"Addiction Is the Goal"

"Sure, let's give it a name, something like TikTok depression or Silicon Valley zombification or whatever. The key fact is that users can feel it, even if they don't have a label or a diagnosis. They feel it even if the technocrats refuse to tell them about it. Just listen to the words people use to describe their toxic online interactions: doomscrolling, trolling, doxxing, gaslighting, etc.
"In the year 2024, this is what we do for fun."

Ted Gioia at The Honest Broker in 2024 writes about "dopamine culture."

At Culture: An Owners Manual, W. David Marx discusses internet-driven fads.

As does Amanda Mull at Bloomberg.

You Got Two Ways to Go

"Ceasing to think of freedom as the possession of many options would be no small rupture. What might take its place? Abandoning a consumerist worldview might not be the worst thing for humanity, and for Americans in particular—it might lead to a sturdier value system, maybe one more concerned with the common good. But the resulting vacuum could just as easily be filled by Trump's idea of freedom, one based on power and sovereignty over others, and on screwing the other guy before he screws you. The cruelty of this vision almost demands a reinvigoration of choice, an effort to salvage what had made this human impulse so liberating to begin with."

Gal Beckerman at The Atlantic reviews Sophia Rosenfeld's The Age of Choice.

"Little Trumps"

"Our national crisis will not be correctly perceived, let alone solved, until we recognize that the root of the problem lies in that supposed repository of virtue, the American people. The prestige media's rote expeditions to rural diners in Iowa to discover the Real America are wearing distinctly thin at this juncture, because what lies at the core of Trump's support is a not-insignificant fraction of would-be totalitarians who possess the same mentality as those who lynched Black people in the Jim Crow South, mobbed Jews during Kristallnacht and beheaded professors during Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution."

Mike Lofgren at Salon warns of an "America slid[ing] into totalitarianism."

"This Pressure to Build a Personal Brand Is One of the Great Pathologies of the Past Three Decades"

"The same anxieties that attracted people to New Thought at the dawn of American capitalism would later fuel demand for the positive-psychology movement, which has since been enshrined in the curricula of American business schools. At first glance, this movement may appear unassailable. Its goal, after all, is to make people happier and encourage them to 'flourish' in their work lives. However, as Baker demonstrates, its primary role is to lend intellectual support to the entrepreneurial ethic. 'Psychology is the idiom through which entrepreneurship is discussed,' he writes. In fact, 'it's not always obvious where positive psychology ends and entrepreneurship begins.' How could it be, when business schools now employ teams of psychologists, urging future leaders to embrace 'grit,' find 'flow,' adopt a 'growth mindset,' and establish their own personal brand? 'Popular psychology,' Baker writes, 'encouraged Americans to cultivate an attractive personality that would help them win the affection of their coworkers and bosses and thus ascend the corporate ladder—instead of striving to embody the transcendent moral values constitutive of the older notion of character.' Baker is keen to expose the harm this movement's entrepreneurial turn has caused the culture at large. The book opens with the tragic story of Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos and the author of Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose. Hsieh died in a fire at the age of forty-six after barricading himself in a shed with nitrous-oxide canisters, a propane tank, and candles. It's a cautionary tale about the Faustian bargain 'positive psychology' struck with the startup world."

Drew Calvert at Commonweal reviews Erik Baker's Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America.

"The Perfect Pathology for Citizens of a Democracy"

"This is  If merit, not rank, determines social value and achievement, as is meant to be the case in our country, then your average person will be confronted every day with the question of why they haven't experienced greater success—a toxic recipe for self-righteousness, shame, anxiety, and self-consciousness. Especially when, thanks to our deranged media environment, the apparent success of others—including those we consider undeserving—is constantly in view. Why should they be so lucky, we might ask ourselves. Why isn't my life like theirs? Why should I have to change my behavior to accommodate them? Why don't people respect or value me?"

Alan Elrod at The Bulwark argues that "Trump's Secret Weapon Has Always Been Status Anxiety."

"The Culture War Gives Life Shape and Meaning"

"Twenty-first-century communalism is a peculiar kind of communalism. For starters, it's very socially conscious and political. Whether you're on the MAGA right or the social-justice left, you define your identity by how you stand against what you perceive to be the dominant structures of society. Groups on each side of the political divide are held together less by common affections than by a common sense of threat, an experience of collective oppression.  Today's communal culture is based on a shared belief that society is broken, systems are rotten, the game is rigged, injustice prevails, the venal elites are out to get us; we find solidarity and meaning in resisting their oppression together. Again, there is a right-wing version (Donald Trump's 'I am your retribution') and a left-wing version (the intersectional community of oppressed groups), but what they share is an us-versus-them Manichaeism." 

David Brooks at The Atlantic warns that "[d]oomsaying can become a self-fulfilling prophecy."

"Dark Counterprogramming to the American Story"

"The most persistent conspiracy theories can survive on the fringes for decades, before suddenly reappearing with new details, villains and heroes, often at a time of social upheaval or economic dislocation. Sometimes, these beliefs can erupt into action, as they did on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of President Donald Trump's supporters broke into the U.S. Capitol."

David Klepper of the Associated Press writes that "Even Before The Revolution, America Was A Nation Of Conspiracy Theorists."

"Our Values Tend to Cluster Around Certain Poles, Described as 'Intrinsic' and 'Extrinsic'"

"When a society valorises status, money, power and dominance, it is bound to generate frustration. It is mathematically impossible for everyone to be number one. The more the economic elites grab, the more everyone else must lose. Someone must be blamed for the ensuing disappointment. In a culture that worships winners, it can't be them. It must be those evil people pursuing a kinder world, in which wealth is distributed, no one is forgotten and communities and the living planet are protected. Those who have developed a strong set of extrinsic values will vote for the person who represents them, the person who has what they want. Trump. And where the US goes, the rest of us follow."

George Monbiot at The Guardian calls Donald Trump "a walking, talking monument to extrinsic values."

"Crowdfunded Ministries of Truth"

"A temptation always exists to blame media bias on a closely held conspiracy, but the real drivers lie deeper. Creed and greed might fill the medium with the messages, but it is the medium itself that defines polarization—its true message. If ad-driven media manufactured consent, reader-driven media manufacture anger. If ad-driven media served consumerism, reader-driven media serve polarization. There can be no 'solution' for a shift of such magnitude. 'How do we fix polarization?' is the wrong question. The right question is, 'How are we going to live with it?'"

Andrey Mir at City Journal argues that the Internet has allowed for "the mutation of journalism into post-journalism."

"Admitted That His Chief Foe Was a 30-Something Single Woman With a Post-Graduate Degree"

"Unlike Carlson's other phobias, I think this one is rooted in reality. Critical race theory remains an opaque legal philosophy and not an instruction manual for K-12 students; immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than those born here; and vaccine mandates save lives. But women with agency? We threaten his whole world."

Regarding Tucker Carlson, Ana Marie Cox at NBC News writes that "lately it's become clearer what his greatest source of terror is: women in power."

"This Is Not a New Problem. What Is New Is the Medium"

"'Cancel culture is much more focused on punishment. Social media is like an accelerant to an arson. Everything moves rapidly and out of control. So, the slightest spark creates an avalanche, if you will, of retribution. There's no room for error. And the response is not to start a conversation or a dialogue, but to shut the person out in some way.'"

Ted Koppel at CBS Sunday Morning discusses "cancel culture."

"Religion Is Never Created nor Destroyed, in Any Society, Merely Transformed from One Form to Another"

"No, this isn't about sky fairies or who you personally profess as your lord and savior. Religion is fundamentally about dealing with reality via myth, ritual, and folklore, rather than data, empiricism, and skeptical inquiry. There's no less of it now than ever before. In fact, I'd go further and posit The Law of Conservation of Religion"

Antonio Garcia-Martinez at The Pull Request argues that "[t]he seculars don't understand their own religiosity because, frankly, they don't know enough about religion to recognize it."

"But the Paying Audience Loves the Show and That's All That Matters"

"The current GOP is less interested in the messy business of governing than it is in performative indignation and the memes that play well in social media and on cable television. Memes, it shouldn't need to be said, are not ideas and don't require a consistent set of principles. The result is a kind of free-floating nihilism, as the GOP chases narratives that stir outrage, generate clicks, shake loose grassroots contributions, and play well on Newsmax and Fox."

At Politico, Charles Sykes shows how "Republicans' attacks on Big Business are as fake as their phony working-class act."

But Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, interviewed by Zack Stanton, contends that "[w]hat the GOP cares about and what major businesses care about are, increasingly incompatible."

"These Are People Who Feel Like They've Lost Something"

"The participation of people with middle- and upper-middle-class positions fits with research suggesting that the rise of right-wing extremist groups in the 1950s was fueled by people in the middle of society who felt they were losing status and power, said Pippa Norris, a political-science professor at Harvard University who has studied radical political movements."

At The Seattle Times, Todd C. Frankel reports that "[n]early 60% of the people facing charges related to the Capitol riot showed signs of prior money troubles."

"It Is Baked into Every Apple Pie, and It Lurks Beneath Purple Mountains' Majesty"

"The line between cooperation and conspiracy, between politicking and plotting, is necessarily subjective. But episodically throughout American history, in every century from the 17th to the 21st, some considerable share of Americans has fallen under the spell of a fantastical, fevered vision of conspiracy, usually with occult and Satanic elements. Most often, these conspiracy theories are politically oriented, but sometimes they pop up outside of politics, as in the Salem witch trials of the 1690s, the Satanic-day-care-abuse panic of the 1990s, and the Satanism panic touching rock music and role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons that immediately preceded that fiasco, echoes of which can still be heard in dark whisperings that the Harry Potter franchise is a Luciferian propaganda project. Richard Hofstadter famously called the associated political tendency 'the paranoid style in American politics,' tracing its history back to the Illuminati panic that gripped the New England clergy in the 18th century. Hofstadter makes an important and often underappreciated point: Conspiracy theories attract lunatics, but their relevance extends far beyond the bughouse."

Kevin D. Williamson at National Review explains "Why Americans Adore Conspiracy Theories."

And Greg Miller at Knowable Magazine writes about "a new type of 'conspiracy without theory' that relies on sheer assertion and repetition rather than evidence and reason."

"Guided Apophenia"

"QAnon has often been compared to ARGs and LARPs and rightly so. It uses many of the same gaming mechanisms and rewards. It has a game-like feel to it that is evident to anyone who has ever played an ARG, online role-play (RP) or LARP before. The similarities are so striking that it has often been referred to as a LARP or ARG. However this beast is very very different from a game." 

Reed Berkowitz of Curiouser calls the QAnon conspiracy theory "gaming's evil twin. A game that plays people."

And Daniel N. Gullotta at The Bulwark places QAnon into a longer history of Satanic panics, as well as reviewing Mike Rothschild's The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything.

"If You Don't Define Yourself, Somebody Else Will"

"Obama has been attacked on the Democratic left, criticised for failing to see the urgent necessity of police reform. But that is to miss the point. It's because change is urgent and necessary that Democrats need to argue for it in a way that wins, rather than loses, support." 

Jonathan Freedland at The Guardian discusses "the gap between what people say and what other people hear."

"Floods the Information Environment With So Many Lies, Half-Truths and Theories That the Public Becomes Disoriented, Confused and Distrustful of Everyone"

"Trump's strategy is sophisticated, even if his style is not. As a profligate and frequently unsuccessful litigant, he almost certainly knows that his lawsuits will not reverse the election. To succeed, however, he must merely reach two attainable goals: convince Republicans that the election was not free and fair (as 70 percent of them already believe, according to a recent  Politico/Morning Consult poll); and convince much of the rest of the public that the election result is in doubt, and can never be known for sure. Those outcomes will frustrate and distract Democrats, outrage and mobilize Republicans, and—most important from Trump's point of view—position him to remain agitator-in-chief after he leaves office." 

Jonathan Rauch at Persuasion discusses Donald Trump's "Firehose of Falsehood."

And David Shaywitz at The Bulwark presents "The Marketing Theory Which Explains Why Trump Owns the GOP."

"To Quantify the Unquantifiable"

"But Lindsay Rogers might have had a more fundamental critique than that: The idea of political polling was broken to start with. It was a falsely scientific way to put numbers on a concept that can't be measured in the first place, and which changes shape every time you try. And indeed, it is the very elusiveness of political opinion—its resistance to being pinned down—that makes democracy necessary. When we measure mass or distance, we know we can do so accurately. But our values, attitudes and opinions are not concrete but fluid. They change with time—in the days and weeks before an election, as well as in the years in between them. Which is precisely why democracy requires that every few years, we vote anew."

David Greenberg at Politico recalls "The Political Scientist Who Warned Us About Polls."

And at Vox, Dylan Matthews interviews David Shor about contemporary polling problems.

"Our Greatest Presidential Embarrassment"

"Tonight, Trump's sycophants and enablers find all their dreams that his presidency would be the most consequential and important in American history crashing down around them. We should all remember Trump as he presented himself in this monumental moment. As a babbling, incoherent, conspiracist."

Amanda Carpenter at The Bulwark reacts to Donald Trump's post-election press conference.