for policy development and strategy at Google DeepMind, argued that “future workers will likely function as orchestrators of intelligence,” overseeing what A.I. does. Over the longer term, A.I. could also create new jobs and new professions that we can’t currently envision, which is what other transformative technologies have done.

    But the fact remains that if A.I. agents can eventually carry out virtually all cognitive tasks without human intervention—a possibility touted by their promoters—many workers could be displaced, and firms may be reluctant to take on new ones. Given the evolving capacities of models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude, it’s perhaps unwise to wholly discount the prediction from Dario Amodei, the C.E.O. of Anthropic, that within five years A.I. could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs. Elsewhere in the economy, who knows what could happen? But if the marriage of A.I. and robotics proceeds, in other sectors, along the lines that it seems to be moving in the automotive industry, where autonomous vehicles are already being deployed in some places, taxi-drivers and truck drivers likely won’t be the only blue-collar workers whose jobs are affected.

    “It’s clear that a lot of jobs are going to disappear: it’s not clear that it’s going to create a lot of jobs to replace that,” Geoffrey Hinton, one of the pioneers of the deep-learning models that underpin generative A.I., remarked at a conference last month. “This isn’t A.I.’s problem. This is our political system’s problem. If you get a massive increase in productivity, how does that wealth get shared around?” If A.I. abundance does materialize, that will be a central question.

    In a recent Substack article, Philip Trammell, an economist at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, and Dwarkesh Patel, a tech podcaster, pointed out that in standard economic theory deploying more capital raises workers’ productivity and their wages, but reduces the rewards of further capital investment as diminishing returns set in. This “correction mechanism” keeps the over-all shares of income that accrue to labor and capital pretty constant over time. But if A.I. is easily substitutable for labor throughout the economy, and a potential shortage of workers is no longer a bottleneck to production, the stabilization effect disappears, capital incomes “can rise indefinitely,” and the owners of capital receive an ever-growing share of the economic pie, Trammell and Patel write. How far can this process go? “[O]nce A.I. renders capital a true substitute for labor,” Trammell and Patel write, “approximately everything will eventually belong to those who are wealthiest when the transition occurs, or their heirs.”

    Trammel and Patel relate their analysis to Thomas Piketty’s book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” from 2014, which argued that, under certain conditions, rising inequality is inevitable under capitalism. To address this problem, Piketty called for a global tax on wealth. Trammell and Patel argue that Piketty’s pessimistic analysis hasn’t applied until now, but “he will probably be right about the future.” They also endorse Piketty’s policy solution, writing, “Assuming the rich do not become unprecedentedly philanthropic, a global and highly progressive tax on capital (or at least capital income) will then indeed be essentially the only way to prevent inequality from growing extreme.” (The tax would have to be global, the authors argue, because if capital doesn’t need much labor to produce things it would be even more mobile than it is now, which would enable it to evade national levies.)

    The article by Trammell and Patel has already received some pushback online, largely on the ground that its assumption that capital is perfectly substitutable for labor is unrealistic. Brian Albrecht, the chief economist at the Portland-based International Center for Law & Economics, argues that the process of A.I. machines replacing workers is likely to take a long time, and during that transition “standard economic principles apply.” Krier argued that the mere fact A.I. can do something more cheaply or effectively than human workers doesn’t mean it will inevitably replace them. “People pay a lot to go see concerts and Olympic races even if in principle a model can generate the same song and a robot can run faster,” he wrote.

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    John Cassidy

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  • Billionaire Peter Thiel warns if you ‘proletarianize the young people,’ don’t be surprised they end up communist | Fortune

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    PayPal cofounder and Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel doubled down on his worries about generational conflict and the future of capitalism after a similar warning he issued in 2020 proved eerily prescient.

    After Tuesday night’s election victory of democratic socialist Zoran Mamdani as New York City’s mayor, an email Thiel sent five years ago went viral.

    In the correspondence to Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen and others, he warned that “When 70% of Millennials say they are pro-socialist, we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and understand why.”

    Thiel expanded on those concerns in an interview with the Free Press that was published on Friday, saying strict zoning laws and construction limits have been good for boomers, who have seen their properties appreciate, but they have been terrible for millennials, who are having an extremely hard time buying homes.

    “If you proletarianize the young people, you shouldn’t be surprised if they eventually become communist,” he explained.

    While Thiel, who backed Donald Trump’s re-election, disagrees with Mamdani’s answers to New York’s housing affordability problems, he credited the lawmaker for talking about the issue more than establishment figures have been.

    He also said he’s not sure if young people are actually more in favor of socialism or if they have become more disillusioned with capitalism.

    “So in some relative sense, they’re more socialist, even though I think it’s more just: ‘Capitalism doesn’t work for me. Or, this thing called capitalism is just an excuse for people ripping you off,’” Thiel added.

    Affordability politics

    While Mamdani’s victory highlighted voters’ shift away from Republicans, moderate Democrats also won with campaigns that focused on the cost of living.

    The off-year election results were a “wake-up call” for both parties to tackle the affordability crisis, according to polling expert Frank Luntz, who distinguished it from inflation.

    Thiel expressed some sympathy for voters seeking bold ideas to solve daunting problems like student debt and housing costs, which previously have been addressed with “tinkering at the margins.”

    Such incremental attempts haven’t worked, spurring voters to warm up to proposals outside the typical political discourse, including “some very left-wing economics, socialist-type stuff,” Thiel said.

    As a result, he’s not surprised that voters have gravitated toward Mamdani, even though he doesn’t think his ideas will work either.

    “Capitalism is not working for a lot of people in New York City. It’s not working for young people,” Thiel said.

    ‘Old people’s socialism’

    He also observed that the growing popularity of socialism among younger Americans comes amid a “multi-decade political bull market.”

    This era of increased political intensity comes as people have started looking more to politics to fix their problems, according to Thiel, who leans more libertarian. 

    Part of that is due to a huge mismatch between people’s hopes and reality, with that chasm growing bigger than ever.

    “There are some dimensions in which the millennials are better off than the boomers. There’s some ways our society has changed for the better,” Thiel said. “But the gap between the expectations the boomer parents had for their kids and what those kids actually were able to do is just extraordinary. I don’t think there’s ever been a generation where the gap has been as extreme as for the millennials.”

    But when asked if a revolution is on the horizon, he said he thinks that’s hard to believe, given that communism and fascism are “youth movements.”

    At the same time, America’s aging demographics are marked by fewer young people, who are not having as many children.

    “And so, we have more of a gerontocracy. Which means that if the U.S. becomes socialist, it will be more of an old people’s socialism than a young people’s socialism, where it’s more about free healthcare or something like that,” Thiel added. “The word ‘revolution’ sounds pretty high testosterone and violent and youthful. And today, if it’s a revolution, it’s 70-something grandmothers.”

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    Jason Ma

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  • Google’s corporate parent posts first-ever quarter with $100B in revenue in latest show of its power

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    SAN FRANCISCO — Google’s corporate parent on Wednesday announced its first-ever quarter with more than $100 billion in revenue, a milestone that illustrates the unwavering power of its internet empire amid legal and competitive threats.

    The news of Alphabet Inc.’s accelerating growth in revenue and profit comes on the heels of a court ruling in the U.S. Justice Department’s landmark monopoly case against Google’s dominant search engine that was widely seen as a mild rebuke that wouldn’t hobble the company.

    Alphabet performed like a powerhouse during the July-September period, delivering a profit of nearly $35 billion, or $2.87 per share, a 33% increase from the same time last year. Revenue rose 16% from last year to $102.3 billion. Both figures easily exceeded the analysts’ projections that steer the stock market.

    Investors celebrated the third-quarter numbers by driving up Alphabet’s stock price nearly 5% in Wednesday’s extended trading.

    That’s on top of a 30% surge in Alphabet’s shares that has created nearly $770 billion in stockholder wealth since early September. That’s when U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta rejected a Justice Department proposal to break up Google to curb the abuses of a search engine that was declared an illegal monopoly last year.

    Mehta’s cautious handling of Google’s search monopoly largely reflected his belief that rapid advances in artificial intelligence technology have already been spawning conversational “answer engines” from rising tech stars such as ChatGPT and Perplexity that are giving consumers more options.

    ChatGPT’s creator OpenAI and Perplexity have released AI-powered web browsers to compete against Google’s industry-leading Chrome browser that the Justice Department had unsuccessfully tried to persuade Mehta to order to be sold.

    But Google has been implanting more AI features into both its search engine and Chrome, as well as its other products, as part of its effort to protect its turf while also expanding into new technological frontiers. In a sign of the inroads those efforts are making, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai disclosed Wednesday that Google’s AI-powered Gemini app now has 650 million monthly users.

    Like other major tech companies, Google has been bankrolling its AI ambitions with a spending spree that has raised worries about a potential bubble that will eventually burst. Alphabet now expects to budget $91 billion to $93 billion for capital expenditures this year, up from $85 billion in its previous quarterly report issued in July, with most of the money earmarked for the massive data centers needed to power AI.

    Alphabet has the luxury of drawing upon a lucrative ad network that Google has spent a quarter century building. Google’s ad sales totaled $74.2 billion in the third quarter, a 13% increase from last year.

    The AI craze has been a boon for Google’s Cloud division that oversees data centers for other companies, an endeavor that has turned into the fastest growing part of Alphabet. Google Cloud posted revenue of $15.2 billion in the past quarter, up 34% from last year.

    Although Google appears to have fared relatively well in the legal attack on its search engine, it still faces a potentially damaging blow in another case brought by the Justice Department against the technology underlying its ad network.

    After condemning parts of Google’s ad technology as an illegal monopoly earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema is considering ways to handcuff the company in the future. The Justice Department is seeking a court order to force Google to sell pieces of its ad network — an issue that Brinkema isn’t expected to rule on until early next year.

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  • Capitalism in the cracks: How Japan’s microspaces unleash economic experimentation

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    This is part of Reason‘s 2025 summer travel issue. Click here to read the rest of the issue.

    A three-story house tucked into a mere one-meter gap between tall buildings. A flower shop shaped like a triangle, wedged between a retaining wall and the sidewalk. A standing bar humming with laughter beneath the rumble of passing trains. In most cities, these spaces would be dead zones—awkward, overlooked, written off by zoning and building codes as unusable.

    But in Tokyo, they bloom with life. These microspaces are amenities. They’re capitalism in the cracks, not just in form but in function.

    These strange slivers often become homes for new ideas: a two-person bar, a bookstore barely wider than a fridge, a late-night shop that opens on a whim. They invite experimentation, economic as well as architectural.

    Tokyo’s ability to cultivate these spaces isn’t just a cultural quirk. It’s a byproduct of a city that leaves room for improvisation, that adapts to its imperfections, and that transforms constraints into creativity. These spaces reveal what is possible when cities loosen their grip on regulations—when policy becomes an enabler, not a gatekeeper. They offer a glimpse of what urban life could look like if more places embraced flexibility.

    Tokyo’s urbanism emerged more than it was planned. Most of its neighborhoods weren’t drafted in a planner’s office. They were shaped incrementally by individuals responding to need and opportunity.

    Modern Tokyo is a city born from ruin. After the devastating bombings of World War II, with little funding available for formal reconstruction, residents rebuilt on their own—using salvaged materials to create homes on the ruins of old neighborhoods. Over time, the government stepped in to connect and formalize what had already taken shape. The result is a dense, oddly beautiful patchwork: irregular lots, winding streets, and spaces so small that most cities would ignore them. But Tokyo doesn’t.

    There are at least three varieties of microspaces here: pet architecture, yokochos, and undertrack infills.

    ***

    Of all of Tokyo’s urban quirks, few are as endearing—or revealing—as pet architecture.

    Coined by the architectural firm Atelier Bow-Wow, the term describes buildings that are “unusually small, humorous, and charming”: little pets in a city built for human beings. Awkwardly shaped and impossibly tiny, they defy conventional notions about how much space is necessary for any given use.

    You might stumble upon a rubber stamp store crammed into a leftover triangle of land between a train line and the road in Nakano. A one-meter-wide real estate office in Shimokitazawa. A tiny bakery that somehow fits between a wall and a utility pole in Koenji. These are buildings that shouldn’t exist, but they do.

    In many cities, spaces like these would be rejected outright as unusable. They’d run into a wall of regulatory barriers: minimum lot sizes, minimum unit sizes, parking mandates, and zoning codes that separate uses into rigid slots—residential here, commercial there, industrial somewhere else.

    Omoide Yokocho; Katarina Hall

    But in Tokyo, they’re opportunities. They challenge bureaucratic assumptions about what buildings are supposed to look like. As the Atelier Bow-Wow architect Yoshiharu Tsukamoto has put it: “They illustrate unique ideas with elements of fun, without yielding to unfavorable conditions.” Pet architecture is playful, it’s resourceful, and it’s all over the city.

     

     

     

    ***

    Yokocho literally means “side street” or “alleyway.” In Japan, it means something more: narrow lanes filled with tiny bars and restaurants. Usually found near train stations or commercial centers, these narrow streets range from just 1.3 to 2.8 meters wide—narrow enough to stretch out your arms and touch both walls, too tight to meet code in most U.S. cities. Inside, you’ll find bars the size of walk-in closets, seating six to 12 patrons and often run by a single staffer.

    Yokochos emerged after World War II as black markets. They were improvised stalls selling basic goods. Over time these stalls became food joints and drinking dens, and eventually they were fixtures of Tokyo’s urban landscape.

    The Golden Gai district in Shinjuku packs more than 200 tiny bars into six alleyways in an area smaller than a city block. (It’s the kind of setup a North American fire marshal would never allow.) Most buildings are two stories high, with steep staircases leading to completely different experiences upstairs. Want a fancy whiskey bar? It’s there. A horror movie–themed bar? Absolutely. Hospital-themed? Erotic fetish? Retro video games? A quiet library bar? They have all of the above. All unique. All impossibly small.

    Nearby, on the other side of Shinjuku station, the Omoide Yokocho district is known for late-night yakitori (chicken skewers) and drinks, with around 80 shops squeezed into a single alleyway. In Shibuya, Nonbei Yokocho—or “Drunkard’s Alley”—crams 40 shops into spaces barely two meters wide. And in Ebisu, Ebisu Yokocho sits in a covered passageway built on the remnants of a former shopping center that houses izakayas (Japanese pubs) ranging from 10 to 16.5 square meters, serving everything from grilled fish to okonomiyaki to oden.

    So beloved are these places that developers have recreated them inside modern buildings. Shibuya Yokocho, a sleek version inside the Miyashita Park complex, mimics the feel of the real thing, with curated chaos, shared tables, and dishes from every prefecture in Japan.

    Nostalgia aside, yokochos are more than relics. Their size, affordability, and independence make them incubators for creativity and entrepreneurship.

    ***

    Tokyo’s rail system is everywhere—and wherever there are train tracks, there are gaps. In many cities, these would be fenced off. In Tokyo, they’re filled with life.

    Like yokochos, many undertrack infills began as black markets after the war. What were once dusty, makeshift stalls have since evolved into hubs of commerce and dining.

    Near Ueno Station, izakayas nestle underneath and between train lines. You can sit shoulder-to-shoulder with salarymen, sip a highball, nibble on sashimi, and watch the trains pass overhead.

    A few blocks from there is Ameyoko, a market wedged beneath the Yamanote Line between the Okachimachi and Ueno stations. It’s a sensory overload: cosmetics, spices, fresh seafood, and cheap street snacks packed into a narrow pulsing corridor under the tracks.

    A few stops away on the Yamanote Line, in Yurakucho, rows of cozy restaurants and standing bars are tucked into the arches beneath the tracks. Some are linked by narrow alleyways that run under the railway itself, connecting one lively pocket to another. At around 6 p.m., the lights come on, the smoke rises, and the area fills with after-work revelers grabbing food and drinks before catching their train home.

    What unites these undertrack infills is their uncanny ability to turn infrastructure into opportunity. Instead of ignoring the voids created by transit, Tokyo builds into them.

    To understand why Tokyo looks the way it does, you have to start with zoning. Zoning laws determine what can be built and where—homes, shops, factories, or nothing at all.

    In the U.S., zoning is local. Each city or county writes its own code, but most follow similar templates. Neighborhoods are typically residential, commercial, or industrial, with little room for overlap. The rules are rigid. It’s often illegal to run a small business out of your home or to build on a lot deemed too small. Any change of use typically requires hearings, permits, consultants, and months—maybe years—of paperwork. It’s a large bureaucratic system that tends to push out small, experimental, or unconventional uses.

    Japan takes a different approach. The same zoning system applies nationwide, from Tokyo’s densest neighborhoods to the smallest rural town. The rules are meant to maintain the scale of buildings, preserve sunlight access, and prevent fire hazards.

    Ueno; Katarina Hall

    Instead of rigid land-use rules, Japan uses a set of 12 flexible zoning categories, arranged on a spectrum from residential to commercial to industrial. These are broad guidelines, not strict prescriptions. Within them, landowners are largely free to decide how to use their space.

    Take Category 1, officially designated as “exclusively residential.” In practice, that doesn’t mean only homes can be built. Small shops, dental clinics, hair salons, and day cares are all permitted. What’s prohibited are large, disruptive developments. You won’t find a department store in Category 1, but you might find a ramen shop on the ground floor of someone’s home.

    Each zone builds on the one before it. If something is allowed in Category 1, it’s automatically allowed in Categories 2 through 12. The only major exception is strictly industrial areas. Elsewhere, layers of possibilities build on each other, allowing for the kind of vibrant, fine-grained mixing of activities you see in Tokyo.

    Japan also avoids rules that would make small-scale development impossible. There are no minimum lot sizes. Small parcels can be freely subdivided. Building heights are based on road width, not a fixed number. And it’s legal to run a business out of your house. The result is a city that allows for increasingly complex and nuanced configurations.

    The rules are more like scaffolding than a straitjacket. They set the frame, but decisions are left to property owners, architects, and builders.

    This flexibility has made Tokyo radically adaptable. It makes space not just for small businesses but even smaller microbusinesses. If you have an idea and a few square feet, you can start something without hearings or expensive consultants.

    “There are a lot of ways in which not only zoning but other pieces of the puzzle all come together to encourage these experimental, intimate, small-scale mom-and-pop businesses,” explains Joe McReynolds, an urban studies scholar at Keio University’s Almazán Architecture and Urban Studies Laboratory. “There’s a lot of tilt in the regulations toward small businesses,” he says, from lower taxes and simpler food safety rules to the relative ease of getting a liquor license.

    Gap House; Nicholas Kane

    Tokyo may be unique, but you can sometimes spot a glimmer of flexibility even in cities with heavy-handed planning systems.

    Take London. With its heritage protections, conservation zones, strict building codes, and endless red tape, changing the built environment there often means running an obstacle course of applications, consultations, and design reviews. Yet small-scale invention sometimes slips through.

    In West London’s Bayswater conservation area, where uniform facades and historical preservation rules are the norm, you’ll find the Gap House. With a street frontage of only 2.3 meters (8 feet), this five-story home fills what was once a narrow alley between two buildings.

    “My inspiration was Japan and the Netherlands,” explains the architect (and owner), Luke Tozer. “Both make good use of small bits of land.”

    The project required extensive negotiation, creative diplomacy, and imaginative design work to bring neighbors and planners on board. “We ultimately convinced them of a design that could be contemporary and sympathetic to the adjoining areas without it trying to mimic them,” Tozer says. “One of our arguments was [that] it should be different because it’s obviously of its time but also we want to try and still make it clear that it is a gap.”

    The result is a home that opens into a rear garden and maximizes every inch of its narrow footprint. “It required some imagination. Thinking out of the box. Good design, that’s where it comes in,” Tozer reflects. “That’s where good design adds value on tricky sites.”

    The Gap House shows that even in cities bound by strict zoning and preservation overlays, there’s still room for architectural courage.

    “I love the fact that in a city—even a city where you’ve got an acute housing crisis like in London—there are always bits of land that are left over, forgotten,” Tozer says.

    There are cracks worth filling. But if every project demands a fight, we will never see this kind of development flourishing.

    “Letting people run a little coffee shop, a little bookstore out of the ground floor of their houses, that’s the sort of thing that makes a neighborhood charming and local and lovable and livable,” McReynolds says.

    That’s part of what makes Tokyo so magnetic. It’s a city where the unexpected flourishes. Walk a single block and you’ll see a narrow home tucked between buildings, a pet-sized owl café, or a triangle-shaped standing bar. It’s this patchwork—this mixture of building scales and uses—that gives the city its pulse.

    Tokyo can’t be copied. Its history is unique. But we can learn from its ethos of trusting its citizens and adopting policies that enable rather than restrict. If more cities embraced the idea that flexibility breeds vitality, we might start to see cracks of our own—cracks that could be filled with opportunities.

    This article originally appeared in print under the headline “Capitalism in the Cracks.”

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    Katarina Hall

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  • Bob Murphy: Welcome to MAGA socialism

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    What do you call it when the state takes partial ownership of a private company? Just asking questions.

    Ten percent of Intel now belongs to the U.S. government. Today’s guest says it’s time to start using the “F word.”

    Economist Bob Murphy is no anti–Donald Trump #resistance fighter quick to shriek “fascism.” In fact, he says he was relieved when Trump won the last election. But the Austrian school economist and host of the Human Action Podcast and The Bob Murphy Show tells us he’s alarmed by the Intel news and the hints from Trump’s chief economist that more companies are next.

    This didn’t start with Trump. Remember the bank bailouts? Ever heard of Fannie Mae? What about the G.M. takeover? This moment has been a longtime coming, and Murphy says one surprising culprit is another institution the president is now trying to exert control over: the Federal Reserve.

    Watch or listen above as we discuss America’s troubling lurch toward China-style “state capitalism,” the bipartisan enthusiasm for consolidating state power over private industry, and why it’s finally time to end the Federal Reserve and how to actually do it.

    00:00 Intro monologue

    00:01:30 Government ownership and capitalism

    00:05:17 Historical context of government intervention

    00:09:24 Sovereign wealth funds: pros and cons

    00:13:20 The role of AI in government policy

    00:17:13 Concerns over nationalization and corporate influence

    00:21:09 The future of corporate partnerships with government

    00:36:13 Trump’s war on the Federal Reserve

    00:39:25 The Federal Reserve’s independence and accountability

    00:46:05 Critique of the Federal Reserve’s effectiveness

    00:55:20 The case against the Federal Reserve

    01:06:14 Navigating the current economic landscape

    Mentioned in the podcast:

    1. “Masa Son Pitches $1 Trillion US AI Hub to TSMC, Trump Team,” by Min-Jeong Lee, Mackenzie Hawkins, and Anto Antony
    2. “Decoding the Structure of the Federal Reserve System,” by TradingView
    3. U.S. Core Inflation Rate, according to Trading Economics
    4. Economic volatlity pre– and post–Federal Reserve, by the Heritage Foundation
    5. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) on Truth Social: “The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately. There is no other solution to this problem. Thank you for your attention to this problem!“
    6. Acyn on X: “Lutnick: Intel agreed to give us 10% of their company—It is not socialism. This is capitalism.”
    7. “NEC Director Kevin Hassett on Intel deal: It’s possible government will take stake in more companies,” by CNBC
    8. “Trump announces $500 billion ‘Stargate’ AI infrastructure project,” by LiveNOW from FOX
    9. Bob Murphy on X: “maga rn“
    10. “A Comprehensive Case for Ending the Fed,” by Bob Murphy on The Human Action Podcast
    11. Has the Fed been a failure? by George Selgin, William D. Lastrapes, and Lawrence White
    12. “ZEROHEDGE DEBATE! Should We End the Fed? Bob Murphy vs David Beckworth (George Gammon moderates),” by Robert Murphy
    13. “Kelsey Piper: The AI Race is Accelerating,” by Just Asking Questions podcast

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    Liz Wolfe

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  • Trump says he ‘paid zero’ for $11 billion federal stake in Intel. Here’s the downside.

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    President Donald Trump negotiated a deal last week for the U.S. government to take a substantial ownership stake in an American company. Despite his assurances, Trump’s socialistic transaction is a terrible deal not only for the parties involved, but for the entire U.S. economy.

    “It is my Great Honor to report that the United States of America now fully owns and controls 10% of INTEL, a Great American Company that has an even more incredible future,” Trump posted Friday on Truth Social. “The United States paid nothing for these Shares, and the Shares are now valued at approximately $11 Billion Dollars. This is a great Deal for America and, also, a great Deal for INTEL. Building leading edge Semiconductors and Chips, which is what INTEL does, is fundamental to the future of our Nation.”

    “I PAID ZERO FOR INTEL, IT IS WORTH APPROXIMATELY 11 BILLION DOLLARS,” Trump added on Monday. “All goes to the USA. Why are ‘stupid’ people unhappy with that?”

    As of this writing, Intel’s market cap is around $110 billion, so a 10 percent stake would indeed be worth $11 billion. But despite what Trump says, this was not a freebie.

    “Under terms of the agreement, the United States government will make an $8.9 billion investment in Intel common stock,” the company announced. “The government’s equity stake will be funded by the remaining $5.7 billion in grants previously awarded, but not yet paid, to Intel under the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act and $3.2 billion awarded to the company as part of the Secure Enclave program….The $8.9 billion investment is in addition to the $2.2 billion in CHIPS grants Intel has received to date, making for a total investment of $11.1 billion.”

    Intel added that “under the terms of today’s announcement, the government agrees to purchase 433.3 million primary shares of Intel common stock at a price of $20.47 per share, equivalent to a 9.9 percent stake in the company.” According to the Financial Times, that was “below Friday’s closing price of $24.80, but about the level where they traded early in August. Intel’s board had approved the deal, which does not need shareholder approval.”

    The Financial Times added that under the agreement, “the US will also receive a five-year warrant, which allows it to purchase an additional 5 per cent of the group at $20 a share,” but only “if Intel jettisons majority ownership of its foundry business, which makes chips for other companies.” Trump may be expanding state ownership of private industry, but at least he seems to have no interest in seizing the means of production.

    The CHIPS Act grants were approved under Trump’s predecessor, President Joe Biden. Before leaving office, Biden’s administration rushed to finalize many such grants, even as Intel was the worst-performing tech stock in 2024; the government actually agreed to less than initially allocated when the company failed to hit certain milestones.

    Instead of rescinding those grants, as Trump reportedly threatened to do, he instead demanded a tenth of the business, as a result making the U.S. government Intel’s largest shareholder.

    Every part of this transaction flies in the face of any sincere interpretation of free markets, including the Biden administration’s original sin to approve billions of dollars for a struggling company. It is perhaps telling that as Reason‘s Eric Boehm noted last week, the idea that the U.S. government should take a piece of Intel in exchange for CHIPS Act funding was first floated by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.). Trump and his allies are now issuing talking points that could have come from the socialist senator himself.

    If the U.S. government insists upon dishing out taxpayer money to private companies, is there any reason it shouldn’t, as U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick put it to CNBC, get “a piece of the action”?

    There are many reasons, in fact. “The most immediate risk is that Intel’s decisions will increasingly be driven by political rather than commercial considerations,” Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute wrote Sunday in The Washington Post. “With the U.S. government as its largest shareholder, Intel will face constant pressure to align corporate decisions with the goals of whatever political party is in power.”

    Not only that, Lincicome writes, but “Intel’s U.S.-based competitors…might find themselves at a disadvantage when vying for government contracts or subsidies, winning trade or tax relief, or complying with federal regulations. Private capital might in turn flow to Intel (and away from innovation leaders in the semiconductor ecosystem) not for economic reasons but because Uncle Sam now has a thumb on the scale.”

    Such market distortions may seem abstract, but they can have devastating consequences for the American industrial economy. “Will investors and entrepreneurs stay away from critical industries that might also see the U.S. government eager to get more involved?” Lincicome wonders. “Will future presidents, Republican or Democrat, use this noncrisis precedent to carry out their own adventures into corporate ownership with their own economic and social priorities attached?”

    Indeed, White House National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett told CNBC on Monday that he’s “sure at some point there’ll be more transactions, if not in this industry, [then] in other industries.”

    Trump has made several such deals just since reentering office in January. He leaned on Intel competitors Nvidia and AMD to give 15 percent of proceeds from Chinese sales to the government; he demanded veto power over U.S. Steel as part of its sale to the Japanese company Nippon Steel; and MP Minerals, which operates a rare earth mineral mine in the U.S., got a $400 billion government investment that made the Department of Defense its largest shareholder.

    In his Monday morning Truth Social post defending the Intel agreement, Trump said, “I will make deals like that for our Country all day long.”

    But as Lincicome notes, Republicans likely won’t be in power forever; in time, a Democratic president would have the same influence on Intel—and beyond.

    “This is a product of both parties forgetting a cardinal rule of politics: don’t give yourself powers you don’t want your opponents to have,” writes Ryan Young, an economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “The Democrats who passed the CHIPS Act likely did not foresee Republicans using it to essentially nationalize Intel. Similarly, Republicans cheering government takeovers of chipmakers will somehow be surprised if Democrats invoke similar powers in the health insurance, energy, and other industries when they are in power again.”

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    Joe Lancaster

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  • FKA Twigs Reminds: Don’t Ever Fucking Work In An Office…Because You Might Not Experience “Eusexua” Long Enough to Escape It

    FKA Twigs Reminds: Don’t Ever Fucking Work In An Office…Because You Might Not Experience “Eusexua” Long Enough to Escape It

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    In the annals of “office music videos,” there are very few. In the recent past, there have been the likes of Britney Spears’ “Womanizer” and Fifth Harmony’s “Worth It,” but these played with the idea of “office aesthetics” more than trying to “make a statement” about office work and its soul-crushing nature. And, in its way, that’s what FKA Twigs’ music video for her eponymous first single from Eusexua does. Except that it also incorporates the kind of message that Avicii and Nicky Romero’s 2012 hit, “I Could Be The One,” does in its own music video, where an office worker (played by Inessa Frantowski) endures the daily drudgery of her life—dominated mostly by the banal tasks she’s “required” to do for eight hours a day—until she gets the wake-up call to abandon it entirely (resulting in an ironically tragic denouement).

    In a similar fashion, we see a frantic FKA Twigs running into the generic office where she works at the outset of the Jordan Hemingway-directed “Eusexua.” Clearly, she’s dangerously tardy and doesn’t want to get caught. “You’re late,” the drag queen-esque co-worker who looks like Eartheater tells Twigs as she scurries into the fluorescently-lit space (and maybe it is Eartheater—after all, “Alexandra Drewchin” has a co-songwriting and co-producer credit on the track). Plopping down in her seat and taking off her glasses, Twigs barely has time to get her bearings before the boss man materializes to demand, “Have you got a second?” Reluctantly, Twigs says, “Yeah.” “Have you seen the new comments?” “I…haven’t. Were they on GroupSpace?” “No, TeamZone Chat.” Automatically, Twigs seems to be trolling the ridiculous names that get used in a corporate setting, all under the guise of “improving communication.”

    Frantic to accommodate her boss, Twigs tries to log in on her computer to see what’s what, only to keep getting an error message that makes checking her latest emails impossible. Meanwhile, her boss drones on, “We’re phasing out GroupSpace. Everything’s on TeamZone now.” “I’m really sorry.” “It’s fine. Loads have missed it. That’s why I’m standing here physically right now.” Before she can keep engaging in this banal conversation, the phone on her desk rings. Telling her boss “one second,” she answers it, ostensibly receiving some sort of hypnotic message that leads her into a state of what she calls “eusexua.” This being a term Twigs created to describe the feeling of transcending time, space and your body when you find yourself in a euphoric moment that can turn into hours passing without realizing it (this inspired by her clubbing period in Prague while filming The Crow—disastrous for her acting career, but great for continuing to spur her musical one). Indeed, that definition and the events that take place also recall Avicii’s video for “Levels” (he obviously understood how soul-sucking office [non-]life was, despite enduring the different kind of soul-sucking lifestyle entailed by being a world-famous DJ).

    And, evidently, whoever is calling her wants her to remember what that feeling is after she’s so clearly gone numb as a result of spending most of her time in an office setting (and for a company called “CroneCorp” no less). Her boss initially regards her with a strange look at the sight of her own bizarre expression while she listens to whatever is on the other side of the phone (an alien race seeking to remind humans that they’re wasting their potential on “busy work” for the sake of pay?). But then, he, too, is overtaken by eusexua, along with the rest of the office as they get into formation to perform what is sure to become among Twigs’ most iconic choreography—courtesy of Zoi Tatopoulos, “best known for her extraterrestrial approach to creative direction and movement choreography” (so maybe that alien theory holds weight). The accompanying Janet Jackson-y backbeat does not yet let us hear the actual song. Instead, we’re given a preview of “Drums of Death,” which is to be the fourth track on Eusexua. Thus, as though Twigs is speaking from the “head alien” perspective, we hear her voice command, “Listen, girl, drop your skin to the floor/Let your clothes body talk/Shed your skin/Rip your shirt/Flesh be torn/Feel hot, feel hard, feel heavy/Fuck who you want/Baby girl, do it just for fun.”

    It is after this mantra that everyone in the office really has shed their “skin” (a.k.a. work clothes) in favor of wearing solely their skivvies. The lyrics to “Drums of Death” then continue to play as Twigs asks, “Hello, what you like?/Do you wanna meet later?/Relax and ease your mind ‘cause you work so much/I know what you like, and you’re my main character/I’m here anytime, you can call me up.” And with the shedding of her “work skin,” as it were, Twigs is also the only one to be given what will now be known as her “Eusexua era haircut.” Which means a “semi-2007 Britney,” as only half of her head is shaved (the front part).

    Before Twigs and her fellow (erstwhile) office workers cease their dance, Twigs concludes it with the sound lyrical advice, “Crash the system, diva doll/Serve cunt, serve violence.” It is then that Hemingway focuses the camera on a computer keyboard with someone’s hand repeatedly tapping the same button before then panning downward to reveal the office in topsy-turvy mode, with its ceiling now showing signs of dirt and decay infecting the space—almost like a commentary on how fucking antiquated this type of work setup is. At the same time, it’s also a means of remarking on how humans need to literally get back to the earth. Away from all the trappings of so-called modernity that have turned them into automatons. At the “bottom” of the dirt-caked ceiling, Twigs is suddenly outfitted in a black, extraterrestrial-chic “ensemble” (mainly a pair of tights) just as the setting switches entirely and she’s pulled upward (or downward, depending on how you look at it) into an earthen backdrop—this moment somewhat mirroring her being pulled up into a new surreal setting during her famous “cellophane” video.

    Writhing in sexual unison with the former office workers who have joined her in this “state of being” (eusexua), they, too, look as though they’ve been ejected—birthed—from out of the dirt that was spilling into the office ceiling. And yes, this type of sexual writhing is something Madonna perfected during The Girlie Show via a performance of “Deeper and Deeper” that concludes with plenty of orgiastic flair (she perfected this writhing, once again, during her performance of “Justify My Love” for The Celebration Tour).

    Channeling the lyrics of Olive’s 1996 song, “You’re Not Alone” (during which Ruth-Ann Boyle assures, “You’re not alone, I’ll wait ’til the end of time/Open your mind, surely it’s plain to see/You’re not alone, I’ll wait ’til the end of time for you”), Twigs sings, “You’re not alone (under the stars)/Do you feel alone?/You’re not alone.” A statement that, although seemingly “simple,” still has plenty of importance and meaning to the many people who feel perennially lonely—even more so in this increasingly dehumanized world (and that sort of dehumanization was arguably refined with the advent of the office space).

    By the end of the video, Twigs has somewhat left the height of eusexua long enough to realize she’s still in the office (now back in her “professional” attire) as other co-workers appear to remain in a state of feral bliss. Seeming to remember where she is, Twigs also remembers that she probably shouldn’t stay in this hellhole another second…because she might not get the “eusexua call” again. The one that shook her out of her coma in the first place.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • As Charlize Theron’s J’Adore Era Comes to An End, Rihanna and Dior Have “Capitalism on the Brain”

    As Charlize Theron’s J’Adore Era Comes to An End, Rihanna and Dior Have “Capitalism on the Brain”

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    There’s nothing Rihanna won’t do these days—except, of course, release new music. As such, for her latest foray into the world of high fashion (including an on-again, off-again partnership with LVMH for Fenty), she’s opted to let Christian Dior use her 2016 track from ANTI, “Love on the Brain.” Specifically, in the new ad campaign that has officially let the world know that Charlize Theron is no longer looking as much like her long-standing print ads for the J’Adore fragrance as she used to (though that hasn’t stopped Dior from letting Johnny Depp continue to be the face for Sauvage). And no, it certainly doesn’t feel like a coincidence that the brand has decided it’s time for a “fresher” face (though Gen Z wouldn’t call anyone who’s thirty-six all that fresh) just as Theron has entered the last year of her forties (having turned forty-nine in August of this year).

    Because, unfortunately, it’s already been deemed “generous” enough that women have been “permitted” to keep “feigning” youth in their forties of late—but to “let” them continue to do it in their fifties would be too much for most (read: the patriarchal powers that be). Naturally, many would argue that Theron has been the face of J’Adore (which first launched in 1999) for the last twenty years, therefore it’s perfectly acceptable to pass the torch to someone else. And yet, the shift to “younger model” Rihanna still feels somewhat icky, like Nina Sayers taking over Beth MacIntyre’s lead in Black Swan. Even so, Rihanna is game enough to take up the mantle, paying homage to one of the original ads by reappearing against the backdrop of Versailles (still the height of French opulence) for what is sure to be the first of many commercials in promotion of its L’Or Essence de Parfum and others that might come up along the way. Particularly if Rihanna is planning to stick around for as long as Theron did (though they likely wouldn’t allow her to since she’ll be over fifty in the next twenty years—an unfathomable thought indeed).

    Incidentally, when Theron became the first celebrity face of the parfum, John Galliano was still Dior’s artistic director, having not yet gone off the rails with his antisemitic rant in 2010, which soon got him fired from Dior in 2011. When Theron was announced as the parfum’s “ambassador” in 2004, it was also said by then CEO and president of LVMH Perfume & Cosmetics, Pamela Baxter, “Ms. Theron was chosen because she represents modern femininity and embodies the spirit and energy of Dior. She is a classic beauty.” Rihanna, then, seems to signal an about-face for what the perfume “means” and who it’s catering to. Because, although beautiful, Rihanna is not conventionally so. Indeed, Steven Klein, the director of the commercial (being billed as “J’ADORE, THE FILM”—despite having a one-minute length) remarked upon “Rihanna’s incredibly contemporary beauty” as opposed to her “classic” kind. And, to be sure, the euphemism here seems to be that—gasp!—Rihanna is Black. A “quality” that high fashion houses have only recently “gotten around to” considering and including, with Rihanna’s partnership mimicking how Coco Mademoiselle tapped Whitney Peak to be their parfum’s face after years of the likes of Kate Moss and Keira Knightley in spokesperson roles. The sudden revelation of being in the twenty-first century, wherein “white girl beauty” is no longer the ideal, also seems pointedly timed for a moment when the world is braced for the U.S. to welcome not only its first female president but its first Black and Indian president.

    So it is that the tonal shift in terms of the “catch phrase” said at the end of Theron’s versus Rihanna’s commercial is also marked. While Theron opts to strip away her glamorous trappings (namely, all her jewelry pieces and her dress), Marvin Gaye’s “A Funky Space Reincarnation” plays in the background as Theron pronounces, “Gold is cold. Diamonds are dead. A limousine is a car. Don’t pretend. Feel what’s real. C’est ça que j’adore.” “Realness” continues to be a motif in Rihanna’s catch phrase as well, telling the audience as she walks on water at the end of the “film” (in a visual that harkens back to Madonna’s 2004 “Love Profusion” video, which was recreated for Estée Lauder’s Beyond Paradise commercial [also directed by Luc Besson] when it used the song in its ad), “Your dreams. Make them real.” It’s a tagline that appears to encourage people to retreat further into their delusions rather than acknowledging anything real whatsoever. As for “just” making dreams happen, well, it’s easier said than done, naturally.

    Needless to say, the implication here is that one’s dream is to live decadently while wearing J’Adore. Except that we all know Rihanna is likely wearing her own fragrance, Fenty Eau de Parfum—which actually sells for more on average than J’Adore. Evidently, no one seemed to feel this was a conflict of interest, assuming that Rihanna’s fans must have plenty of extra pocket money to support both fragrances. Besides, it’s not “cannibalism” if it isn’t the same brand (not like Starbucks opening within a half-mile radius of another Starbucks).

    What’s more, all is fair in love and capitalism. Two words that go hand in hand, especially with Rihanna choosing to wield “Love on the Brain” as the “film’s” song choice. Thus, once an earnest, hopelessly devoted power ballad, its new context has made it as base as any other song that gets tainted by use in a commercial (see also: The Beatles’ “Revolution” being featured in a Nike ad)—positioned as just another means to sell something. And what Rihanna and Dior are selling here is not just a certain lifestyle, but the aspiration to a certain lifestyle. As though trying to convince people that capitalism isn’t a failed system that we’re all still going through the motions of. Back in 2015, when Rihanna had her first entrée into a Dior commercial (part of the brand’s Secret Garden series), with the campaign also shot by Klein, it was easier to believe in such things. After all, that was arguably the last year before the U.S. truly let all veneers slip away, with Trump becoming president in 2016 (a few years later, Rihanna would deem him “the most mentally ill person in America”).

    Though that reality wasn’t made to sink in until the end of the year. Which is why, even for most of 2016 itself, there was still a more aspirational air to the U.S. Like in January of ‘16, when ANTI was released—its first single being “Work,” a song less about paid work than it was about the kind of work people have to do for love and orgasms. Of course, that didn’t stop the masses from making it their “every day I’m hustlin’” anthem. Which is why it was on the polar opposite spectrum for Rihanna’s fourth and final single from ANTI, “Love on the Brain,” to be so unapologetically about l’amour. More to the point, l’amour abusif. Something Rihanna has been almost as good at romanticizing as Lana Del Rey.

    In a way, however, abusive love is the only kind of love there can be with capitalism involved. Maybe that’s why, in this J’Adore “film,” there’s a certain violence to the way Rihanna abruptly ties her corset and then practically chokes herself with the signature gold choker necklace that Theron once wore for these commercials. To be sure, gold is the word that best describes the ad’s look (even if Theron formerly told us that “gold is old”). Unless, of course, one wanted to be more realistic and add “fool’s” to the front of it. Because there is nothing less realistic than being instructed, “Your dreams. Make them real.” It’s on par with the other capitalist credo that goes, “If you want it badly enough, you’ll find a way to get it.” Even if that means begging, borrowing, cheating or stealing to do so. This often being what happens when someone realizes they can’t “win” at capitalism. With no one ever taking into account that the celebrities who tout that they worked hard and made their dreams come true are part of either one of two categories: 1) an example of the one in a million chance that managed to penetrate the system or 2) born into wealth and/or a family name that could help them get ahead.

    So it is that most people have, that’s right, an abusive relationship with capitalism. And yet, Rihanna and Dior still seek to glamorize its frills. Perhaps that’s why they opted to leave out the lyrics from “Love on the Brain” that go, “You love when I fall apart/So you can put me together and throw me against the wall” and “It beats me black and blue, but it fucks me so good/And I can’t get enough.” For these are the sentiments that best describe the toxic dynamic that most people have with le capitalisme.

    It is also because of capitalism and its fundamental promotion of homogeneity and the status quo that, despite Rihanna being a “new” face for J’Adore, there is nothing actually new about this imagery. And, funnily enough, when Theron starred in Dior’s The New Absolu campaign in 2018 (which featured Kanye West’s “Flashing Lights” [mind you, after he had already shown his true colors with support for Trump by wearing a MAGA hat throughout 2018]), it looked very similar to the imagery Rihanna had already shown fans in her ANTIdiaRy. Namely, being immersed in an opulent bath while staring directly into the camera.

    Perhaps, in some way, unwittingly grafting Theron’s mise-en-scène from that ANTIdiaRy moment foreshadowed Rihanna’s eventual welcome into the “Dior family” as an official brand ambassador. Either way, the final result only serves to prove what Fredric Jameson said in The Antinomies of Realism: “society has ever been as standardized as this one, and the stream of human, social and historical temporality has never flowed quite so homogenously.” Even if “hidden” behind a shiny new face.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Trump Brings Back the Worst of the 80s

    Trump Brings Back the Worst of the 80s

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    Although some could argue that Ronald Reagan’s oppressive regime in the 1980s is part of what fueled better pop culture than the schlock of the moment, one thing that could never be improved was Donald Trump. A man who did become part of the pop cultural lexicon of that era despite being a New York-confined Patrick Bateman type. For whatever reason (apart from The Art of the Deal), he managed to infiltrate the mainstream consciousness—more than likely because, in those days, it was the height of “aspirational” to be rich. Not that it still isn’t, it’s just more “cloaked” behind “earnest,” “let’s save the planet” messaging.

    Trump, obviously, never gave a fuck about that. And still doesn’t. Nor did he ever care about reading, though he did feign being very taken with the “excellent” Tom Wolfe during both men’s heyday. “Excellent” was the word he used to describe the quintessential 80s author in a 1987 interview with Pat Buchanan and Tom Braden when asked what books he was reading. But, of course, 1) he wasn’t actually reading any and 2) Trump couldn’t resist the urge to ultimately say, “I’m reading my own book because I think it’s so fantastic, Tom.” That book was the blatantly ghostwritten The Art of the Deal, released, incidentally, in the month that followed The Bonfire of the Vanities landing on bookshelves everywhere. Indeed, that was the main reason Trump was on the show.

    Oddly, Trump’s book (an oxymoron, to be sure) was the thing that made him become a household name in America, as opposed to just being limited to the niche jurisdiction of New York City and certain parts of New Jersey. As for his abovementioned interview, some have speculated that Bret Easton Ellis used this bizarre moment for Bateman/American Psycho inspiration. For it does smack of Bateman saying whatever the fuck comes to his mind just to see if anyone’s actually paying attention (e.g., saying he’s into “murders and executions mostly” instead of “mergers and acquisitions”). A moment where, in one instant Trump is declaring he’s well-versed in all literature Wolfe but hasn’t yet read The Bonfire of the Vanities, and, in the next, claiming to be reading Wolfe’s “last book.” Which would have been, what else, The Bonfire of the Vanities. He certainly wasn’t talking about From Bauhaus to Our House. And yet, even when caught in a lie, Trump always counted on touting generalities with confidence as a means to deflect from his total lack of knowledgeability.

    So it is that he keeps repeating such generalities as, “He’s a great author, he’s done a beautiful job” and “The man has done a very, very good job.” Finally, realizing that there might be some people out there not falling for his bullshit, he relies on the excuse, “I really can’t hear with this earphone by the way.” (Or, as Mariah would put it, “I can’t read suddenly.”) Trump, in this and so many other ways, has brought back the “art” of the flagrant lie-con that was popularized by some of the 80s’ most notorious swindlers, like David Bloom and Jim Bakker. Everyone wanting to adhere to the “fake it till you make it” philosophy so beloved by the U.S., and which it was essentially founded upon. A “philosophy” that Trump has taken “to heart” his entire life. Except for the fact that, as Tony Schwartz, the true writer of The Art of the Deal, eventually said, Trump doesn’t actually have a heart. More specifically, “Trump is not only willing to lie, but he doesn’t get bothered by it, doesn’t feel guilty about it, isn’t preoccupied by it. There’s an emptiness inside Trump. There’s an absence of a soul. There’s an absence of a heart.”

    And it can be argued that this absence began to extend to the collective of America in a more noticeable way than ever during the Decade of Excess. Uncoincidentally, it was the decade when neoliberalism came back into fashion in a manner as never seen before, courtesy of the “laissez-faire” policies of Reagan and, in the UK, Margaret Thatcher. With such an emphasis on “me first” and “getting ahead at any cost,” it was no wonder that a man like Trump, emblematic of the Wall Street monstrosity that would come to be embodied by Gordon Gekko, was so “revered.” His “lifestyle” coveted. Of course, it was harder then to debunk myths, like the idea that anything about Trump was “self-made.”

    In the backdrop (or foreground, depending on who you ask) of Trump and Reagan representing the worst of the 80s, there were, needless to say, so many amazing things about that decade: the birth of MTV, and with it, a new generation of visual artists (including the 1958 Trinity, Madonna Prince and Michael Jackson), Square Pegs, Golden Girls, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, They Live, E.T., Dirty Dancing, Flashdance, Footloose (a whole rash of dancing movies, really), any John Hughes movie, the eradication of smallpox, the aerobics craze and Jane Fonda’s Workout, Pac-Man (and the rise of video games in general, culminating in the release of Game Boy in 1989), the early days of the internet and personal computers, the first female vice presidential candidate (Geraldine Ferraro), the fall of the Berlin Wall… So many great, memorable things that should outshine the ickier moments today—like the rampant homophobia in response to AIDS, the Challenger explosion, Irangate, the Chernobyl disaster, New Coke, the rise of the yuppie, the death of vinyl (though it would have the last laugh) and George H.W. Bush managing to win the 1988 election so as to take more “Reaganomics” policies into the 90s.

    And now, Trump wants to bring all the worst of the decade back. The homophobia, the religious overtones (complete with satanic panic), rampant misogyny, the worship of money, the rollback of environmental regulations and, maybe most affronting of all, Hulk Hogan. The latter, like Trump, experienced his own heyday in the 80s, when interest in pro wrestling and the WWE reached an all-time crescendo. And, also like Trump, Hogan has a reputation for, let’s say, embellishing (read: fabricating) his lore. Because he found his success by being an over-the-top wrestler, Hogan never seemed inclined to shed his performative persona. As a result, many will remain forever haunted by Hogan at the RNC a.k.a. Trump rally ripping his shirt off to reveal a Trump/Vance tank top as he screamed, “Let Trumpamania [unclear why he wouldn’t just say ‘Trump Mania,’ but anyway] run wild brother! Let Trumpamania rule again!”

    As many pointed out, it was like seeing the plot of Idiocracy fully realized. A trajectory that can now be rightfully pinned on the “ideals” of the 80s. For while it was the best of times, it was also the worst of times—and those are coming back with a vengeance if Trump manages to win the presidency yet again. On the plus side though, it seems that CDs are making a comeback to align with this potential return to the Decade of Greed.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Narcissistic Culture of “Image” and Excessive Self-Monitoring

    The Narcissistic Culture of “Image” and Excessive Self-Monitoring

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    In a world obsessed with public image and attention-seeking, learn about the cultural forces propelling society to become more narcissistic – and how this influences us to be in a constant state of self-scrutiny.


    The idea that our culture is becoming more narcissistic and self-centered is not new.

    Historian and social critic Christopher Lasch’s book The Culture of Narcissism was first published in 1979. By that time, the 1970s were already dubbed the “Me-generation.” Americans were increasingly shifting focus to concepts like “self-liberation,” “self-expression,” and “self-actualization,” while untethering themselves from past traditions and social responsibilities.

    Interestingly, Lasch traces the narcissistic roots in America back way further, starting with the early days of the Protestant work ethic and its singular focus on labor, money, and wealth-building, including the old “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mantra.

    This early thread of American hyper-individualism continues into the New Age movement at the turn of the 20th century with its focus on personal happiness and spiritual fulfillment, as well as the popularity of Ayn Rand’s “virtue of selfishness,” and the rise of celebrity-worship and fame-seeking that still characterizes much of American life today whether it be in politics, sports, art, or entertainment.

    Things appear to be getting worse. The book was written over 40 years ago, but a lot of the observations in it seem strangely prophetic when looking at the world today. Lasch accurately describes how narcissistic trends have evolved on a societal and cultural level, and you can perfectly extend his theories to explain our modern culture.

    Before you continue reading, remember this is a cultural analysis of narcissistic tendencies and it isn’t focused on clinical or psychological definitions of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).

    Many people act more narcissistic because that’s what our society rewards and that’s how people think they need to act to get ahead in today’s world.

    One can even look at certain narcissistic tendencies as a survival strategy in an otherwise competitive, atomized, isolated – “every man for himself” – world.

    Now let’s dive into how our modern culture amplifies and rewards narcissism.

    The narcissist craves an audience

    First, the most defining characteristic of a narcissist is that they depend on the attention and validation of others to feel good about themselves.

    Contrary to the popular myth that the narcissist suffers from excessive self-love, the truth is they are deeply insecure and lack true confidence and self-esteem. The main reason they brag, show off, or puff-up-their-chests is only to appear strong when deep down they feel weak.

    As a result the narcissist is obsessed with their image and appearance. They feel they need to “win people over” to be accepted and liked by others, and this requires a carefully manufactured persona they create for the public.

    This deeply rooted “need for attention” plays a central theme in Lasch’s analysis:

      “Narcissism represents a psychological dimension of dependence. Notwithstanding his occasional illusions of omnipotence, the narcissist depends on others to validate his self-esteem. He cannot live without an admiring audience. His apparent freedom from family ties and institutional constraints does not free him to stand alone or to glory in his individuality. On the contrary, it contributes to his insecurity, which he can overcome only by seeing his ‘grandiose self’ reflected in the attention of others, or by attaching himself to those who radiate celebrity, power, and charisma.”

    Without an audience to appreciate them, the narcissist struggles to find their self-worth. They don’t believe in themselves – they need “proof” they are a good or important person through the eyes of others.

    To the narcissist, any attention is better than none at all; even negative attention like gossip, drama, and criticism feeds into their egos by letting them know they are still front and center.

    In a society that rewards attention for the sake of attention (including fame and notoriety), the narcissist grows and thrives. Who knows, that next scandal with a famous celebrity may be their big breakthrough – whatever gets them into the limelight!

    Image-centrism: The society of the spectacle

    One major contributor to the rise of narcissistic tendencies is that our culture is becoming more image-centric.

    Popular ideas on what true “happiness,” “success,” “fame,” “beauty,” and “achievement” look like are based on outward images and appearances increasingly fed into our culture through photographs, movies, television, and advertising:

      “[One] influence is the mechanical reproduction of culture, the proliferation of visual and audial images in the ‘society of the spectacle.’ We live in a swirl of images and echoes that arrest experience and play it back in slow motion. Cameras and recording machines not only transcribe experience but alter its quality, giving to much of modern life the character of an enormous echo chamber, a hall of mirrors. Life presents itself as a succession of images or electronic signals, of impressions recorded and reproduced by means of photography, motion pictures, television, and sophisticated recording devices.”

    This book was written before the internet and social media which have only increased our “image-centrism” tenfold. Selfies, avatars, memes, filters, photoshop, and AI have all continued to add more layers to this hyper-reality between manipulated images and how we choose to present ourselves.

    This constant barrage of cultural images shapes our beliefs and map of reality. It subconsciously puts ideas in our heads about what “happiness,” “success,” and “beauty” are supposed to look like.

    Once these social images are set in our minds, we naturally feel the desire to live up to them.

    Narcissists can often be the most sensitive to these social images because they fear their true self isn’t good enough, so they take society’s picture of “success” and try to mirror that image back to others.

    On the surface, the narcissist is a crowd-pleaser. They don’t trust their own judgement, so if society says this is what “happiness” or “success” looks like, then they will try to mimic it the best they can.

    Everyone has an audience now

    Technology, internet, social media, cameras, and recording devices have created a world where everyone feels like they have an audience all-the-time.

    Family photo albums and home videos were early stages in turning “private moments” into “public consumption,” but now we have people over-sharing every meal, date, and shopping spree on their social media feeds.

    Lasch correctly identifies this trend back in the 1960s-70s, including a mention of the popular show Candid Camera, which was one of the first “hidden camera” TV shows:

      “Modern life is so thoroughly mediated by electronic images that we cannot help responding to others as if their actions – and our own – were being recorded and simultaneously transmitted to an unseen audience or stored up for close scrutiny at some later time. ‘Smile you’re on candid camera!’ The intrusion into everyday life of this all-seeing eye no longer takes us by surprise or catches us with our defenses down. We need no reminder to smile, a smile is permanently graven on our features, and we already know from which of several angles it photographs to best advantage.”

    Life is recorded and shared now more than ever before. Today everyone has an audience and many people can’t help but see themselves as the “main character” of their own carefully edited movie.

    Unfortunately, we have this audience whether we like it or not. Every time we are out in public, someone may whip out their phones, capture an embarrassing moment, and upload it to the internet for millions to watch. You never know when you may go “viral” for the wrong reasons. The rise of online shaming, doxing, and harassment puts people in a perpetual state of high alert.

    That’s a stressful thought, but it perfectly represents this state of hyper-surveillance we are all in, where there’s always a potential audience and you feel constant pressure to showcase the “best version of yourself” in every waking moment, because you never know who is watching.

    Self-image and excessive self-monitoring

    In a world that rewards people solely based on the “image” they present, we naturally become more self-conscious of the image we are projecting to others.

    This leads to a state of endless self-monitoring and self-surveillance. We see ourselves through the eyes of others and try to fit their image of what we are supposed to be. No matter what we choose to do with our lives, the most pressing questions become, “How will this make me look?” or “What will people think of me?”

    While people naturally want to present themselves in the best way possible and form strong first impressions, an excessive degree of self-filtering and self-management can cause us to lose our sense of identity for the sake of superficial acceptance, internet fame, or corporate climbing.

    At worst, we increasingly depend on this these manufactured images to understand ourselves and reality:

      “The proliferation of recorded images undermines our sense of reality. As Susan Sontag observes in her study of photography, ‘Reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras.’ We distrust our perceptions until the camera verifies them. Photographic images provide us with the proof of our existence, without which we would find it difficult even to reconstruct a personal history…

      Among the ‘many narcissistic uses’ that Sontag attributes to the camera, ‘’self-surveillance’ ranks among the most important, not only because it provides the technical means of ceaseless self-scrutiny but because it renders the sense of selfhood dependent on the consumption of images of the self, at the same time calling into question the reality of the external world.”

    If you didn’t share your meal on social media, did you really eat it? If you didn’t update your relationship status online, are you really dating someone?

    For many people, the internet world has become “more real” than the real world. People don’t go out and do adventurous things to live their lives, but to “create content” for their following.

    Who looks like their living their best life? Who is experiencing the most FOMO on the internet? In a narcissistic world, we start seeing our “digital self” in competition with everyone else – and the only thing that matters is that it looks like we are having a good time.

    More and more, we consume and understand ourselves through these technologies and images. We depend on photo galleries, reel clips, and social media posts to chronicle our life story and present the best version of ourselves to the world. If the internet didn’t exist, then neither would we.

    In the sci-fi movie The Final Cut people have their entire lives recorded through their eyes; then after they die, their happy memories are spliced together to give a “final edit” of the person’s life. Many of us are perpetually scrutinizing and editing this “final cut” of our own lives.

    The invention of new insecurities

    Everything is being observed, recorded, and measured, so we have more tools than ever to compare ourselves against others.

    This leads to the invention of all types of new insecurities. We are more aware of the ways we’re different from others, whether it’s our jobs, homes, relationships, health, appearances, or lifestyles. We can always find new ways we don’t “measure up” to the ideal.

    New technologies create new ways to compare. Before you know it, you have people in heated competitions over who can do the most steps on their Fitbit, or consume the least amount of calories in a week, or receives the most likes on their gym posts. The internet becomes a never-ending competition.

    Of course, measuring your progress can be a valuable tool for motivation and reaching goals. The problem is when we use these numbers to measure up against others vs. measure up against our past self. Always remember that everyone is on a completely different path.

    It’s well-known that social comparison is one of the ultimate traps when it comes to happiness and well-being. You’ll always be able to find someone who has it better than you in some area of life, and with the internet that’s usually an easy search.

    These endless comparisons touch on all aspects of life and heighten self-scrutiny and self-criticism. Finding and dwelling on even “minor differences” can spiral into a cycle of self-pity and self-hate. If we don’t remove ourselves from these comparisons, then we have no choice but to try to live up to them and beat ourselves up when we fail.

    Conclusion

    The goal of this article was to describe some of the key forces that are making society more narcissistic and self-centered.

    Different cultural beliefs and attitudes incentive certain personality traits over others. Our current world seems to continue moving down a more narcissistic path, especially with the increased focus on “image” (or “personal brand”) that we build for ourselves through the internet and social media.

    Most of the ideas in this article are based on the book The Culture of Narcissism which, despite being written over 40 years, is an insightful look into how these social forces continue to grow and evolve.

    Do you feel like our current society is getting more narcissistic? How have these social forces influenced the way you live?


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    Steven Handel

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  • Griselda Shades What A Shithole America Is

    Griselda Shades What A Shithole America Is

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    As yet another narrative that proves capitalism drives people to do insane (and cold-blooded) things, Griselda is as much an exaltation of the beloved American system as it is a cautionary tale about it. That to get “caught up” in the game of paper chasing is to sign one’s death warrant. Especially when that paper chase involves illegal activity. For, as most of us know by now, only white men in government or high-level corporate management can get away with illegal activity in the long run. A woman like Griselda Blanco, not so much. And, although the miniseries based on her life has many discrepancies between fact and fiction (as is usually the way it goes), what it does get right is the sense of disappointment many immigrants (“legal” or otherwise) ultimately feel upon arriving to the so-called Promised Land. The harsh disconnect between expectation and reality. 

    For the Griselda Blanco of Doug Miro’s imagination (in conjunction with co-creators Eric Newman, Carlo Bernard and Ingrid Escajeda), she isn’t all that dismayed by it considering the situation she was fleeing in Medellín. One that required killing her husband, Alberto Bravo (Alberto Ammann), in order to leave. As for that plot point about Griselda killing him for forcing her to sleep with his brother, well, it’s just another means for the series to make viewers feel more empathy for someone so ruthless. Instead, what she killed him for was skimming millions off the top of their drug enterprise together. Because if Griselda cared about one thing, it was bitch better having her money. So, in that sense, perhaps she was a true American. Driven and motivated by the power that money entailed. As a woman who felt powerless for so much of her life, that made sense. As they say, money is power. 

    With every episode directed by Andrés Baiz, his and Sofía Vergara’s participation in the miniseries makes for a very Colombian affair indeed. Though nothing makes it more clichely Colombian than the cocaine itself. Described as so much purer and “tastier” when it comes from the “gateway to South America.” Indeed, per Griselda, that’s really how Blanco gets her foot in the door, attracting the attention of one of Amilcar’s (​​José Zúñiga) dealers at a club called The Mutiny by offering him a “free sample” to get him hooked. As is the case with most men who encountered Griselda, Amilcar made the mistake of underestimating her and the even worse blunder of trying to steal the kilo from her without paying the price she had originally asked for. Making her get it back by any bloody means necessary. Again, this is all how it transpires in the series, which finds it easier, for storytelling purposes, to place Griselda at the bottom rung of the drug ladder upon her arrival in Miami when, in truth, she was already established and well-known as a dealer when she emigrated to the city. 

    But that wouldn’t make for as scrappy of a character as portrayed by Vergara. A character who feels as at sixes and sevens in this environment as any other freshly-arrived immigrant. Without that aura about Griselda in the show, her ability to relate to someone like Chucho (Freddy Yate) wouldn’t be as resonant. At the diner where she first meets her soon-to-be bodyguard/henchman, he is berated and belittled by his boss, who tells him to wipe the counter again because it isn’t clean. When the boss walks away, Chucho mutters in Spanish, “Get your eyes checked, asshole.” Griselda takes this as her “in” to relate to him, asking, “You Colombian?” He replies, “Yes, but I came to America to wash dishes.” The sardonic remark speaks to the notion that doing anything “honestly” in this country is a surefire ticket to poverty and obscurity. Griselda knows that, and she also knows how to draw in people like her—“underdogs,” if you will—to endear them to her cause. A cause that, in the end, turns out to be serving her ego. For that’s the thing about power: it makes you hungry for more. Which, of course, plays into narcissism. And what’s more American than that, really? The bill of goods everyone gets sold about “taking what’s theirs.” The lie that everyone can be powerful, or at least has the opportunity to be…if they play their cards right. Usually, though, the only people with the right cards are those that the second episode is named after: “Rich White People.” 

    It is in this episode that the first major shade is thrown at the U.S. about what a shithole it is. And worse still, one that’s pretending to be a Promised Land. A Third World country in sheep’s clothing, as it were. And that much is highlighted when Griselda calls some sex worker comrades of hers to Miami to smuggle in some cocaína in the patented Griselda way: stuffed in bras. Being that this was still the glory days of no-frills airline travel, it was so much easier to carry off such a trick. And with the help of her trusted friend, Isabel (Vergara’s real-life cousin, Paulina Dávila), leading the pack of other “working girls,” Griselda has a willing army of smugglers at her feet. But that also means she has to house them in the same rundown motel she’s been staying at. The one with the empty pool and questionable sheets. It’s the waterless, dilapidated pool that makes one of the women comment, “What an ugly-looking pool.” “No water, how great,” another responds. She then adds, “I thought the States were more fancy.” But no, turns out, not really. Unless, of course, you belong to the aforementioned rich white people group. The very market Griselda plans to tap into as no other dealer has ever tried to before, figuring they thought South Americans of any variety were too “dirty” to deal with. And yet, just as Griselda knew how to tap into people’s emotions so as to “relate” to them and then lure them onto her side as a loyal subject, she also knew how to tap into her vision for unique business purposes that “the men” in the industry simply didn’t have the intuition or imagination to execute. 

    By giving rich white folks the “little thrill” of cocaine as funneled to them by their tennis coaches and yoga instructors, they could feel far removed enough from the ickiness of the “overly ethnic” drug dealers normally employed by the cartel. And, talking of the cartel, it is the Ochoas that Griselda brings to their knees in order to gain full control of Miami, forcing a key overlord in the Medellín cartel, Fabio Ochoa (Christian Gnecco-Quintero), to take a meeting with her after drying the city out of all cocaine by using the Marielitos as her footmen to steal the Ochoas’ drugs from their drop points. When Fabio finally meets with her, he admits, “We’ve all been impressed by what you’ve done here. No easy task to tame these American shithole cities. So many egos, so many guns…” And yet, there Griselda was, a woman managing to carve her place in the upper echelons of the business. (Plus, Blanco is an appropriate last name for someone trafficking cocaine, as she put the “white” in white powder.) 

    Her “enterprising” spirit and “whatever it takes” attitude are, needless to say, the stuff that American capitalist dreams are made of. As Vergara said of Griselda, “She had nothing, no education or tools to survive.” Only her wits, will and balls of steel. That usually leads to the sort of rags to riches potential American capitalism gets off on. That is, when the person in question is not “immigrant trash” like Griselda. But then, nothing is trashier than America itself…as Griselda points out in these shade-drenched moments of dialogue.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • “Passive” Living Has A Price (And It’s Called White Guilt): The Curse

    “Passive” Living Has A Price (And It’s Called White Guilt): The Curse

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    Consistently talked about as the weirdest, most unclassifiable thing that has ever aired on television (obviously, those who say that have never seen Twin Peaks), The Curse’s series finale left viewers feeling more unsettled than ever. And, to be sure, it was probably one of the strangest, most unpredictable conclusions of a TV show in the medium’s history. But that’s what one should have expected from the likes of Benny Safdie (whose brother, Josh, acted as one of the co-producers). And yes, one supposes, “oddball” Nathan Fielder. An “actor” whose inherently annoying personality translates easily to the role of Asher Siegel, the playing-second-fiddle husband of Whitney Siegel (Emma Stone). Formerly Whitney Rhodes, her maiden name before she likely married Asher to free herself of it, thereby freeing herself of ties to her parents, Elizabeth (Constance Shulman) and Paul (Corbin Bernsen), who are notorious throughout Santa Fe for being slumlords. 

    As Whitney has been trying to cultivate a “different” kind of real estate brand (while still using her parents’ blood money to do so), Asher has been her devoted minion in helping her achieve that goal. Even if she doesn’t seem to fully realize he’s guilty of having skeletons in his own faux-noble closet. In fact, it doesn’t take a psychologist to comprehend that Whitney has sought out her parents in Asher’s form. Especially, as we learn during the first episode, “Land of Enchantment,” in terms of Asher’s micropenis. A trait that her father also shares with him—and has no problem discussing with Asher when the couple comes over to visit. While pissing on his tomato plants to “nurture” the soil, he tells Asher, “Break the illusion in your mind. ‘Hey, I’m the guy with the small dick.’ I tell all my friends. They know.” Paul then adds, “Be the clown. It’s the most liberating thing in the world.” This little piece of advice foreshadows how Asher will soon be referred to as the “jester” to Whitney’s “queen.” Green queen, that is. A term Whitney comes up with as the name for the show in lieu of the mouthful that is Fliplanthropy. 

    The show’s producer, Dougie Schecter (Safdie), is all for the name change, assuring her that HGTV will love it. One of the final cuts of an episode he plays for Whitney, however, is not something they’re likely to “love.” Mainly because of how utterly banal and lacking in “tension” it is. Whitney, prepared to do whatever is necessary to ensure her show is a hit, decides to take Dougie’s advice and give voiceovers to certain “subtle” moments she shares with Asher that play up the reasons behind her vexed expressions. After all, as Dougie points out in episode six, “The Fire Burns On,” “Look, what we have here is a frictionless show. There’s no conflict, there’s no drama. And that’s not something people want to watch. And I get that you’re trying to kind of put this town out there, put it on the map and you can’t talk about any of the racial tensions, or the crime, stuff like that. So what’s left? You and Asher.” But there won’t be anything left of them if Dougie has his way about amplifying the drama and getting Whitney to commit to it. Which of course she does—because there’s nothing she wouldn’t do to ensure the “reality” show is a success. That word, “reality,” being, needless to say, a total fabrication that’s manipulated for the very specific purpose of “audience entertainment.” Because, as Dougie said, no one really wants to see unbridled reality. It’s, quite simply, too dull. And all a viewer ultimately wants out of any show, no matter the genre, is to be taken out of their own lives for a while. 

    This has become more and more the case as the TV-guzzling masses seek to distract themselves from the horrors splashed all over the news like pure entertainment itself. But for those who would rather see chaos that has more of a “narrative”—while also seeking to believe they can learn something about “helping the planet”—a series like Green Queen could certainly deliver on that dual level. Or so Dougie and Whitney want it to. Asher, on the other hand, is just a stooge who would like to believe he has any idea what’s going on. In the end, though, it’s apparent that he was always just a worker bee carrying out orders for his hive queen. Not green queen. And, talking of that color, it does apply to the general green-with-envy aura that both Asher and Whitney have (though more the former than the latter). They’re so concerned with their perception, after all, that it’s easy for them to become jealous of anyone who is perceived as more genuine (and actually is) than they are. The way local Native American artist Cara Durand (Nizhonniya Luxi Austin) is—not just for her art, but her entire “aura.” This is precisely why Whitney and Asher glom onto her like leeches as they parade her artwork in their passive home. As though owning one of her pieces makes them as “brilliant” by proxy.

    Throughout The Curse, Whitney and Asher do their best to convince the rest of the town (and, hopefully, the rest of America) that they are as beneficent as someone like Cara. Though, naturally, a show like The Curse presents the more recurrent dilemma regarding white people of late: can any white person really be “good” no matter how hard they try if their inherent privilege is at the root of most of the world’s suffering since the beginning of civilization? What’s more, is there really any “goodness” at all in a person when their motives are always grounded in self-aggrandizement. As Joey Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc) on Friends (the whitest show you know) put it, “Look, there’s no unselfish good deeds, sorry.” Because the vast majority of them serve, in some way, to make the “do-gooder” feel better about themselves. To boost that person’s own ego. 

    With the white ego being rattled more and more every day (resulting in the current neo-Nazi political response), there’s been an according uptick in over-the-top displays of “concern” and “allyship.” For the last thing most white people (save for the MAGA ilk) want to be accused of is villainy. And what’s the easiest way for a blanco to boost their “goodness” cachet? The eco-friendly trend. Which is, in fact, a trend rather than a genuine way of life that anyone wants to endure long-term. But so long as Whitney and Asher can cursorily (no “curse” allusion intended) parade how great they are for making “real change” in the community and, therefore, the world, they don’t have to feel too guilty when they do totally hypocritical things like put an air conditioner in the passive house (that’s supposed to naturally moderate its temperature “like a thermos”) they live in. 

    As the couple goes about the process of filming their episodes centered on selling Whitney’s “passive” (and cartoonishly mirrored) homes in the little-known (though not anymore) ​​Española, a dark and ominous pall seems to be cast over everything. Or so Asher tells himself after being “cursed” by a little girl in a parking lot named Nala (Hikmah Warsame). At Dougie’s urging, Asher approaches her to buy one of the cans of soda she’s selling so Dougie can film him doing “good person” shit. Alas, Asher makes the mistake of handing her a hundred-dollar bill solely for the shot, then telling her he needs it back. Something to the effect of this exact scenario is what inspired the idea for The Curse in the first place, with Fielder recounting to IndieWire how “on a routine trip to pick up a new cell phone, [he] was stopped by a woman asking for spare change. He didn’t have any, told her as much and she responded by looking him straight in the eye and saying, ‘I curse you.’” Almost an exact replica of what goes on between Asher and Nala (minus the can of soda). And, just as it is in The Curse, in real life, “Fielder went on his way, but couldn’t stop thinking about the stranger’s sharp words. So he went to an ATM, got twenty dollars and handed it to her. Just like that, she lifted the curse. When Safdie heard the story, he asked Fielder, ‘What would’ve happened if you went back there and she wasn’t there? Then your whole life would be ruined because the curse would just be on you. It would be something that you had to think about forever, and you’d never know for sure whether or not something happened to you because of that or not.’” With both men so openly giving such credence to the woman’s words, well, talk about giving more people a reason to say “I curse you” as a means to extract money. 

    Yet Fielder insisted, “I don’t believe in that stuff, but I can’t get those things out of my head. Sometimes if someone says something to you, even conversationally, where you feel like you messed up something, it can linger in your mind and grow and consume you. Then we just started riffing on that idea, like, ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting if that vibe was hanging over an entire show?’” And there is a large element of The Curse that promotes the idea that if you put thoughts or intentions out into the world, they can have an eerie tendency to, ugh, manifest. That overly-used-by-white-people word. Particularly white people in L.A. But were it not for L.A. and its Lynchian vibe, it can be argued that Fielder and Safdie might never have created The Curse. For it began with Fielder riffing on “trying to encapsulate odd experiences I had since I moved here. L.A. sometimes feels like… there’s something off” (Mulholland Drive anyone?). 

    New Mexico stands in for that “off” feeling easily enough. Though one can imagine the passive living houses Whitney is trying to shill doing quite well on the real estate market in L.A. Where Whitney might also have been tied to her slumlord parents in one way or another. Though she is initially convinced, “There is nothing on Google that ties me to them,” she later demands of her father, “Why does the city keep calling me and telling me my phone number is associated with units in the Bookends?” Worse still, if she Googles “Whitney Rhodes,” there’s a picture of her standing next to her parents at a “ribbon cutting” for the Bookends Apartments. A detail that proves just how much harder is to live in denial about one’s self and one’s “goodness” in the modern age, where the internet never lets anyone forget all of the shady things they might have done in the past. In other words, to quote Dougie berating Asher, “Doesn’t this get exhausting? Cosplaying as a good man?”

    The answer, for white people, is: never. What’s more, the sardonic irony of a phrase like “passive living” applies precisely to how most white people live/engage with the world. Nevertheless, we are all (regardless of color) living pretty goddamn passively as we watch the present destruction unfold around us. Because, in truth, none of us knows how to stop it. Or, more to the point, none of us knows how to truly and profoundly disengage with the behavior that capitalism has furnished and indoctrinated humanity with for centuries. To that point, The Curse is as scathing about faux beneficence as it is about the oxymoron that is “sustainable capitalism.” 

    As for whether or not Asher’s eventual fate at the end of the final episode was really a result of Nala’s “curse” or a phenomenon grounded in the “science” of the passive house causing a reverse polarity of gravity in Asher (episode two was, funnily enough, titled “Pressure’s Looking Good So Far”), that depends on the viewer’s interpretation. Though it’s pretty clear that Asher no longer gave weight (again, no pun intended) to the “curse” theory. A “theory,” quite honestly, that is peak white privilege in and of itself. Think about it: how white is it to assume a curse has really been put on you just because a few things don’t go your way (e.g., not getting any chicken in your chicken penne order)? Perhaps this is why Asher can at last admit to Whitney in the penultimate episode, “Young Hearts,” “I’m a terrible person, don’t you see? There’s not some curse. I am the problem.” Ah, that Swiftian admission. The one that white people, more and more, love to declare because, so long as you acknowledge what you are, you don’t actually have to do anything to change it. 

    Asher, however, vows to Whitney that he’s a changed man at the end of “Young Hearts,” assuring, “If you didn’t wanna be with me, and I actually truly felt that, I’d be gone. You wouldn’t have to say it. I would feel it and I would disappear.” To many, that seems like the obvious foreshadowing to what becomes of him in the finale. But there was foreshadowing long before that at the end of episode five, “It’s A Good Day,” when Asher and Whitney are shown going to bed together only for the scene to later reveal that Asher is no longer sleeping next to her. Could it be that he had already floated up toward the ceiling that night—and many other nights before? Calling her his “angel” as she falls asleep, maybe the truth is that Asher amounts to her angel. By coming across as more devilish than she does (thanks to the privilege of white womanhood). This allows her to more fully believe and invest in her delusions about herself as the real do-gooder of the operation despite knowing, fundamentally, that she’s probably even more narcissistic than Asher. A narcissism that has evolved and grown stronger as a “chromosome” in los blancos over many centuries of enjoyed hegemony.

    Thus, Safdie and Fielder challenge us to ask: is “the curse,” at its core, simply karma catching up to white people after centuries of employing various forms of subjugation and colonialism? After all, it’s not anything new to say that gentrification is the new colonialism. What is new, however, is the idea that the Earth might actually finally be having a visceral reaction to white people’s bullshit and therefore forcibly ejecting them from its atmosphere. Which, in all honesty, means Whitney might be next if there ever happens to be a season two.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Let's Check In On Communism: Cuba Raising Gas Price To $20 A Gallon

    Let's Check In On Communism: Cuba Raising Gas Price To $20 A Gallon

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    We have far-left Democratic politicians who want to bring full blown socialism to the United States. They’re not ashamed of it, some of them even refer to themselves as socialists.

    They say capitalism is bad. They say free markets are wrong.

    Is $20 a gallon for gas wrong? Because that’s the state of communism in one of the world’s last bastions of the defeated ideology.

    RELATED: ‘I Have No Words’: MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinki Beside Herself Over Poll Showing Key Voter Bloc Moving To Trump

    In the communist country of Cuba, the regime is going to deliberately raise the price of gasoline to astronomical heights.

    Jalopnik reports, “The Cuban government has announced that it will be raising the country’s fuel prices by over 500 percent in February. Pump prices will spike from 25 Cuban pesos to 132 pesos per liter, according to the BBC.”

    The story continues:

    To use figures more relatable for us Americans, the prices are jumping from $3.94 per gallon to $20.86. The sharp increase paired with the opening of 29 gas stations that will exclusively accept U.S. dollars serve as a government attempt to bolster the country’s struggling economy.

    It’s not a complete surprise that Cuba’s communist government is opening dollar-only gas stations. The U.S. dollar is the most widely used currency in international trade, and Cuba’s foreign currency reserve is heavily depleted. The government is hoping to use revenue from these new stations to purchase fuel on the international market.

    This is what communism gets you. This is what socialism gets you. Even during the worst days of Bidenflation, our nominally mixed-market economy held gas to (for the most part) less than $5 per gallon.

    And that was crushing for middle-class Americans. $20 gas would grind our entire country to a halt.

    RELATED: Elon Musk: Biden ‘Actively Facilitating’ Illegal Immigration As Caravan Of 15,000 Illegal Immigrants Reportedly Heads To The U.S.

    There’s a Reason Cubans Flee for America

    The radical leftist idea that we should somehow replicate this kind of socialism in the U.S. is something the overwhelming majority of Americans would never stand for in practice.

    Cubans have regularly tried to illegally enter America on rafts in shark-infested waters for a reason.

    No one in America is trying to do the same to get into Cuba.

    There’s a reason for that.

    Hunter Biden Flees Committee Hearing After Nancy Mace Tells Him To His Face ‘You Have No Balls’ and Should Be ‘Arrested Right Here And Right Now’

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    is a professional writer and editor with over 15 years of experience in conservative media and Republican politics. He has been a special guest on Fox News, Sirius XM, appeared as the guest of various popular personalities, and has had a lifelong interest in right-leaning politics.

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    John Hanson

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  • Thanksgiving: The Kickoff of Greed Season, Or: Eli Roth Gives America a Bitter Reflection of Itself in Ultimate Holiday Horror Movie

    Thanksgiving: The Kickoff of Greed Season, Or: Eli Roth Gives America a Bitter Reflection of Itself in Ultimate Holiday Horror Movie

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    In 2021, a horror-comedy called Black Friday was released to little fanfare. For, while its premise was solid, its execution was decidedly wobbly. When Eli Roth created the fake trailer for a slasher movie called Thanksgiving to be included in Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse double feature, released in 2007, perhaps he couldn’t have known that Black Friday would set the stage for the entire premise of the real movie. One that he realized, after seeing how well-received the fake trailer was, needed to be fleshed out and developed. For those few who might have had high hopes for the Devon Sawa-starring Black Friday, Thanksgiving does exactly what it couldn’t manage: makes a commentary on humanity’s capitalistic grotesqueries cresting at the outset of the lump of end-of-year holidays that begins with Thanksgiving (and, to confirm, the American tradition of post-Thanksgiving hyper-consumerism has spread throughout the world ever since the Cold War ended and the statement, “We all live in America now” took hold once capitalism “won” and communism “lost”). 

    Although Christmas is usually the holiday to get the most attention/play (ergo, an entire film genre centered around it that simply doesn’t exist for Thanksgiving), it is with the phenomenon of Black Friday—its own kind of American holiday—that the “season of giving” truly commences. Even as it ultimately means taking from everyone by plundering Mother Earth of its valuable and increasingly precious resources. And yes, it just so happens that Black Friday has become synonymous with Thanksgiving as the corporate overlords have seen fit to keep their stores open on Thursday night for those feeling ambitious enough after stuffing their faces and entering a tryptophan coma to buy some useless shit to give to their loved ones at Christmas. 

    Roth saw the empty space where Thanksgiving movies ought to be, lamenting that, after Halloween, it’s all family-oriented Christmas movies that get shoved down your throat. As a year-round horror fan, Roth couldn’t abide seeing this obvious lack in the holiday movie genre, especially with Thanksgiving being the emotionally tense, rife-with-carving-knives day that it is. To Roth, the real question was: how could someone not have seen how perfect it was for a horror movie premise until he came along? 

    In fact, long before the fake trailer he directed for Grindhouse, the blueprint for the movie was already there. Having grown up in Newton, Massachusetts, just forty-five minutes away from Plymouth, so-called birthplace of Thanksgiving and the location where Roth, naturally, chooses to set his stage (or table, if you prefer), the director was subjected to his fair share of Thanksgiving enthusiasm. So influenced by the holiday was Roth that, at thirteen, he and his friend, Jeff Rendell (the screenwriter of Thanksgiving), would try to come up with the best Thanksgiving-themed kills (some of which would show up in the eventual movie). In interviews about Thanksgiving, Roth stated things like, “[Thanksgiving] was the only major holiday without a killer” and “Growing up, I dreamed of writing a slasher movie like Scream or Halloween” (to be sure, Plymouth has the distinct feel of “small-town America” in the vein of the fictional Woodsboro or Haddonfield). Filling the void for that type of masked killer to suit Thanksgiving specifically was the role Roth was born for. And part of the reason it took him so long to finish Thanksgiving is because he wanted it to live up to the trailer that was so beloved. After all, it’s a lot of pressure to write a movie that was largely intended as a two-minute lark (on that note, Tarantino and Rodriguez do get a special thank you in the credits for allowing Grindhouse to serve as the launching pad for Thanksgiving). But, in his heart, Roth always carried the story of Thanksgiving. With key pieces and phrases from the trailer also materializing in the film (though sadly, “This holiday season, prepare to have the stuffing scared out of you” doesn’t enter the equation). This includes the punny catchphrase, “This year, there will be no leftovers.” And also, “The table is set.” A part of the voiceover in the trailer that reanimates as an Instagram caption warning the killer’s victims that they’ll be sitting at that table, dead or alive, soon enough. 

    As the voiceover of the fake trailer explains, “In the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, the fourth Thursday of November is the most celebrated day of the year.” So celebrated, it seems, that the town even has special masks modeled after famed pilgrim and former governor of Plymouth Colony, John Carver. Needless to say, Roth was delighted to learn that Rendell had unearthed such a serial killer-y name in his research of Plymouth. How could they not take such a gift from the historical gods and use it to their advantage? Especially since no one gets more ardent about Thanksgiving as an “American institution” than Plymouth, where the “first” Thanksgiving took place among English colonists and the Wampanoag tribe. Or rather, that’s the “first” Thanksgiving that Sarah Josepha Hale chose to center the holiday around when advocating for it to become a national one. Unfortunately, there are no Hale masks to complement a John Carver one—that would perhaps be too “busy.” Because if classic slashers like the aforementioned Halloween and Scream have taught us anything, it’s that only one mask can serve as the iconography for a truly memorable horror movie. To that end, there are few things more horrific in America than insatiable consumerism. 

    However, as much as Thanksgiving is a story about the havoc gross consumerism causes, it’s also a story about the rage invoked among the hoi polloi when they see the flagrant privilege of others. For it’s not only bad enough to have privilege, but it’s even worse to flaunt it in front of the rabble. Which is exactly what Jessica Wright’s (Nell Verlaque) friends, Evan (Tomaso Sanelli), Gabby (Addison Rae), Scuba (Gabriel Davenport) and Yulia (Jenna Warren), do when they decide to go on a (not so) “stealth mission” to get Evan a new phone from RightMart, the store Jessica father, Thomas (Rick Hoffman), owns. Because it’s the type of uniquely American “one-stop shop” where you can buy, apparently, lipstick, a phone and a waffle iron. Indeed, the security guard tries to placate the evermore ravenous crowd by shouting, “The store opens in ten minutes, you’ll get your waffle iron!” And it’s true, the first one hundred customers to enter the store are promised a free waffle iron. The kind of promotion that corporate management never seems to understand will backfire spectacularly. 

    Thomas, the “big man in charge,” certainly doesn’t seem to, explaining to his family, “You know, we always do the, uh, midnight Black Friday, but people were showing up at six p.m. anyway, so…” When he’s complimented for his business acumen, Thomas insists, “Yeah well credit my beautiful finacée over there, it was her idea.” The “beautiful fiancée” in question is Kathleen (Karen Cliche…quite a name, by the way), the Meredith Blake-esque figure in Jessica’s life. And, from the moment we see their first exchange together, it’s clear they have a contentious rapport, with Kathleen criticizing Jessica’s sartorial choice and Jessica reminding her that she’s in her own house. “Don’t you mean ‘our house’ now?” Kathleen ripostes. But no, Jessica does not mean that, and it makes Kathleen’s fate all the more apropos (particularly as she was also the credited “brainchild” for opening the store on Thanksgiving instead of waiting until actual Black Friday. But, as RightMart employee Mitch Collins [Ty Olsson] puts it, “Let’s face it, Black Friday starts on a Thursday now. Even in Plymouth.”). Kathleen’s fate, as a matter of fact, was one foretold in the fake trailer from Grindhouse. Along with the shudder-inducing memory of the trampoline scene that also reappears in Thanksgiving. So, too, does a bloody parade scene—this one, of course, being much more polished. 

    It is during the Thanksgiving Parade that one might be the most convinced they know who the killer is. And throughout the tale, Roth and Rendell do manage to keep viewers guessing about who “John Carver” might be, just as it is the case in Scream with Ghostface. Though, the specific motive behind it isn’t as exciting as the general reason for why “John Carver” would go to all this trouble to, let’s say, set such an elaborate table. For when he finally gathers them all together, he explains why he only left this sect of his targets alive, shaming, “It wasn’t enough to get in the store early. You had to taunt everyone outside to show them how special you were.” Now, he plans to show the rest of the world just how special they truly are by livestreaming their murders (something about that smacking of Spree starring Joe Keery). Thus, insisting, “Every year, people will watch this video and think of your greed, and the people who died from it.” Of course, that’s a fitting “double meaning” kind of statement for a holiday that still largely ignores the greed of the colonizers who pillaged Native Americans’ land and killed them for it. All neatly repositioned and marketed as a day of coming together and forgetting about “differences” (caused by the bloodlusting avarice of “mild-mannered” pilgrims). 

    What the killer seems to underestimate is the collective short-term memory of the masses, which will soon allow them to go back to their regularly-scheduled, violent Black Friday competing next year (for online shopping hasn’t eradicated the physical contact sport that this “holiday” continues to invoke). Thus, his revenge, served too hot, as it were, proves to be rather unsatisfying for him on multiple levels by Thanksgiving’s conclusion. Because, once Gordon Gekko verbalized what Americans had been thinking all along—“Greed is good”—there was never going to be any unteaching of that message.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Past, Present, and Future: Lessons from A Christmas Carol

    Past, Present, and Future: Lessons from A Christmas Carol

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    From ‘Bah, humbug!’ to redemption: Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ unfolds as more than just a festive fable, offering profound insights into self-discovery, kindness, and rewriting one’s life story.

    Charles Dickens’ timeless classic, “A Christmas Carol,” isn’t just a heartwarming tale of holiday spirit; it’s a profound exploration of human psychology and the power of personal transformation.

    Many of us have heard the story before through countless movie and TV adaptations, especially the infamous Scrooge, whose name has now become a common insult toward those who fight against the holiday spirit of joy, kindness, and charity.

    If you’re interested, you can read the original 1843 novella A Christmas Carol for free at Project Gutenberg. There are also many free audiobooks you can find and listen to.

    The story opens the day before Christmas with Ebenezer Scrooge at work, a strict businessman who is described as miserable, lonely, and greedy, without any close friends or companions. His nephew visits, wishes him a cheerily “Merry Christmas!” and invites him to spend dinner with his family, but Scrooge rudely brushes off the kind gesture and responds with his trademark phrase “Bah humbug!”

    Scrooge’s cynical and negative attitude is on full display in the opening chapter. “He carried his own low temperature always about with him.” In one instance where he is asked to donate money to help the poor, the wealthy Scrooge asks, “Aren’t there prisons? Aren’t there workhouses?” and then complains about the “surplus population.”

    It’s clear that Scrooge’s only concerns and core values in life are money and wealth. If it doesn’t help his profits or bottom line then he doesn’t care about it, especially the well-being of others which he claims is “none of his business.”

    The archetype of Scrooge is more relevant today than ever, especially in our corporatized world where rich elites isolate themselves from the rest of society while income inequality, crime, and economic woes continue to rise for the average person. Dickens observed early signs of increased materialism, narcissism, and greed almost two hundred years ago, but these unhealthy instincts have only grown rapidly since then. Social media has particularly warped people’s perceptions of wealth, status, and fame, which has in turn blinded us to many other important values in life.

    In many cases people like Scrooge live lonely and miserable lives until they die, clinging to their money as they are lowered into their graves. However the story of “A Christmas Carol” provides hope and inspiration that people can change their paths in life if they are given the necessary insight and wisdom.

    As the well-known tale goes, Scrooge is haunted by 3 benevolent spirits on consecutive nights (The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future), each teaching him an essential lesson on what really matters in life.

    This breakdown of past, present, and future creates a complete picture of one’s life. It’s a powerful framework to spark self-growth in any person. Once we reevaluate where we’ve been, where we are, and where we want to go, we have a much clearer idea on what the right path forward is.

    Keep in mind you don’t need to be religious to reap the benefits of this story. Its lessons are universal. While there are supernatural and spiritual elements, the wisdom is real and tangible.

    Introduction: The Ghost of Marley

    Before Scrooge is visited by the three spirits, he encounters the ghost of his former business partner Marley who had died seven years ago.

    The ghost of Marley is shown to be in a type of purgatory, aimlessly roaming the town, entangled in many heavy chains with cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses made out of steel, representing a lifetime of greed and selfishness:

      “I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?”

      “Or would you know,” pursued the Ghost, “the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!”

    The ghost lets Scrooge know that his actions have far-reaching consequences too. He will suffer a similar fate if he doesn’t change his ways, but there’s still hope for redemption! He then leaves, announcing to Scrooge that he will soon be visited by three spirits that will guide him to a better path.

    Marley’s ghost serves as a warning, but also a sign of hope.

    The Ghosts of the Past: Forgiving Your Former Self

    Scrooge’s first encounter is with the “Ghost of Christmas Past,” who serves as a poignant reminder that we must confront our history to understand our present.

    The Ghost of Christmas Past transports Scrooge through various memories he had as a child and young adult, showing his psychological development over time.

    The first scene brings Scrooge back to his childhood town, where he is immediately rushed with feelings of nostalgia, cheerfulness, and joy. These positive memories depict a very different Scrooge from present, revealing his once optimistic and hopeful disposition. What happened to him since?

    The memories begin to grow darker. Multiple scenes show Scrooge spending Christmas alone as a young child, one time being left by himself at boarding school while his friends were celebrating the holidays with family, and another time sitting solitarily by the fire reading. Scrooge begins to shed tears and show sympathy toward his former, abandoned self.

    One of the most pivotal memories is when young adult Scrooge is speaking with his past lover. She notices a fundamental change in him that has become a dealbreaker in their relationship.

      “You fear the world too much,” she answered, gently…”I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one-by-one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you…”

    She sees that money has become Scrooge’s God which he puts above all other values, including love. The young woman continues…

      “Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man.”

    Here we begin to see Scrooge’s hardening into the man he is in the present.

    His pursuit of wealth as his main source of comfort and satisfaction has damaged his relationship beyond repair. The lover sees no other option but for them to go their separate ways. The memory deeply pains Scrooge and he cries out for the ghost to show him no more.

    In truth we are all a product of our past, including our environment and the choices we make in life. Scrooge has clearly gone through hardships and taken wrong turns that have influenced where he finds himself today; but it’s not too late.

    The Ghost of Christmas Past forced Scrooge to remember events that he had long forgotten, neglected, or ignored because they were too painful to think about. While these old memories cannot be altered, you have to accept your past, be honest with yourself, and forgive yourself if you want to learn, grow, and change for the better.

    One of the main lessons here is that you need to take responsibility for the past before you can take power over the future. Scrooge is suffering, but he’s learning.

    Making the Most of the Present: Opportunities for Joy and Kindness

    Scrooge’s next encounter is with the “Ghost of Christmas Present,” who teaches Scrooge all the opportunities for good that cross his path every single day.

    The spirit is colorfully dressed with holly, mistletoe, berries, turkeys, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and punch surrounding him, a representation of the simple pleasures in life we can all learn to appreciate, savor, and be grateful for.

    First, the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge for a walk outside in the town during Christmas Day, observing all the happiness, zest, and cheer overflowing through the streets. Everyone from all backgrounds is enjoying the festivities.

    When two people bump into each other and start a small fight, the ghost sprinkles a magical substance on them which instantly ends the argument and brings both back to a more joyful demeanor.

      “Once or twice when there were angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few drops of water on them, and their good humour was restored directly. For they said, it was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was! God love it, so it was!”

    On Christmas, all fights are optional.

    The ghost then leads Scrooge to the home of Bob Cratchit, his current employee who he often treats poorly. Here Scrooge is introduced to Bob’s sick and disabled son Tiny Tim, who despite his illness is still excited to spend holiday time with the family. The poor family makes the most of the limited food and time they have together, including a fake “goose” dinner made out of apple sauce and mashed potatoes.

    Scrooge looks on in sympathy and wishes he could do more to help them. He asks the spirit about the current state of Tiny Tim’s health:

      “Spirit,” said Scrooge, with an interest he never felt before, “tell me if Tiny Tim will live.”

      “I see a vacant seat,” replied the Ghost, “in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.”

    In another scene, Scrooge is transported to the home of his sister’s family, the same party his nephew invited him to the previous day. Everyone in the household is enjoying the Christmas holiday while singing, dancing, and playing games. Several times Scrooge is brought up in conversation and everyone can only laugh and shrug at Scrooge’s relentless misery and gloom.

      “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “He wouldn’t take it from me, but may he have it nonetheless. Uncle Scrooge!”

    Scrooge knows that these events and perceptions by others are part of his own doing.

    At every turn, Scrooge denies taking advantage of daily opportunities for happiness, including rejecting a group of children singing carols, responding rudely to acquaintances (“Bah humbug!”), and refusing to give to charities or help others when it’s fully in his power.

    These events are small, but they build up over time. Whenever Scrooge is given a choice between kindness vs. coldness, he chooses to be cold. After enough tiny social interactions, Scrooge has cemented his reputation around town as being the miserable miser.

    Can he still change it?

    The Shadows of the Future: Shaping Tomorrow Today

    The final spirit Scrooge meets is the “Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come” or the “Ghost of Christmas Future.” This ghost blends in with the darkness of the night, wearing a long black robe that covers their entire face and body, except for a boney hand it uses to silently point.

    The ghost begins by showing men on the streets joking and laughing about someone who has just passed away. At a pawn shop, robbers are selling stolen property they recently seized from the dead man’s estate, saying it’s for the best since the items will no longer serve any use to him. Scrooge, perplexed by the meaning of these scenes, intently watches on. Another man jokes:

      “It’s likely to be a very cheap funeral, for upon my life I don’t know of anybody to go to it.”

    Scene by scene, people show ambivalence toward the death. Scrooge grows frustrated and asks:

      “If there is any person in the town who feels emotion caused by this man’s death, show that person to me. Spirit, I beseech you!”

    Now they see a family that was in debt to the dead man, and they are feeling humble gratitude and quiet glee that they no longer have to worry themselves about such an evil creditor:

      “Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter. The children’s faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what they so little understood, were brighter; and it was a happier house for this man’s death! The only emotion that the Ghost could show him, caused by the event, was one of pleasure.”

    Already having suspicions on who this man is, Scrooge begs the ghost to finally reveal where his future lies. The ghost travels to a graveyard and points at a tombstone that upon inspection reads: Ebenezer Scrooge

    Scrooge’s heart sinks. Next it’s shown that Tiny Tim hasn’t recovered from his illness and has also passed away, and at such a young age. Feeling completely hopeless at this point, Scrooge desperately begs:

      “Answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?”

      “Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!”

    As long as you’re alive and breathing, you have the power to change.

    When we think about death, it puts everything about life into perspective. Our time is finite in this world and we must make the most of it without being distracted by trivialities and lesser values. If you were laying on your deathbed right now, what would your main regrets be?

    When Scrooge reflects on his own death and what influence he’d leave on the world, it shakes him at his core – but also transforms him.

    The Power of Redemption: Transforming Scrooge’s Tale into Our Own

    After the visitations of the three ghosts, Scrooge wakes up a changed man ready to start his new life. He rises from bed excited, hopeful, and giddy that he’s still alive and still has a chance to change his current course.

    Upon finding out it’s still Christmas Day, he buys a prize turkey to send to the Cratchit family and begins giving generous amounts of money to children and the poor. He continues to walk around the town square, giving everyone warm greetings and a hearty “Merry Christmas!”

    When he sees Bob Cratchit the next day at work, he immediately gives him a raise in salary and promises to take care of Tiny Tim and assist the family in anyway possible. He becomes a lifelong friend to the family.

    This sudden change in Scrooge’s behavior confused the townsfolk at first, including many who made fun of this rapid transformation that was so uncharacteristic of Scrooge. But these words and gossip didn’t bother him:

      “Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter[…] His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.”

    At its core, “A Christmas Carol” is a story of redemption and heroism. Scrooge’s journey from miserly recluse to benevolent samaritan exemplifies the human capacity for change.

    By reflecting on his past, present, and future self, Scrooge discovered the best path forward – a process that applies to all forms of self-improvement.

    This story has insightful lessons that can apply to anyone’s life, no matter what situation they find themselves in. We can’t change the past chapters, but we can change how our story ends.

    Never forget you have the power to rewrite your life story at any time.


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    Steven Handel

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  • Cry For Argentina (Among Other Countries)

    Cry For Argentina (Among Other Countries)

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    As the world continues to turn evermore in an extreme right-leaning direction, it can be no real surprise (especially not to the highly jaded ones) that Argentina’s latest president is none other than Javier Milei a.k.a. “El Loco.” And yes, he seems to be someone who acts the way Donald Trump truly wanted to while still kind of “holding back” (believe it or not). Because, at the bare minimum, at least Trump never dressed up in a superhero costume reminiscent of Nacho Libre while calling this alter ego “General Ancap.” Though he probably wanted to do something similar (with his rightful alter ego name being something like General Shithead or General Cheeto). Indeed, Trump’s “congratulations” for Milei appear as much a sign of his own hope for more dystopia during the 2024 election as they do “genuine happiness” over the fact that unhinged men keep fortifying patriarchy’s hold over the political arena, ergo what goes on in the world. 

    With his own demagoguery, Milei rose to political prominence in much the same way that Trump did: through a lot of publicly-displayed buffoonery. Specifically, he was an economic (therefore, political) pundit that made numerous TV appearances, sometimes in the guise of the aforementioned alter ego. Usually, so that he might sing about Argentina’s economic crisis in that getup. His career as an “economist” for various privately-funded companies, including Corporación América, as well as a think tank called Fundación Acordar, only added to the insulated reverence he kept building over the years. Having his own radio show, Demoliendo mitos (a.k.a. Demolishing Myths—ha! As if!) didn’t hurt his steady building of a following either. One that, like the Americans who gravitated toward Trump, simply wanted to see a radical change—any radical change—in their government. One that, in Argentina, has been dominated by Peronism since the time of Perón.

    In fact, Milei’s victory over erstwhile current president Sergio Massa marks the first time since the country returned to a “democracy” (back in 1983) that such a dominant far-right presence has managed to take hold of the government. Because, as is often the case, the right tends to triumph in elections when the left is blamed for economic crises and the correlative rising poverty and crime rates. Both of which Argentina is suffering from big time, what with the poverty rate hovering at over forty percent. Milei, a self-declared libertarian, clearly saw this as an opportunity to swoop in and act as that “superhero” he mimicked on TV. The kind who wields chainsaws in public while on the campaign trail to indicate his “seriousness” about wanting to make “dramatic cuts” in order to “stabilize” the economy and curb the out-of-control inflation problem that has been plaguing the country. 

    As Milei put it, “There is no room for gradualism. There is no room for half measures.” The Netherlands’ latest far-right leader, Geert Wilders, would likely agree. Wilders even wears a red tie, a signature of Donald Trump (apart from the red, shudder-inducing “Make America Great Again” hat). As leader of the ironically-titled Party For Freedom, much of Wilders hardline politics is rooted in “nativist,” anti-immigration views—with an especial emphasis on being distinctly anti-Islam (his vocal sentiments have, indeed, made him a target for many Islamic extremist death threats). While his economic policies are less in the spotlight than Milei’s, Dutch philosopher Rob Riemen might as well be talking about both men when, in 2010, he cited Wilders and his party as “the prototype of contemporary fascism” in that he has finagled “the politicization of the resentment of the man in the crowd” (this description also easily applying to Trump’s political rise as a demagogue). 

    Throughout the globe, this alarming turn of phrase has continued to gain traction in terms of the far-right gradually “collecting” power and entering increasingly into mainstream government after lying in wait to pounce on the “right moment” (no pun intended) via taking advantage of public dissatisfaction with things that ultimately have nothing to do with conservative “soapbox solutions.” In Europe especially, the far-right continues to gain control of governments at the highest level. This includes Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Petteri Orpo in Finland and Viktor Orbán in Hungary. Another alarming “tidbit” of late is that if French presidential elections were held today, polling wisdom suggests far-right extremist Marine Le Pen (who has already run for the role of French president three times) would finally win. 

    All across the world, not just in Europe and South America (see also: ​​the recent power held by Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Chile’s José Antonio Kast), a fascist, far-right darkness is taking hold. One spurred by the age-old idea that conservative parties are somehow “miracle workers” at resuscitating the economy (of course, the Tories in Britain are the most glaring present evidence to the contrary). Milei simply happens to be among the freshest, most overt examples of how, when people turn to the right for “fiscal salvation” (which, by the way, never actually comes), they, without fail, seem to forget, every time, about the even higher price one must pay in the sacrifice of human rights so as to achieve that so-called salvation. 

    In Argentina’s case, toppling the Peronism that has dominated the country’s politics since the time after Juan Perón’s first “presidency” (read: a presidency that employed many dictatorial tactics) is yet another sign of how extreme things have become. With voters turning to “shock politics” in a bid to seek a change that can never truly come unless the system of capitalism is dismantled entirely. And no, that does not automatically mean turning to socialism (that age-old conservative fear), but rather, a reassessment entirely of humanity’s priorities. 

    Naturally, the likelihood of that happening is nil, with Žižek’s adage, “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” automatically coming to mind amid increasingly absurd voter “preferences” relating, in the end, to how they can better secure their financial well-being instead of their emotional and spiritual one. In short, putting a more colorful Band-Aid (represented by the superhero costume-wearing politician) on a fatal wound that needs a different cure entirely. 

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Research shows that grandparents are great personal finance teachers. Here’s what my poppa who became an accountant during the Great Depression tried to teach me about money

    Research shows that grandparents are great personal finance teachers. Here’s what my poppa who became an accountant during the Great Depression tried to teach me about money

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    Poppa once took me to a deli for dinner. I was a boy of about 10. We went to the cash register to pay, only for him to find he lacked exact change.

    “I’ll owe you the nickel,” he told the cashier, who refused the offer. My grandfather fished out a dollar bill and collected 95 cents in change. “I’ll remember this,” he warned the cashier with a menacing scowl.    

    Benjamin Sheft never took anything in life for granted, least of all money. Any time we ate in a restaurant, he studied the check as if it were a sacred text. Paying cash, he peeled currency off his billfold as if stripping away a sheet of his own skin.

    As I grew up, no one tried harder to teach me about money–earning it, saving it, and losing it–than my poppa. Nor with less success.

    This year, the British financial services company Legal & General conducted a wide-ranging survey of 2,000 grandparents and 2,000 grandchildren. Among the questions it asked grandchildren was, “What are the most important life lessons your grandparents have taught you? As it turned out, almost a third of grandchildren (30%) cited grandparents for passing down “financial and money-saving advice.” 

    Similarly, Charles Schwab last year issued a guide to grandparents about teaching financial literacy to grandchildren The Role of a Grandparent | Over 50s | Legal and General.  It counseled “talking about money in everyday situations” with grandchildren and even learning to prepare a budget. “Starting these conversations at a young age,” it said, “can help ensure your grandchildren grow up to become responsible money managers.” 

    My poppa came to the United States from a village in Russia at age two in 1909, his father a tailor who barely spoke English. He married at 20 and became a father at 21, his daughter – later my mother – stricken profoundly deaf in infancy. He graduated from the City University of New York with a degree in accounting, the first member of his family to go to college.

    In his search for clients during the Great Depression, the newly minted CPA went door to door, on foot, to businesses around his neighborhood–dry cleaners, auto-repair shops, anything–offering to do the books for a pittance. 

    But by the late 1940s, in the first flush of the postwar boom, Poppa started to hit his stride. He opened an accounting firm with a partner, renting an upper-floor office right across East 42nd Street from Grand Central Terminal. There, he prepared taxes, bank records, payrolls, you name it. In my visits to the premises, I always gawked at his view of the Empire State Building.

    In the early 1950s, he moved his family from the Grand Concourse in the Bronx to a neighborhood on Manhattan’s Upper East Side suddenly swanky with the Second Avenue El recently torn down. He sent his son through New York University and Yale Law School. He bought my parents a split-level, three-bedroom house in suburban northern New Jersey and himself a Cadillac, then the standard American symbol for financial success. In due course, my grandparents joined a country club, where Poppa played golf, smoked cigars, and savored his Scotch on the rocks. They attended Broadway shows, acquired season tickets to the opera and the ballet, and vacationed in Europe and Asia.

    Even so, Poppa always believed he was chronically a day late and a dollar short. His son, my Uncle Leonard, once told me so. One day Poppa verified that claim. He told me how he and some partners once invested in a garden-apartment complex.  

    “I sold my stake in it too soon,” he admitted, his voice hoarse with regret. “I wanted to turn a fast buck.” He shook his head in shame and disbelief. “If I had held onto it longer, I would be a millionaire now.”

    You could never have enough, he seemed to be saying. Likely he never recovered, all those decades later, from the psychic wounds of the Great Depression.

    He meant to teach me about money–to count it, watch it, grow it–but I could never see money as he did. I grew up spoiled, certain that money magically materialized. The $5,000 in gifts for my bar mitzvah in 1965? I blew it 10 years later. Adjusted for inflation, that cash would today be worth north of $47,000. The $17,000 in presents at our wedding in 1979? These were squandered by the late 1980s. Today, that sum would amount to at least $74,000.

    Before I could learn anything from Poppa, I had to make my own mistakes. It took me until age 35 to develop a serviceable work ethic (having two kids will do that) and then until 45 to get out of debt. Some of us never learn, while others learn late. Eventually, I pulled myself together.

    “Everything is addition and subtraction,” says a character in a film noir the title of which I’ve forgotten. “The rest is just conversation.”

    Our parents and grandparents can teach us only so much. As I found out–and as Poppa showed me–certain lessons we just have to learn on our own.

    Bob Brody, a consultant and essayist based in Italy, is the author of the memoir Playing Catch with Strangers: A Family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes of Age.

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    Bob Brody

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  • The Grim Fan Fiction Presented by the Mean Girls x Wal-Mart Commercial

    The Grim Fan Fiction Presented by the Mean Girls x Wal-Mart Commercial

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    In 2023, Wal-Mart has so “generously” allowed us to catch a glimpse into the lives of where the mean girls from 2004 are now. Not only that, but this version of 2023 ostensibly exists in an alternate realm where the name Karen (and Karen Smith, no less) isn’t something worthy of calling attention to. Not at any point during the extremely lengthy commercial (almost a full two minutes [an “epic” in the realm of advertising], which means Wal-Mart really shelled out for it). Though there were plenty of other “plot points” that attention was called to in terms of assessing where some of the Mean Girls characters have ended up. And, let’s just say it, the assumptions to be made are rather grim. 

    For a start, Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) is still hanging out with Gretchen (Lacey Chabert) and Karen (Amanda Seyfried). Are we really to believe that Cady would have remained friends with anyone from The Plastics (particularly since she informs viewers at the end of the movie, “In case you’re wondering, The Plastics broke up”)? And if one person was worth remaining friends with, wouldn’t it have been Regina? If for no other reason than she had a mind of her own. Or, as Damian (Daniel Franzese) said, “She’s the queen bee, the star. Those other two are just her little workers.” Later on in Mean Girls, Cady marvels, “Was I the new queen bee?” It seems that, for the purposes of this Wal-Mart commercial, yes, she is. Even if she’s now a guidance counselor. Arguably one of the bleakest aspects about this flash forward to the mean girls’ future. That, and it seems that Janis Ian (Lizzy Caplan) isn’t friends with her or Damian anymore, having likely moved on to bigger and better things outside of the Chicago area. 

    Perhaps this is why Cady has resorted to a continued friendship with Gretchen and Karen. The latter of whom appears to be doing a “weather report” for no one’s benefit but her own—and yeah, it’s a bit sad that she’s still skulking around the high school to do it. They should have at least shown her doing “weather” for a local channel, and maybe even alluding to the climate change factors that have become unignorable in the years since 2004. Though, somehow, the next scene transition occurs by showing Karen on the big screen of Kevin Gnapoor’s (Rajiv Surendra) living room, even though it would make no sense for Karen to broadcast from North Shore High School if she was a legitimate “weather girl.”

    But that’s not supposed to be the viewer’s focus as the camera whip-pans to Kevin’s son holding a twenty-five-dollar (because of course the price flashes on the screen) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RC in his hands (with a Hot Wheels and Barbie box in the background, to boot). After all, it’s so important that Generation Alpha understands the importance of material goods, too. That job has already been done on Gen Z, who, although positioned as “climate-conscious” and “embracing of all sexual and ethnic identifications,” ain’t really none of that based on what one actually sees outside of think pieces concerning said birth cohort. Kevin then half-heartedly tells his son, “Don’t let the haters stop you from doing your thang, Kevin Jr.,” as though he has little will left to believe that himself. And clearly, if Janis isn’t in this scene, it means she dumped his ass along with Cady and Damian’s, too. 

    As for Gretchen, she’s apparently been a young mom since roughly 2007 (if we’re to believe her daughter is sixteen, and Mean Girls came out in 2004, when Gretchen would have been sixteen herself). Not only does she have a high school-age daughter named Amber who seems more Regina than Gretchen, she also has two younger kids as well. All of whom are Asian, though there’s no sign of the Asian husband she presumably married as a result of immersing herself in an Asian clique at the end of Mean Girls (this being a hyper-specific detail for the Wal-Mart commercial to include). 

    Cady’s life also appears rather empty based on her purchases of “Apple AirPods and Legos,” though that doesn’t seem to stop one stalker-y student from wanting to imitate that purchase the way Bethany Byrd (Stefanie Drummond) did with Regina George’s Army pants and flip flops. It’s never really made clear if Cady does have kids of her own (hence, the reason for buying Legos?), but it is clear that she has no compunction about displaying a pathetic mug on her desk that reads, “Best Guidance Counselor Ever.” Perhaps this level of patheticness is her karma for calling Ms. Norbury (Tina Fey) a “sad old drug pusher” back when she was a student instead of a “teacher.” And maybe her additional karma for all that high school fuckery was not ending up with Aaron Samuels (Jonathan Bennett), who is nowhere to be found…perhaps because the real-life Aaron Samuels turned out to be gay (which is why he was more willing to appear as that character in Ariana Grande’s “thank u, next” video). 

    Nonetheless, Cady does her best to maintain “plucky” narrations as she remarks, “Even as the guidance counselor, I was still getting schooled.” Yes, by the Gen Z tits who are even more asshole-ish than millennials were (this despite the former’s reputation for “tolerance”). So while Gretchen appears to have an absentee Asian husband as she lives out her tragic lawnmower mom life, Cady is working for a middling wage at the same high school she attended twenty years ago. Maybe the only person with a more depressing fate is Damian, who, for whatever reason, is working the projector for the Winter Talent Show. 

    Possibly the one thing that could be more heinous is if Karen ended up marrying her “first cousin,” Seth Mosakowski, and having inbred, even dumber children with him. In any case, there’s obviously a reason why Regina George is no longer consorting with any of these “losers.” Because, evidently, she didn’t peak in high school as expected…the way all the others appear to have done just that. One would instead like to believe that she and Janis have finally consummated their long overdue lesbian relationship and are proud owners of a kinky sex shop that also sells lacrosse gear (which itself can double as sex toys) somewhere in L.A.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Gen Zers Think Millennials Are Cringe, But Still Want to Emulate Them in the Mean Girls Commercial

    Gen Zers Think Millennials Are Cringe, But Still Want to Emulate Them in the Mean Girls Commercial

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    Apart from being one of the most overt pieces of capitalist propaganda to wield pop culture in recent memory, the Mean Girls x Wal-Mart commercial is a stark reminder not just of Gen Z contempt for millennials, but for their simultaneous desire to emulate them. After all, there’s a fine line between hate and love, as it is said. And, to quote Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan), it’s not millennials’ fault that Gen Z “is like in love with them or something.” At least, if one is to go by the obsession with their era (even when trying to deride it through an over-the-top condemnation of skinny jeans and side parts). 

    Within the absurd universe of 2023-era Mean Girls, Gen Z is somehow the spawn of Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert), while Cady (Lindsay Lohan) and Karen (Amanda Seyfried) don’t seem to have any clear claim on children of their own (unless it’s the other two members of Amber Wieners’ Gen Z clique). And maybe Cady is too busy “nurturing” youths in her role as a guidance counselor anyway to bother with children of her own. Which brings us to a scene designed to make her look out of touch in an “old” way rather than a “cute” one (as she did in 2004 whilst talking to Aaron Samuels [Jonathan Bennett]). Since everything is “cute” when you’re young enough…as society has drummed into our collective minds by now. This occurs when, sitting behind her desk dispensing “guidance” to a duo of mean girls, she once again says, “Grool.”

    The duo looks at her like she’s a “Martian” (as Regina called her) after she utters, apropos of nothing, “Grool.” At least when she said it in the actual movie, it was a conflated response to Aaron declaring of his Halloween party invite, “That flier admits one person only, so…don’t bring some other guy with you.” She started to say “great,” then “cool”—ergo, “Grool.” But how would these Gen Z putas living their far more “glamorous” life be expected to know anything about that “lore.” So naturally, they look up from their phones long enough to respond with disgust, “Huh?” and “What’s ‘grool’?” Cady assures, “It’s nothing.” 

    Almost as “nothing” as Gen Z claims millennials are to them despite constantly turning to Mean Girls as a behavioral bible and/or source of 00s yearning/“aesthetic” inspiration. And in the Wal-Mart commercial, that emulation comes both behaviorally and sartorially as Gretchen’s daughter and her friends wear the same pastels and plaids as the original Plastics did. Even though Cady was sure to tell us at the end of Mean Girls (after Damian [Daniel Franzese] delightedly warns of a freshman trio of girls, “Check it out, Junior Plastics”), “And if any freshmen tried to disturb that peace…well, let’s just say we knew how to take care of it.” Cue Cady imagining a school bus running the trio over and then assuring, “Just kidding.” But, of course, there are surely many millennials by now who have had such violent and hostile fantasies about cartoonishly ageist Gen Z. Particularly since, as we see exhibited by the Gen Z Plastics of the Wal-Mart commercial, they’re essentially grafting what millennials did while simultaneously critiquing them. Mainly for being “old” and for having never experienced the horrors of modern-day smartphone/social media life in their teens the way Gen Z is now. 

    To that point, Gretchen has happily taken on a Mrs. George-esque (Amy Poehler) persona by becoming not like a regular mom, but a cool mom as she sets up the ring light and camera to film Amber and her bitch friends doing limply-executed dances, presumably for TikTok. Amber then snaps at her mother when she says, “This is gonna be so fetch.” Amber’s response? “Stop trying to make fetch happen, Mom. It’s still not gonna happen.” Gretchen looks deeply wounded by this, for surely it’s gotta sting more coming from her daughter than Regina George. Her daughter, mind you, who knows nothing about millennial culture because not only did she not live through it, but everything about it has been diluted and bastardized by TikTok. Including Mean Girls itself. 

    This usually extends to the oft-referenced Winter Talent Show scene, which is recreated here as well (albeit with “smart” flat-heeled boots in lieu of stiletto-heeled ones). Even though Gretchen (and Cady/Karen, for that matter) would have needed to get pregnant right after high school, circa 2007-2009, to have a high school-age daughter. The probability of this seems rather unlikely (unless you’re Lorelai Gilmore), considering her Type A personality and “good” college/“respectable” career path. Even if having kids and marrying a “similar-minded/pedigreed” man was also at the forefront of her mind, that wouldn’t have been until, realistically, at least her mid-twenties. But, for the sake of capitalist propaganda, we must suspend our disbelief as Gretchen (joined by two more children who also appear to be Asian, which means she definitely didn’t marry Jason [Daniel DeSanto]), Cady and Karen watch a “less hot version” of themselves perform the same song and dance that they did “back in the day.” To far greater ennui…even though Gretchen takes over for Mrs. George on the filming front. 

    By the end of the commercial, the movie has been so perverted from its original self that the Burn Book pages plastered all over the school have been transformed into ads for Wal-Mart Black Friday deals instead of salacious pieces of gossip (many of which wouldn’t fly in the Gen Z climate of the present, where jokes about people being fat, or slutty, or statutory rapists would probably be deemed too insensitive).

    And yet, while millennial messaging has been “massaged” to suit a Gen Z demographic in this commercial (not just with the Burn Book being nothing but a “coupon book,” but also Gretchen having her son play with a Barbie), it is still Gen Z trying to be “analog” in the end by engaging with printouts. This being just one of the many ways, throughout the commercial, in which they’ve surrendered to their worst, most “cringe” fear: “being millennial.”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Mean Girls x Wal-Mart Commercial: A None Too Subtle Trojan Horse for Capitalism Via Millennial Nostalgia

    Mean Girls x Wal-Mart Commercial: A None Too Subtle Trojan Horse for Capitalism Via Millennial Nostalgia

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    As the “reunion” that everyone’s been waiting for, it was practically inevitable that the Mean Girls “assembly” (high school pun intended) would disappoint. Mainly because, yes, the so-called reunion is a fucking Wal-Mart commercial. That said, it actually seems as though, rather than people being disappointed by it, they’re somehow delighted. Dare one say…“tickled.” But the reason behind that appears to be less about content and more about an increasing fiendishness for nostalgia, especially among millennials. And no, it’s not because they’re, as Gen Z would falsely bill them, “old,” but because it’s glaringly apparent that times in 2004 were far more bearable—fun, even (remember fun?)—than times in 2023. 

    Of course, naysayers and “pro-progressive” types would argue that life was so much worse back then (see: the media manipulation and vilification of women like Britney Spears). That we’ve come “such a long way” (or “such a long way,” as Gretchen Wieners [Lacey Chabert] would utter it) in our perception of things (“thing” being the word that still describes how men see women) and our “tolerance for others” (read: white people in print and media making flaccid attempts at “inclusivity”). But the truth is, psychologically, society has gone further back into the Dark Ages with its mentality—particularly toward women and minorities (who are only viewed as minorities by the white people who only make up about eight percent of the world’s population). So yeah, a throwback to 2004 is bound to feel pretty fucking great right now. Like sweet candy compared to the tasteless gruel (a riff on “grool,” obviously) being served up on a daily basis in this part of the century. 

    What’s more, 2004 was still within a prime era for the U.S. in terms of continuing to hold up capitalism as what George W. Bush would later call “the best system ever devised.” To that end, one would like to believe the Mean Girls x Wal-Mart commercial is a wink-wink nod to the Bush years’ unironic exaltation of capitalism, but no, that’s clearly not the case. In fact, this capitalistic propaganda posing as “Mean Girls nostalgia” at its worst treats the viewers as though they themselves still live in 2004, when it was easier to pretend “deal shopping” for Black Friday isn’t the very thing that’s helped to make 2023 even more of a dystopia compared to 2004. Or that the presence of Missy Elliott (whose song, “Pass That Dutch,” plays repeatedly throughout the original Mean Girls, therefore this commercial) spelling out “D-E-A-L-S”  instead of “K-L-A” (that’s how Coach Carr [Dwayne Hill] spells “chlamydia”) somehow makes the human predilection for consumerism more “kosher.” As does, according to the commercial creators, Gretchen Wieners replacing Regina George (Rachel McAdams) in the silver Lexus convertible. Except it’s now a brandless convertible of a nondescript tone.

    That’s right, since Rachel McAdams announced simply that she “didn’t want to” be part of the little puff piece for capitalism, they got Chabert to fill in for one of McAdams’ key moments from the film. So in lieu of Regina pulling up to the soccer field and shouting, “Get in loser, we’re going shopping,” Gretchen does. And no, it’s not to pick up Cady (Lindsay Lohan) and Karen (Amanda Seyfried), but rather, her own high school-age daughter (which doesn’t quite mathematically track), Amber Wieners. Amber stands on the field with her clique comprised of the next generation mean girls, and is absolutely mortified (could it be because Gen Z is supposed to be more environmentally concerned? No, it’s because, no matter what era you’re in, parents are always humiliating) when Gretchen cries out, “Get in sweetie, we’re going deals shopping!” Even though the back of her car is already piled high with plenty of shit from Wal-Mart. Because what it the American message if not, even to this day: excess! 

    So it is that the Mean Girls x Wal-Mart “partnership” wields nostalgia like a seductive and deadly weapon to keep encouraging the very capitalistic behavior that will be humanity’s undoing. Behavior that millennials once got to relish in the 00s without half as much guilt about it as there is now (and mainly only because of Greta Thunberg). Yet that’s the the thing, isn’ it? There’s still clearly not enough guilt or compunction about it if a commercial like this can exist…and continue to be so gleefully embraced. The same goes for the abominable Menulog commercial starring Latto and Christina Aguilera. Both employ the same method of assaulting the audience with “eye candy” and familiar 00s nostalgia (via Christina Aguilera) to distract from the obvious point: we want you to keep engaging in the same buying patterns as the very generation you and Gen Z are constantly railing against—baby boomers. And in this scenario, it makes all the sense in the world that millennials are also known as echo boomers. Just look at the way Cady, Gretchen and Karen are living. That is to say, in the exact same way as their own parents. 

    The warm reception toward this commercial (and its tainting of the original movie) is, accordingly, a sign of how desperately so many people want to deny the reality of now. One in which the idea of Cady, Gretchen and Karen (though, pointedly, not Regina) continuing to carry out the same toxic consumerist cycle of the generation before them is a comfort rather than a horror show. After all, millennials were supposed to be different—they were supposed to want something more (besides more material goods). And yet, like the yippies of the 1960s who became yuppies in the 1980s (see: Jerry Rubin), millennials, if we’re to go by this commercial, have gladly sold out in the same way to keep the very system that has failed them (perhaps more than anyone) going. 

    It does seem fitting, in this regard that McAdams, the lone Gen Xer of the group (a.k.a. the “eldest” of the quartet at forty-four) opted to opt out. Perhaps old enough to know she doesn’t really want to be part of this schlock under the pretense of it being something “for the fans” when, obviously, it’s for nobody’s benefit other than the capitalist agenda’s, which has been using pop culture for decades upon decades to promote its purpose. This brings us to the fact that a “Mean Girls” commercial has already been recently used to promote a brand: Coach. Yes, back in 2021, Megan Thee Stallion stepped into the role of Regina George (because McAdams so patently doesn’t want to) to help recreate the introduction scene to the leader of The Plastics and, of course, sell some overpriced handbags. 

    Then there was a 2022 Allbirds commercial wherein Lohan, as usual, capitalized on Mean Girls (one of her only viable movies) to sell some shoes by peppering in “subtle” references to the movie. Like how she was a mathlete in high school. She then goes to pick out a pair of pink running shoes and says, “Well, it is Wednesday.” More “hardy-har-har” allusions arrive when she adds, “These don’t just look cute. They’re made with natural materials…always avoid the plastics,” followed by, “Bouncy. Perfect for a queen bee like Lindsay Lohan.” The point being, it’s fairly evident that, for whatever reason, Mean Girls has become a go-to for bolstering consumer faith in capitalism. And again, that’s arguably because 2004 was such a peak time for worshiping it. But what’s past doesn’t have to be present…so long as you’re not seduced by it. Therein lies the catch.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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