Writing complex topics that feel accessible — and other writing tips

On the "single stark element" that's with you all along in your narrative, something that "underpins the whole thing," Charlie Jane Anders says today:

"I have a feeling my stuff errs on the side of 'deceptively complicated.' I write things that have a million things whizzing around, but they boil down to one or two simple ideas. Or at least, I hope that there’s one or two main ideas when you look past all the fancy whizzbangery on the surface, or else you are left with just a mickle of a muddle. Right?

* * *

But if something is deceptively complex, how do you keep it from becoming just straight-up overcomplicated and messy? I wish there was a magic bullet – but I think part of it is that if you want to be able to strip away all the layers of complexity and find something stark underneath it all – a single stark element – then that needs to be there the whole time. You have to have one idea that you keep coming back that underpins the whole thing."
— Charlie Jane Anders, "The Difference Between Deceptively Simple and Deceptively Complex," Buttondown, January 10, 2024

Her book on writing:

What is it useful for me — or for us — to say?

You have a standpoint. You're positioned. Think about your standpoint and do the most useful thing for you, based on who you are. Sometimes that's individual. Sometimes it's collective.

But what makes it serious?

Be your theme simple, complex, or somewhere in the middle like "deceptively complex," what makes it serious?

Sometimes you have to write it to find out and let the reader decide.

An affirmation: My essay theme "may seem silly" and "probably is silly, which is a shame, considering that I’ve got this whole essay about it now." ("This is What Makes Us Girls: On the Lana-Del-Rey-to-Red-Scare Pipeline." Jude Doyle (on Ghost). 11 Jan 2024.)

Do journalism

Library research may not be enough. You may have to pick up the phone.

Ask lots of questions

Ask questions, e.g.,:

• "What words would you use to describe the most important values held by people in your culture?"
• "Who taught you those values? Why are they important to you?"

And so on.

Those two questions, and a few more, are from "50 Possible Questions to Open Israeli-Palestinian Dialogues," Kenneth Cloke, Mediate.com, January 26, 2024

Ask one big question

"The personal essay can be about almost anything," Aimee Liu writes, but is "rooted in a central question." The writer writes themself into the frame as the person who is raising the question, a recognition that is central to what makes it a personal essay. It doesn't matter so much if the question is answered. The personal essay "doesn’t necessarily seek to make sense out of life experiences; rather, these essays tend to let go of that sense-making impulse to do something else, like nose around a bit in the wondering, uncertain space that lies between experience and the need to explain or organize it in a logical manner."

This is from "Picture Your Structure" in her Legacy & Lore (Substack, February 16, 2024):

"Like a memorist, an essayist always writes two essays simultaneously, overlapped as transparencies, one exploring what Vivian Gornick calls the situation, the other what she terms the story. Poet Richard Hugo talks about a piece’s 'triggering subject' and its generated, or real, subject. Phillip Lopate describes the 'double perspective' that an essayist needs, the ability to both dramatize and to reflect. I’ve always talked to my writing students about the narrow subject and the larger subject."

Know the answer to 'did they or didn't they'?

"Fitzgerald had to know whether Gatsby died in that pool in the end. If he wasn’t sure, he wasn’t sure which story he was telling..." — George Saunders, "De Maupassant, Part Three," Story Club, April 4, 2024

'Yes' and 'no' can contain multitudes of possibilities

These little words are clear-cut on the surface, but depending on context, they can mean different things.

Based on Jackie Duden, "The Word No Shapes Us," May 9, 2024: A no can be a form of protection (e.g., when you tell someone to stop for your good or for theirs), a statement of values (e.g., when you say what you won't permit and try to teach it to others), a longing (e.g., when you tell yourself you can't have something), or an expression of hope (because it's not for now, but it might be for later).

There's no one model to explain all of human psychology

Paul Tournier explained in The Violence Within that there are “schools of scientific psychology” that “set up a doctrinaire model into which they attempt to fit the whole of human behaviour in terms of a few relatively simple mechanisms — projection and introjection, identification and differentiation, unconscious repression and liberation of complexes, drives and resistances…” While these may contain insights that are “true and valuable,” Tournier says that when we give too much weight to them (exactly “in the very fact of their being elevated into systems”) we risk “the infinite diversity of life and of the mind,” and we may forget that “the essential problems are not about mechanisms, but about values, not about functions but about the person, problems which cannot ever be reduced to an inventory of functions. Literary psychology cannot be learnt—it is too rich, too varied, too subtle, because it never allows itself to be reduced to any sort of model. It may be looked at as one might contemplate a big bunch of wild flowers…the bouquet as a whole does not deliver up the secret of its harmonious unity.”
Paul Tournier. The Violence Within. Translated by Edwin Hudson, 1978. New York: Harper & Row, 1982, (originally Violence et Puissance, 1977) pp. 64–65.

Get specific

"Show, don't tell"? Maybe, but don't oversate it. After all, George Saunders says, "something told specifically enough...becomes showing." The show-don't-tell distinction breaks down. It's really about specific-not-vague. Being "specific" doesn't mean the writer judges or states. Instead, the writer suggests but gives so many details that the reader can complete the idea in their own mind. Such "showing" makes us feel "as if we’re learning/seeing/experiencing something. Something new appears in the textual reality. And there’s a quality of openness, of unfolding discovery - a non-static quality. We 'buy into' that little morsel of fictive reality."

(See: George Saunders, Show? Tell?, Office Hours, August 8, 2024)

Be willing to use a controversial word

While sometimes your goal is to tone down a controversy and build bridges, sometimes you want to truth-tell and provoke thought with your vocabulary choice.

Facilitate good conversations

"Before starting an activity, ask yourself what's most essential. This insight helps you know what can be cut if needed or expanded upon. Engaging participants in reflective debriefs can open new avenues for conversation and deepen the learning experience. For example, asking participants what they felt during an activity, what they noticed, and how it relates to their work can turn a simple exercise into a profound discussion."
Douglas Ferguson, President of Voltage Control, LinkedIn, August 2024

Technology exists to solve a problem

"...if you took a 1988 Toyota Hylux and dropped it into another historical period – the Peloponnesian War, the Islamic Golden Age, the Mongol Empire, the Aztec Empire – it wouldn’t really change much. Sure, they probably wouldn’t be able to turn on the damned thing and you’d be limited to one tank of gas, but if you gave a demonstration of its capabilities, I still don’t think that many of the recipients of that demonstration would be interested in taking it. Even if you explained all of the steps needed to make the required materials, the one technological artifact that you’re discussing implies a whole world and I don’t think that these inhabitants of other cognitive and social worlds would be interesting in moving wholesale into the one that you’re demonstrating.

That’s because technology exists to solve a problem, so – similar to how you write a character in a work of fiction – the question becomes one of want and need. What problem do you want and need to solve?"

— Cameron Summers, What is Technology? (Contraslop, Part 1), Broken Hands, June 19, 2024

Summers adds that a technology may be "brought in to do one thing, and then it achieves something else as a side effect because it can extend its function in an interesting and novel way."

People have feelings about what they do

"I can’t think of a way for a character — fictional or otherwise — to pull off a convincing redemption story without experiencing and expressing true remorse ... feeling remorse is a valuable and cathartic experience that empowers change. Whether personal responsibility is an illusion or not, feeling responsible and taking action to change our behavior, is a powerful thing."
— Steven Toews, How to Write a Convincing Redemption Story, The Writing Cooperative, Feb 8, 2024

More fiction tips

'The 10 Best Writing Tips I’ve Ever Heard: A Weird Circular Guest Post by Alex Kingsley.' August 2, 2024

People can reflect on their arguments

To reduce fights, reflect on:

1. "Why the conflict happened"
2. "How the conflict should have been handled"
3. "How conflicts should generally be dealt with"
4. "How people should generally respond to conflicts in their relationship"
5. "Why this kind of response makes sense"
6. "What would be most helpful for dealing with future conflicts"

"6 simple questions that reduce relationship fights — from a psychologist." Mark Travers. Forbes. April 18, 2024.

People can be open to possible worlds that do not exactly mirror their current lives

"...white people want their sci-fi and fantasy media to remain just as exclusionary as their real lives...the vast majority of white Americans live, socialize, matriculate, shop, and worship segregated among themselves."

— Rod T. Faulkner, The Basic Reason White People Hate Black Representation In Onscreen Sci-Fi And Fantasy, Medium, March 3, 2024

The importance of representation

Even when "the term 'trans' didn't yet exist; in the best cases, they used 'transsexuals,'..." (Portero, p. 51), one may have been thinking in a trans way:

"I had already internalized trans fatalism and convinced myself that a life of loneliness awaited me. I was sure that I'd be trapped in a closet for a long time, pursuing relations with men and with women to reinforce my lie and end up alone, tormented by what could never be. The very few stories of women like me that I had seen and read always ended that same way. Even the all-powerful emcee in Cabaret spends the entire movie without a name and winds up in front of an audience filled with Nazis as a drumroll accompanies a firing squad."

— Alana S. Portero, Bad Habit, originally published as La mala costumbre, 2023, translated from the Spanish by Mara Faye Lethem, 2024. HarperVia, 2024. p. 81.

Also: "Everything that had to do with my identity, when I was rehearsing possibilities of explaining it, sounded like a confession, of a crime or some unforgivable sin. Having grown up with the language of guilt disseminated from every corner as the only way to refer to trans lives was disheartening." (Portero, p. 100)

If you have representation in literature, not only do you have basic terms to describe what you are (e.g., trans), but you can loosen assumptions of eternal loneliness and original sin tied to simply being who you are.

People can imagine a version of themselves with different opinions and reactions

"Sometimes you’re in the middle of an experience. You don’t really understand this experience, it’s intense, it’s really overwhelming. One option is to write about it autobiographically, or in autobiographical fiction. There’s a character like you, they’re having the same experiences, you can alter the narrative, and that’s one way to work through it. I think, had my life gone a little bit differently, that’s what I would be doing. ... Then the restraint, the constraint, is not to impose my own experience on the thing I’m writing about. That’s, I think, the sort of different challenge: 'I think this is a crisis. I’m writing about someone for whom it wasn’t a crisis. Is there a way in which my experience is not a crisis, actually?' Does this cause me to reflect and better understand what I’m going through? Was my initial instinct not the full story?"

— The Problem of Other Minds: Maggie Doherty, interviewed by Merve Emre. Episode Nine of “The Critic and Her Publics”. New York Review of Books. June 11, 2024

What cost does someone refuse to pay?

"For many of us, we can't pay the cost of defunding the police or any other act aligned with justice, as soon as there is any cost at all for doing so. We'd rather pay the much higher cost of funding the police, and treating the many symptoms of supremacy as "the way things are," meaning "the way things have to be."
And the question for me then is: what is that cost we can't pay?
I think it's our share of supremacy — whatever that share might be for each of us."
— A.R. Moxon, interviewed by Parker Molloy (Patreon), May 30, 2024

The character is trans

5 Questions For Writers To Explore Being Transgender: A former editor for best-selling and award-winning authors offers five storytelling hacks to help you explore being trans. Stephenie Magister, Prism & Pen, Apr 20, 2024.

Be the friend

"The pathway to what Paul Linebarger called 'psychological disarmament' begins when we find that friend — or when we are that friend. We have to work together to find the guy who is messing around with the gas lamps, and get the receipts to prove it. Unfortunately the problem that confronts the United States now is that the gaslighter is not just one guy. We are in an era of stochastic, decentralized gaslighting — and the traumas we suffer from psychological attacks began generations before we were born. Even if we as individuals get really good therapy, we cannot recover fully until our communities are also given the tools to recover. That's because the secret of psychological warfare is that it is not purely about vibes. It's about politics. And the only solution to political trauma is political transformation."

— Annalee Newitz, Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind. W. W. Norton, 2024. Chapter 6: Dirty Comics.

What would the world look like after the oppressors were gone?

Annalee Newitz talks about 19th-century colonization in North America and "indigenous tribes pushing back with a movement that gets called the Ghost Dance. This is a spiritual and a political movement. It's an anti-colonial movement. It takes the form of tribes coming together, and dancing and singing. The Ghost Dance itself is about describing the world as it would be without the white settlers. And it becomes this really powerful way of pushing back against the war — but more importantly, against these psyops of stealing kids and trying to teach them to reject their indigenous history. And the psyops of trying to manipulate tribes by writing down all of their traditions and using this against them. This is a way that many, many Western tribes reasserted the importance of their histories and were able to have these peaceful gatherings, where they articulated what the world would look like once these horrible white settlers were gone. In a way, it's science fiction. It was speculative worldbuilding."
—

"There's No Way You Can Talk Back to a Gun": On Psychological Warfare. Annalee Newitz, interviewed by Charlie Jane Anders. Happy Dancing. May 28, 2024.

What possibilities would be open to people in a better world?

Looking outward is also looking inward (emphases mine):

"In the evenings, after getting home from the mountain, I switched from writing non-fiction to fiction. I was tired of mining my personal history, I told K. I wanted to look outwards rather than inwards for a while. I read Kelly Link, Abbey Mei Otis, Helen Oyeyemi, Carmen Maria Machado. In their stories, the line between internal and external world became blurred, porous enough that a character’s desires or fears might shape the world—but never in the ways one might expect. Puppets came to life and manipulated their owners, children had to sacrifice parents to protect their homes, a handbag or a tent might offer a doorway to another world. Much like in Everett’s thesis, person and environment became intimately and confusingly entangled. Looking outwards could, in other words, also be a way of looking inwards."
— Many Worlds and the Queer Imaginary: Imagine three possible futures for yourself. Let your future selves be bold..., Emet North, Reactor, May 8, 2024

North leaves us with a question (emphasis mine):

"One final piece of the thought experiment, this one particularly for my queer and trans community. Imagine an alternate version of yourself, one that has received all the acceptance and support the world so often denies us. An alternate self whose parents greeted their queerness or transness with joy rather than anger or fear or disgust. A self that didn’t have to hide, who never held the doors to the closet shut for simple self-preservation. A self whose government hasn’t tried to take away their rights, their access to care. Who hasn’t had their body politicized and made a talking point for self-righteous politicians. Here’s what I want to know now: How would that version of you move through the world? What possibilities are open to them?"

To awaken others to your moral vision: 'Control the context', 'refuse the monotone', 'fall in love', 'manifest spectacular goodwill'

Matthew Frye Castillo writes in Prism & Pen:

"I think of Audre Lorde describing the responsibilities of ethical people, whom she called warrior poets:

“That is the work of the poet within each one of us: to envision what has not yet been and to work with every fiber of who we are to make the reality pursuit of those visions irresistible.”

Gran Fury and ACT UP made 'those visions irresistible' by controlling the context, refusing the monotone, and falling in love."

Or:

[P] Reading an old Vulture interview with Dropout TV CEO Sam Reich, and I felt this quote all the way down through the bottom of my shoes. It angers me how rare this sort of philosophy is.

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— Paul and Storm (@paulandstorm.bsky.social) Aug 26, 2024 at 1:43 PM

What can you do to awaken and "manifest" the reader's "spectacular goodwill"?

What's 'universal' is reaching out to people who already want to get it and giving them permission to similarly lean into who they are

Grace Loh Prasad points out the common assumptions that "true literary craft should be divorced from questions of identity and marginalization" and that "art has authority when it is recognized by the widest possible audience without the need to explain itself." She says: "I started to recognize a persistent, troubling flaw in my writing: I was over-explaining myself" and that this was "a way of trying to justify my presence instead of exhibiting confidence in my authority and expertise....Seen another way, it’s my way of spoon-feeding a lazy reader who I am assuming is different from me, rather than rewarding a curious reader and trusting them to fill in the gaps or look up anything they don’t automatically know." In doing so, "I had unconsciously internalized the indifferent reader — the person who could not be bothered to make any effort to know me better." So, "rather than thinking of them as hurdles for the unfamiliar reader, unexplained or untranslated concepts can be seen as a gift to the people who understand them–to your best and most ardent audience." You can "focus on the people who need your story, who have been longing to see themselves reflected in books, who have waited their whole lives for someone to articulate something that approaches their experience." So: "Invest your energy in reaching the people who are already on your side, who are rooting for you and want you to succeed," and "give permission to others to do the same–and this, in the end, is what will make your story universal." ("It’s OK If Your Writing Isn’t for Everyone," May 21, 2024)

Does the group have a mind?

"The group, like the person, was assumed to be sentient, to have a form of mental activity that guides action. Rousseau (1767) and Hegel (1807) were the early architects of this form of analysis... [Many social theorists after them] were willing to assume that the group has a mental life that plays a part in the patterning of group behavior."
Wegner, D.M. (1987). Transactive Memory: A Contemporary Analysis of the Group Mind. In: Mullen, B., Goethals, G.R. (eds) Theories of Group Behavior. Springer Series in Social Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4634-3_9

Pick a compelling title

Michael Gallant gives some tips in How to Write a Book Title That Gets Attention, BookBaby, January 11, 2024:

• "Be clear and concise."
• "Use strong, evocative language."
• "Be original and unique."
• "Make sure your title is relevant to your book’s content."

Present well

8 Tips for Practicing Scripted Scholarly Presentations by Erin K. Maher, PhD

Use paper?

"Paper Regimes of the Publishing World: A Bird’s Eye View on the Materiality of Global Book History" is published in open access in the journal Globalgeschichte / Global History, vol. 3.2 (2025), pp. 1-28, DOI doi.org/10.13173/GG.... Here is a link: www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/ddo/artikel/... 3/3

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— Daniel Bellingradt (@dbellingradt.bsky.social) December 18, 2025 at 1:49 AM

Brian Evenson: 'Denarration....you're told something and then it's removed'

The Horror Is What We Don’t Yet Know (and Maybe Never Will): Brian Evenson Interviewed by Rob Goyanes, BOMB Magazine, Jun 25, 2019

One of his books is "Last Days, about an amputee cult who captures an unwitting messiah."

From the interview:

RG
You use repetition, in terms of wording and syntax, to create an unsettling effect. What other devices do you consciously employ to produce this?

BE
Most of my work in revision is about sound and rhythm, trying to figure out what is going to really serve the story. I'm working with those things to try to manipulate the reader. A lot of my work uses a process of “denarration”, by which I mean it presents something, narrates it as if it’s real, then it takes it away. A lot of things are qualified or taken away or compromised, or you're told something and then it's removed. That is a big part of the unsettling effect, of destabilizing the story’s world.

Evenson continues:

"So much fiction has this idea: there's a character, they confront something, they change, and then they're different people. If you're around humans for long enough, you realize that that's the exception rather than the rule. It so rarely happens that people actually change in a meaningful way. I've always been a little skeptical of character development, but then what do you do with fiction? My sense is that maybe it’s about conveying mental states and changing the reader. That, to me, is more important than conveying some kind of change in a character in a world that doesn't look like our world."

This reminds me of what William Maxwell enjoyed in novels (1955)

William Maxwell, in a 1955 speech at Smith College, said: "These forms of prestidigitation, these surprises, may not any of them be what makes a novel great, but unless it has some of them, I do not care whether a novel is great or not; I cannot read it." (see: The Writer as Illusionist: Uncollected & Unpublished Work by William Maxwell. Copyright © 1955 by William Maxwell. Introduction Copyright © 2024 by Alec Wilkinson. Excerpted with the permission of Godine. Reprinted in LitHub, January 24, 2024.)

The reader stays to find out whether "there will be more neighbors turning up than the narrator expects, or else he will very much wish that they had." The characters don't know something because "they are at sea, pulling at the oars in an open boat; and so are you." You're introduced to a character, and "you have entered into a personal relationship with a stranger, who will perhaps make demands on you, extraordinary personal demands..." Or: "A door opens slowly in front of you, and you cannot see who is opening it but, like a sleepwalker, you have to go in." Or the narrator "has not actually set eyes on this interesting new person that everyone is talking about. She is therefore all the more interested. And meanwhile, surprisingly, the reader cannot forget the lady, or the dog, or the seafront." Or the writer gives special voice, attitude: "A way of looking at people that is ironical, shrewd, faintly derisive, and that suggests that every other kind of writing is a trick (this is a special trick, in itself ) and that this book is going to be about life as it really is, not some fabrication of the author’s." And "the writer invokes a time: He offers the reader a wheat field on a hot day in July, and a flying machine, and a little boy with his hand in his father’s. He has been brought to the wheat field to see a flying machine go up. They stand, waiting, in a crowd of people. It is a time when you couldn’t be sure, as you can now, that a flying machine would go up." Trust: "If he is a good novelist, you can lean against his trees; they will not give way. ...you ought to be able to shake them until an apple falls on your head. (The apple of understanding.)" As in "the shop of the live fish, toward the beginning of Malraux’s Man’s Fate. ... As the hour that the assassination will be attempted is mentioned, the water on the surface of the bowls begins to stir feebly. The carp, awakened by the sound of voices, begin to swim round and round, and my hair stands on end." Timing: "a fatality about the timing of these visits; he always comes just when she has washed her hair. She is presented to the reader with a bath towel around her wet head, her hair in pins, in her kimono, sitting on the couch in the living room, silent, while her parents make conversation with the suitor. All her hopes of appearing to advantage lie shattered on the carpet at her feet. She is inconsolable but dignified, a figure of supportable pathos."

More reading (if you've got a Medium membership)

Medium members: Check out "The Worst Philosophy Paper I Ever Wrote."

The structure of time in stories

"Whereas a film has 24 frames per second in which to tell its story, a traditional comic book only has a small number of frames, or panels, per page, usually between five and nine, across a total of 22 pages. Comparatively, a comic book is equivalent to about six seconds of film. But obviously, any comic contains more narrative than the time it takes to read this sentence. So where, then, does the content 'hide'?"
— Roy Schwartz, Is Superman Circumcised?: The Complete Jewish History of the World's Greatest Hero, McFarland & Company, 2021.

“I need a meta-time, a thing fueled by the kind of heartbeat I desire — one that is rule-breaking, empathetic, aware of its power enough to offer some kind of mercy.
In DC Comics, there is a concept called hypertime, an in-universe framework formulated as a diagram, making the timelines of stories accurate, even without continuity across existing collections of storylines. The idea postulates a kind of multiversal transit map where each line, representing its own story, runs parallel, crosses over others, and carries on, with characters hopping from one train to another across universes. A reader in the third-dimensional space can look down and make meaning of the stories between the pages, leaving room for the possibility of a fourth-dimensional, hyper-cubic reader who examines that space, a geometric vision incorporating our universe along with the comic story world."
— Kristin Keane. An Encyclopedia of Bending Time. Baltimore: Barrelhouse, 2022. p. 60.

"...pretty much all of my favorite books screw around with the order of events, or come shaped like puzzle boxes, or have seven separate 'third acts.' Like David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest or Rebecca Roanhorse's Black Sun, which jump around in time, or Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow, which intersperses two timelines that slowly converge.
Time is the one drug that absolutely everyone is hooked on. And fiction is the only place to get a really potent hit."
— Charlie Jane Anders. Never Say You Can’t Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times By Making Up Stories. Tordotcom, 2021. Chapter 24.

"Time isn’t an orderly stream. Time isn’t a placid lake recording each of our ripples. Time is viscous. Time is a massive flow. It is a self-healing substance, which is to say, almost everything will be lost."
Charles Yu. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. Pantheon, 2010. p. 14.

"This experiencing of time, it seems to me, is what sets writing apart and makes it more than simply words, more valuable than a commodity, more pleasurable than the audio-visual product which digital culture has converted into a space of hollowed time, like the time you spend flying between two airports. Writing is time packed full. It derives its morality from its immorality; it achieves compassion, not by flattery or glib misrepresentation, but with a gaze that is concerned only with seeing what is there, uncompromisingly, avoiding all fakery. This, then, is what it means to search for the truth: the objective that attends me whenever I ask myself, in an ironic spirit, Why do you write? or, What does writing mean to you?"
— I write like a lover, I write like one dead. The opening essay of my second Mutanabbi book, translated by Robin Moger. Youssef Rakha. Language of Loss (Substack). Dec. 31, 2022.

"Linear history, Oedipal history, is our fantasy, and to perpetuate it we invented the myth of an authoritarianism arising from the preterit, even though authority can only be exercised from the present. Borges, whose work was concerned with the manipulation of time, claimed that each author invents his precursors. Or, to put it in Phillip K. Dick’s terms, the Oedipal structure is a Counter-ClockWorld, a world where, as in this Dick novel, the libraries destroy books and the dead emerge from their graves.The best-kept secret of linear oxidental time is that it is written from the future to the past."
Heriberto Yépez. The Empire of Neomemory. Translated by Jen Hofer, Christian Nagler, & Brian Whitener. ChainLinks, 2013. Originally: El Imperio de la neomemoria (Oaxaca: Almadía, 2007). Part I: America, Pseudo-Patriarchy, Pantopia.

“Any sequence of events is interesting because of its positive and negative shapes. Take a pair of scissors and cut something out. Anything. Why not a devil with horns and a tail and cloven hooves. So. There is your paper with a devil-shaped hole in it. Two devil-shapes, one positive, one negative, and both of them made at the very same moment. Was the Battle of Manzikert the shape of the paper or the shape of the hole? It’s as I’ve said before: there is always a twoness in the oneness, and for this reason it’s almost impossible to know what is happening in the space-time configuration. Not only that: as soon as an effort is made to look at any particular thing the aspect of that thing becomes other than what it was—that event that happened in full view when unlooked-at covers itself when observed, spins around itself one of those wonderful encrusted eggs with a peephole in one end of it; I the observer, receding reactively from the gaze that proceeds from my eyes, find myself shot into the distance thousands of miles away from the peephole. Inch by inch I think my way back; closer, closer, closer I come and here it is all tiny—the tiny, tiny Battle of Manzikert.”
— Russell Hoban. Pilgermann. London: Bloomsbury, 1983.

"If you have come to your planned ending and it doesn’t seem to be working, run your eye up the page and the page before that. You may see that your best ending is somewhere in there, that you were finished before you thought you were."
— John McPhee, in an essay on structure in the New Yorker (January 6, 2013), quoted by Aimee Liu in "Picture Your Structure," Legacy & Lore (Substack), February 16, 2024.

A Jewish sense of story

In a footnote to Most Famous Short Film of All Time, I wrote:

"Literary critic Frank Kermode in The Sense of an Ending (1965) said stories need satisfying endings, just as the Christian story offers an ending that provides a meaning to everything that came before. Dara Horn dissents, saying that Jewish storytelling recognizes that we 'cannot be true to the human experience while pretending to make sense of the world,' and so a story may instead serve as 'the beginning of the search for meaning.'"

I recently came across this reflection by Rachel Klein:

"Where apocalypse narratives are primarily concerned with the restructuring and healing of society writ large after tragedy, time loops focus on the personal growth of an individual by having the person relive their experiences until they learn the lessons required to move on."
— "A Case for Why Time Loops Are Inherently Jewish": These cyclical stories, from 'Russian Doll' to 'Palm Springs,' are the Jewish answer to the Christian apocalypse narrative. Rachel Klein, HeyAlma, June 13, 2022

It's likely that all cultures and religions have some sense of the life cycle, that is, of each generation as a cycle, and of each year as cyclical too. But Judaism, unlike Christianity, doesn't layer on any focus on the supposed end of history. There's just the cycle itself.

There are endings, though.

"The ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation ... likely reinforced the idea that the end times would inevitably be sudden, and total. All these years and millennia later most of us still haven’t learned the painful truth that most ends, even most apocalypses, are gradual, painful, drawn out and sometimes ongoing. If we don’t learn the truth about the end of the world, and worlds ending, the apocalypse may rest eternally on the horizon, ever-present, always informing our lives in numerous ways, but never quite occurring. And the truth is that worlds are ending as we speak. Our own world, your own world, could also end; it might already be falling apart."
— "The Apocalypse is not the End," Joshua P. Hill, New Means, December 30, 2023

"One of my all-time favourite academic articles is a little-known comparison between The Road and In The Mood For Love by Elisabetta Trincherini. From Trincherini I’ve drawn three central ideas about what defines an apocalypse. First, an event must take place that changes the way people relate to their environment so extremely that all that they seem to be somewhere new or different. As Trincherini puts it “what happens after the apocalypse is effectively an “elsewhere,” even if it’s the same place as before the disaster.” Second, what remains of the old world one used to inhabit must appear to the person as ruins. For Trincherini as for us, “ruin is something that follows a catastrophe, after which generally nothing usable remains. And this is the case whether it concerns a concrete universe like planet Earth or the more fleeting one of feelings.” Third and lastly, the catastrophic event must have been so intense that the afterwards in which the people feel that they are living is experienced as violently cut off from both the past and the future.
* * *
Between the transgender tipping point (2014) and the pandemic (2020) a new type of transition emerged. We were the first trans people en masse to refuse the prescribed apocalypse approach. We came out to our families with the expectation that our families could remain as part of our lives. We did not move. We told friends and tried to maintain friendships. Our goals were radical. We wanted what gay people had. The idea was to live out and proud as a trans person among cis people: coworkers, friends, family. Unfortunately, living in denial of an apocalypse hardly ever goes well. Many of us lost our family and friends to their transphobia. That part was just plain and simple. ... Or maybe they tried to help a little too much, they made you their dress up doll, their new project. Once they discovered that you would not play Pygmalion, once you stood up for yourself, they responded with hot rebuke. They were the nuns, and you were the refugee. How dare you scorn their attempts at charity. You were preventing them from completing their mitzvot. Did you not know your place? You suffer so that they can help. That’s how it goes. The last thing that often happened, especially when you were a trans woman and your friends were male, is that they tried really hard to accept you, but when your gender got less unstuck, when it became more clearly defined as ‘woman’, they began to treat you like they treated women. In the best of cases that meant they got awkward, clammed up, held their tongue. In the worst of cases that meant they sexualized you, mistreated you, and ignored you. It turns out it is not tenable to pretend that the apocalypse didn’t happen."
Unstuck In Gender: The Experience of Trans Apocalypse: On experiencing transition as apocalypse, Auto_Anon, May 11, 2026

Is everything fair game for science? Even niceness itself?

Here's a new paper:

Prosocial motives underlie scientific censorship by scientists: A perspective and research agenda
Authors: Cory J. Clark, Lee Jussim, Komi Frey, Sean T. Stevens, Musa al-Gharbi, Karl Aquino, J. Michael Bailey, Nicole Barbaro, Roy F. Baumeister, April Bleske-Rechek, David Buss, Stephen Ceci, Marco Del Giudice, Peter H. Ditto, Joseph P. Forgas, David C. Geary, Glenn Geher, Sarah Haider, Nathan Honeycutt, Hrishikesh Joshi, Anna I. Krylov, Elizabeth Loftus, Glenn Loury, Louise Lu, Michael Macy, Chris C. Martin, John McWhorter, Geoffrey Miller, Pamela Paresky, Steven Pinker, Wilfred Reilly, Catherine Salmon, Steve Stewart-Williams, Philip E. Tetlock, Wendy M. Williams, Anne E. Wilson, Bo M. Winegard, George Yancey, and William von Hippel.
November 20, 2023
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
120 (48) e2301642120

I became aware of it because Megan McArdle wrote an opinion column for the Washington Post, "The world could use more jerks." December 12, 2023.

Yes, the paper seems to be saying that there are facts, and there is niceness, and niceness is often just covering up the facts, and if we were more tolerant of jerks then the jerks would show us the truth.

The paper's abstract defines "scientific censorship" as "actions aimed at obstructing particular scientific ideas from reaching an audience for reasons other than low scientific quality." Any actions? Yes. Having a personal filter is self-censorship. Being deliberately nice is self-censorship. That's the definition.

A key problem here, for me, is that "low scientific quality" isn't defined. One scientist might say that an entire research idea is untenable for ethical reasons, which also means it's untenable for scientific reasons, and the research would be of low scientific quality if it were to proceed. The other scientist might say, no, ethics has nothing to do with scientific quality, and thus they deem the first scientist to have self-censored.

The paper's conclusion isn't really a conclusion. It says that the many co-authors disagree on "whether and where scholars should “draw the line” on inquiry." Nonetheless, they claim they "all agree" that science "would be better situated to resolve these debates, if—instead of arguing in circles based on conflicting intuitions—we spent our time collecting relevant data." I don't believe they mean relevant data on the myriad unique topics of scientific interest, but rather on the meta-topic; that is, they want "better science on scientific censorship" so they can better answer their own question. Anyway, see previous paragraph for the meta-problem here.

McArdle, for her part, in the Washington Post column, wants to expand the message to all writers. She says:

"These professions [journalism and academia] used to be sheltered workshops for those kinds of 'jerks': naturally distrustful folks who like asking uncomfortable questions and experiencing an uncontrollable urge to say whatever they’ve been told not to. These character traits don’t make people popular at parties, but they might well help them ferret out untruths, deconstruct popular pieties and dismantle conventional wisdom."

As she puts it: "Unfortunately, the universe isn’t here to please us, which means niceness and truth will sometimes be at odds."

Crucially, she adds: "Jerks were never the majority, which would be chaos. But they were a teaspoon of leavening..." In other words, some people have permission to be jerks. Not all people. Who will be in the elect few who receive social permission to be rudely contrarian and are perceived as experts simply because of their attitude, and who will be in the majority of sad amateurs who are tone-policed and shut down for expressing a difference of opinion? Ay, there's the rub. Plainly, she reserves the right to be a contrarian. It's her newspaper column, after all. She's the leavening that will transform the critics on whom her voice is overlaid. The transformation will be non-chaotic, we are to feel assured of that.

She quotes Musa al-Gharbi who, readers may discover, has a forthcoming book: We Have Never Been Woke: Social Justice Discourse, Inequality and the Rise of a New Elite.

She also plugs the new book The Canceling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott.

On which note, take a look at this Amazon review for The Canceling of the American Mind. This is what McArdle is asking for, right? Truth-telling while kind of being a jerk? The world is vastly improved now?

Related, on this blog: 2020 "Open Letter on Justice and Open Debate" in Harper's

On political disappointment and anger

Disappointment

Arielle Angel, editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents, wrote in the magazine's newsletter on December 9, 2023:

"The Marxist philosopher Michael Löwy explores doom’s constructive potential in a reflection on the German Jewish theorist Walter Benjamin’s urgent plea for the 'organization of pessimism,' in which that affect is understood not as passive defeatism, but rather as 'an active, practical and ‘organized’' stance 'that is totally dedicated to preventing, by all means possible, the advent of the worst.'"

Angel goes on, pointing out Sara Marcus's recent interview describing, in Angel's words, "the last 2,000 years of Jewish history is a lesson in the creative possibilities of loss." Marcus said in that interview:

"The whole history of Judaism after 70 CE is about having lost the structure of the Temple and ritualistically voicing a desire to get it back, while at the same time building a completely other structure that’s rhizomatic — iterative, decentered — and incredibly durable and flexible. To continue elaborating that structure while never taking our eyes off the fact of loss, and in fact keeping active a longing for the lost object, grounds Jews in a profoundly generative historical experience of disappointment."

What can we generate from this?

People are not things, and it's OK to be angry

A.R. Moxon wrote on October 29, 2023: "All people have an intrinsic and indestructible worth that cannot be measured." We assign value to things, yes, but people "are not things." And so he goes on to say of the U.S. healthcare system:

"It’s very profitable. Some people think this means it is the very best. I’m not kidding! They really think that, and will tell you so without blushing, even though we can all see that it costs us more than any other developed country, and returns worse outcomes, and wipes people out financially every single day. And if you suggest that maybe our healthcare system should not be designed to wipe people out, they ask you how you intend to pay for a system that is designed to heal people instead, which is how you know that deep down, perhaps without telling themselves, they have decided that it is sick people who should have to pay for being sick, have on some level decided that sick people deserve to be wiped out as they are.

This is a very popular belief, I’ve found. It’s one diametrically opposed to the great truth about indestructible and inherent human worth.

And so, I think the appropriate response to this belief is anger."

Resuming the theme: Every life is worthy, and it's OK to be angry

Moxon continued on November 19, 2023:

"The idea here is that all human beings’ lives carry an immeasurable and indestructible worth, but human societies seem increasingly captured by a lie that insists that human beings must be regularly measured to determine if their life is still deserved. One common yardstick used to measure the value of human life is the profit motive, which cares nothing for the good of society; it cares only for growth. Just as unregulated water seeks the most efficient path to its own level, so unregulated profit seeks the most efficient path to the most profit possible, and will run through society the same way a burst water main on the top floor will run through the walls of a house. The most efficient path to profit happens to involve monetizing basic human need — healthcare and water and shelter — which of course ties profit to the immeasurable value of life, upon which an unregulated profit motive can set whatever price it likes, and does, and thus annihilates human beings by the thousands and millions every year, every month, every week.

And so the great lie — that life must be earned — makes products of our lives. It consumes humans for the benefit of wealth, enforces a false insecurity upon us all, divides us into those who deserve life and those who don’t. In this way, the great lie forms the basis of supremacy — the idea that some people matter and the rest do not — which makes our human systems vulnerable to takeover by the most malicious types of supremacist; for example, the white conservative evangelical Christian Nationalists who now are now broadcasting their clear intent to establish a fascist authoritarian rule in my country, the United States."

Anger, he goes on, is an appropriate response — if it's observant, restorative, and expectant. In other words: pay attention to what's really being said, replace these falsehoods with truths, and be hopeful that we can and must make a better world.

Sources

Arielle Angel, Jewish Currents, email newsletter, December 9, 2023

A.R. Moxon in The Reframe (Substack):
"An Appropriate Anger," October 29, 2023
"Channels of Rage," November 19, 2023

Unexpected, unrepeatable, embraceable: 'Fluke' by Brian Klaas

Who we are and what happens: these are inextricably linked. If we care about an event, it's because it happened to someone, and that someone — we tend to believe — must have played a role in it. This is how we form narratives, including the narrative of our own agency.

Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters is about this.

---

The author is Brian Klaas, a professor of global politics at University College London.

(I received an advance review copy from NetGalley. Fluke will be published by Scribner in January.)

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Anything can change the course of our lives. A cloud moves, and a plane doesn’t take off or changes its flight path. It matters who is or isn’t on the plane, whether the plane crashes, or where the airmen drop the bomb.

We know that chance occurrences make a difference in the outcome, yet we resist this notion, partly because it seems unfair. Some people live, others die, due to luck? We might as well say they were saved or destroyed for no reason at all.

And "no reason" isn't what we mean when we say we want "the real story" of "what happened." With no meaningful connections between who we are and what happens, we can't track a narrative. “We want a rational explanation to make sense of the chaos of life,” Klaas says.

Image: Pixabay

But these little reasons indeed seem to be the real reasons.

“Nobody tiptoes around with extreme care to make sure not to squish the wrong bug. Few panic about an irrevocably changed future after missing the bus,” Klaas observes. Yet how else, he asks, does the future get made?

If your parents hadn’t met, you wouldn’t be here. The same is true for your ancestors.

"We are the offshoots of a sometimes wonderful, sometimes deeply flawed past," and "our existence is bewilderingly fragile, built upon the shakiest of foundations." An asteroid killed the dinosaurs, which allowed all of us to be born millions of years later, and today you’ve subtly altered the future of humanity based on "whether you stopped to have coffee before you rushed out the door."

Yes, our actions are part of a chain of events. Turtles all the way down.

Could we have acted differently, though? Did we have free will then? Do we have free will, right now, to change anything at all?

When we look for a cause, we often see a fluke. The fluke isn’t nothing. It’s just not the meaning we originally hoped for. It’s something unexpected and unrepeatable, and we can embrace it.

Fluke is elegantly readable nonfiction, revolving thorny philosophical questions with ease. It poses the question: What theory makes the most sense to you?

You get to choose what you believe.

Or do you?

For more, see "Why Are We Here? Chaos Brought Us Together" (9 min read), which Books Are Our Superpower published today.

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A couple years ago, I wrote about another book by Prof. Klaas: Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us. The article is "Why are powerful people so terrible?" (4 min read).

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Enfield: 'I love how much I hate the word burnout'

Here are the three passages from Holy American Burnout!, a new release by Split/Lip Press, that most spoke to me.

Because I have thought about religious devotion in the context of moving my body:

"It's not that I don't believe in God; it's that I prefer bodies in motion, and I want my belief in God translated into reverential movement. God has always seemed inert, though I've been told He moves in us all." (p. 65)

Because anger is a valid response and it opens the door to change:

"Yes, to be a teacher and relatively conscious in america is to be in a rage almost all the time. Do you suffer in the mind or take up arms against the sea of troubles? You may recognize that the system is built on a one-size-fits-all curriculum that is given minor adjustments to suit the needs of your classroom. You may see how american education prepares certain individuals for the traps awaiting them outside school walls, and you may want them to understand both those traps as well as Shakespeare. You may be angry at those in power who continue to perpetuate these trappings, but you aren't faced with them on a regular basis. You're instead faced with the students who don't warrant or gain from your anger and can, in fact, be hurt by it. So you require something more like grace to navigate this system, or else the bitterness in your heart might melt and resolve you into a lifeless puddle trampled upon by the dancing feet of children." (p. 93)

Because commute leads to comm[b]u[s]t[ion]e:

"What's in a commute? When does it begin or end? Sure, the word implies an ending at either your workplace or home, but since we volley back and forth, maybe the entirety of our working lives is spent in one, prolonged commute. Such an individual exercise. We reach out occasionally and catch the attention or sympathies of a stranger or a co-worker kind enough to lend a ride, but in the end, we all have our own destinations. We can't stop moving.

I love how much I hate the word burnout. It's perfectly visceral. I can feel the burning of my muscles and the heated tension in my spine. Still, the machine grinds on, setting the transmission ablaze — burnt out. Burnout is frequently attributed to teachers, first year teachers especially, but it seems to me the greater american condition, bestowed upon anyone with a commute. * * * I see it there along the horizon too, a great american burnout. If you work the gears too hard, eventually the transmission will erupt. The car will have no choice but to idle.

* * *

Holy american Burnout, grant us the stillness of your fire this time." (p. 115)

Sean Enfield, Holy American Burnout!, Split/Lip Press, 2023

See also

Enfield mentions Baldwin.

'Antisemitism in the Gothic and Jewish Horror' with Dr Mary Going (YouTube)

Antisemitism in the Gothic and Jewish Horror with Dr Mary Going. A talk for Romancing the Gothic, 2023.

She talks about antisemitic tropes in Dracula, Nosferatu, and Paul Wegener's surviving golem film.

One observation of mine

A similarity (in my view) between Jewish and transgender identity: You feel stereotyped as someone who will do "the Jewish thing" or "the transgender thing," and you want to strike forth on your own path, but you may also be inclined to hide your identity in the process because you feel some threat or because you're imitating people who have felt that threat, and maybe that survival behavior is part of the identity."

What it looks like to interrupt a Nazi rally ('A Night at the Garden')

Marshall Curry's 7-minute documentary short, "A Night at the Garden," is on YouTube.

YouTube has age-restricted it, so you may need to go to YouTube to acknowledge the age-restriction before you can view it.

It shows a Jewish man interrupting a Nazi rally in New York's Madison Square Garden in 1939.

Learn more at anightatthegarden.com

By the way... "Who Paid For Millions of Fascist Pamphlets in the US in 1940?" Nazi Germany did, explained in ‘Prequel’ by Rachel Maddow. It's a 7-minute read on Medium. I've unpaywalled the link for you.

"Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz sought to link Donald Trump's Sunday rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City to a pro-Nazi gathering at the arena in 1939, suggesting the former president knows 'exactly what they’re doing there.'" — CNN www.cnn.com/politics/liv... [1/3]

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— Tucker Lieberman (@tuckerlieberman.bsky.social) October 27, 2024 at 2:54 PM

Walz is talking about this: tuckerlieberman.medium.com/ten-past-noo... [2/3]

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— Tucker Lieberman (@tuckerlieberman.bsky.social) October 27, 2024 at 2:55 PM

Today is a GREAT day to check out Marshall Curry's 7-minute documentary short, "A Night at the Garden," in which a Jewish man interrupts a Nazi rally in New York's Madison Square Garden in 1939. www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9gF... Learn more at: www.anightatthegarden.com [3/3]

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— Tucker Lieberman (@tuckerlieberman.bsky.social) October 27, 2024 at 2:58 PM

Sartre's review of that rally:

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— L O L G O P (@lolgop.bsky.social) October 29, 2024 at 6:30 AM

Keep reading

This is all nasty shit but also a pretty clear sign that these people have no moves left. www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

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— Drew Magary (@drewmagary.bsky.social) October 27, 2024 at 4:58 PM

Might be useful to remember that Miller was previously caught in leaked emails urging people to read “The Camp of Saints,” which is basically “The Turner Diaries” for the racist anti-immigrant right. Miller is a certified eugenicist piece of shit & his views are now mainstream Republican politics.

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— Dell Cameron 🦇 (@dell.bsky.social) October 27, 2024 at 6:18 PM

Miller presence aligns this entire procession with ideals firmly held by what used to be a fringe neo-Nazi element within the GOP. This is a Nazi rally.

— Dell Cameron 🦇 (@dell.bsky.social) October 27, 2024 at 6:23 PM

It’s just frankly not an exaggeration anymore. People really need to get over it. This is happening. www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-m...

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— Dell Cameron 🦇 (@dell.bsky.social) October 27, 2024 at 6:35 PM

They are staging a fascist rally in Madison Square Garden. This is not a drill. Do not sit out this election. The result of the election is absolutely consequential and will affect so many lives for generations.

— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran.bsky.social) October 27, 2024 at 5:47 PM

"It's just this amorphous group of people ... they are indeed the enemy from within" -- Trump is indulging in Infowars-level conspiracism

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.bsky.social) October 27, 2024 at 6:56 PM

USA Today headline doesn't reflect how racist this rally is. (Bluesky comment)

Could someone face consequences? (Bluesky comment)

One of the speakers, an apparently white man named David Rem, was arrested 33 years ago for riding a train with a suitcase with 40 pounds of cocaine, to which he pled guilty and for which he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. He claimed to be Trump's childhood friend; it seems he is not, but that doesn't stop the Trump campaign from lying about the friendship too. See:
The strange history behind Trump's “childhood friend” David Rem is speaking at the MSG rally. But how do they know each other? Marisa Kabas, October 27, 2024

Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe Performs Wildly Racist Set At Trump Rally In New York City Hinchcliffe made a series of vile comments about Latinos, Jews and Black people during Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden. Christopher Mathias, HuffPost, Oct 27, 2024

Vivian Jenna Wilson, the daughter Musk considers 'dead' just for being trans, has a few thoughts about that rally he was at.

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— Alex Andreou (@sturdyalex.bsky.social) October 29, 2024 at 6:30 AM

The best take I've seen on Trump's Nazi rally is that it wasn't intended to win anyone's vote but was an attempt by a candidate who knows he will lose to marshall his base for insurrection and violence. www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump...

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— Bryan Edward Stone (שָׁלוֹם) (@bestonetx.bsky.social) October 28, 2024 at 7:24 AM

NAACP Absolutely Slams Dr. Phil’s ‘Hard Work’ Claim At Trump MSG Rally: The civil rights organization called on the TV personality to “tell the WHOLE story” after his talk of America’s origins. Ben Blanchet, HuffPost, Oct 28, 2024

Authoritarianism Expert Breaks Down Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally: Ruth Ben-Ghiat also exposed the real purpose of one claim that was repeatedly made at the event. Lee Moran, HuffPost, Oct 28, 2024

Take a minute to read this excellent piece by @jamellebouie.net Gift link: That Revolting Rally Was a Sign of Weakness www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/o...

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— Kelly Barnhill (@kellybarnhill.bsky.social) October 29, 2024 at 8:15 AM

www.jta.org/2024/10/30/u...

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— Ron Kampeas (@kampeas.bsky.social) October 30, 2024 at 8:46 AM

Regarding what was said about Puerto Rico:

This “Island of Garbage” comment isn’t an isolated incident, and it goes beyond simple racism. Trump’s circle inherently does not consider islanders, those living outside the US Mainland, as real people. Anyone from Puerto Rico, Hawaii or US Pacific Island territories has seen this over and over.

— Robert Rath (@robertrath.bsky.social) October 28, 2024 at 9:25 PM

Note that in the very same rally, Tucker Carlson called Kamala Harris “Samoan-Malaysian.” That’s bizarre until you remember that American Samoa is—like Puerto Rico—a US territory. Many on the right fundamentally believe islanders, even in the State of Hawaii, aren’t “real” Americans.

— Robert Rath (@robertrath.bsky.social) October 28, 2024 at 9:31 PM

“Go back”: How Trump’s media allies have dismissed or denigrated “third world country” Puerto Rico www.mediamatters.org/diversity-di...

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— Media Matters for America (@mmfa.bsky.social) October 29, 2024 at 8:14 AM

A.R. Moxon:

...a speaker who I suppose we must refer to as a 'comedian' referred to Puerto Rico as "a floating island of garbage."

This was, in the eyes of those who control the platforms of communication, and in the halls of power, and in the minds of many comfortable and privileged people, beyond the pale in a way that none of the other things I listed apparently were. I find it interesting to ponder why. You might think that it was seen as beyond the pale because it was racist, but the entire Trump movement has been drenched in the most blatant racism from its inception. You might think that it was seen as offensive because Puerto Rico is a part of the United States, but everyone who was attacked from that stage represents some part of the United States. I think it was seen as offensive because there are a lot of voting Puerto Rican citizens living in swing states, so this particular instance of racist hate disrupted the one thing the press actually seems to think matters: the horse race of the election. It's not that it was racist or hateful or prefigured violence and death for real people—these sort of things are just business as usual—no, it's that it might actually swing the race, which means it was a gaffe.

All over the place, Republicans and journalists scrambled to walk it back and restore balance to the Force. When a Democrat makes a gaffe, the thing to do is report on it for several weeks in massive fonts. When a Republican makes a gaffe, the thing to do is to find a Democratic gaffe to counter it, and if one can't be procured, to make one up."

— A.R. Moxon, Apology Not Accepted, The Reframe, Nov 3, 2024

See also: Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally Was Even Worse Than You Think Social media posts from Jack Posobiec, a far-right influencer and conspiracy theorist, gave a behind-the-scenes look at Trump’s big rally. Christopher Mathias, HuffPost, Oct 30, 2024

Jack Posobiec explicitly says that "Antifa" dates back to the Weimar Republic, explicitly acknowledging that this administration is opposed to those who resisted the arrival of Adolf Hitler in Power.

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— CrimethInc. Ex-Workers' Collective (@crimethinc.com) October 8, 2025 at 3:10 PM

Psst — see this photo on Bluesky, February 2026. A large banner of Trump's face drapes over the outside of the RFK building housing the Department of Justice while masked military police patrol the street.

"Why would the state protect Jews (the default assumption here is “white Jews”) if it doesn’t protect Black people (some of whom are Jews) or working people (some of whom are Jews) or trans people (some of whom are Jews)?

It won’t."

“Give Me the Names of All Your Jews” Is this a prelude to asking for the names of all Black people on campus who could have experienced or witnessed racism in the workplace? Or all women, queers, or trans people? Probably not – that would be woke DEI and critical race theory stuff. Daniel Spector, Portside.org, April 8, 2026

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This, from The Check-In with Danielle Moodie and Jared Yates Sexton, Jun 10, 2026: