Five Things: Supervillains, Liberal Elites, Rogansphere, Draught, Dead Drugs
Hello and welcome back to Five Things!
I saw a headline recently and didn’t bother with reading the article. It was about people on the left side of the political spectrum trying to avoid the news at the moment. This totally resonates with me. While the planet is still heating up more than it should, Conservatives are ignoring what the leading scientists are proposing to slow down global warming. Instead, they turn it into a battle for the rights of the ordinary citizen to drive the car he or she wants to drive and to heat the house in any way possible. And in addition to that, the weirdest freaks get nominated for positions in the next US administration. We now live in societies that have been built upon amazing scientific achievements and which now openly doubt that science has a legitimacy and actually works. This is insane. Why do we give so many stupid people a voice? The next health secretary of the USA is against vaccinations. And talks about the worm in his brain. If this were a movie, people would say this is were the script really got to bizarre. But it is the reality we are living in right now.
We have to stop making stupid and evil people famous.
Don’t worry, I’ll read news again, but it really is a lot right now. They want us to not care and to shut up and of course this is not what we’ll do, ever. But the insanity is just a bit much right now. Also, the campaign for the federal election in Germany just started and it will be awful. The conservative CDU/CSU will argue that under the leadership of the Social Democrats (SPD) everything went down the drain, even when effectively now the stuff is falling apart that had been neglected for 16 years of Merkel. The liberal FDP will talk about how only they can save the white man from having to buy a heatpump or an EV (both apparently unmanly), the Greens will know everything better and show off their moral superiority, while the populists on the left and the right will openly show off how deep they can crawl into Putin’s butt. Meanwhile, the chancellor will argue that while everybody is yelling and screaming, he’s the one working and getting the country back on track. Let’s see how this will evolve.
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The Supervillain Is the Hero Now
This is something I noticed a while ago. We are obsessed with people who are clearly evil. Why is that? Do we really want to find out if reality is a bit like the movies and at the end the good guy wins? I’d rather not have evil guys becoming famous anymore.
Twilight of the American elite
It’s not just a problem of the American elite, it’s the same in Germany. The academic liberals are too far removed from the working-class people who they say they represent best. How can we fix this?
Don’t underestimate the Rogansphere. His mammoth ecosystem is Fox News for young people
The last campaign showed how fragmented the media landscape is by now. While the Harris campaign had lots of superstars amplifying her message, the MAGA campaign could rely on a network of right wing media creators. This is scary stuff.
Drought Is an Immigration Issue
Lots more people will try to reach the USA and the EU than ever before. I understand this. If you have no hope for a future in which you can feed your children, you pack up your things and leave. Global warming will make many places in the world uninhabitable. We need to deal with this. Better borders won’t help.
5 Drug Highs That Define the Grateful Dead’s Legacy
On October 24, 1990 I went to my only Grateful Dead Concert, which turned the venue, an old indoor sports arena from the late sixties, into a weird Hippie happening. It was a cold and grey fall evening in Hamburg and women were wearing colorful dresses and men were wearing tie-dye t-shirts. I was probably the only one who was not intoxicated. The Dead were one of my favorite bands back then and I inhaled (haha, great pun) everything I could read about them. Their drug use was legendary, as documented in the book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tome Wolfe.
That's all for today!
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