The Great Tech-Family Alliance
…we are now faced with a new authoritarianism. The tech industry, once able to peacefully bury its head in the golden sands of California, has woken up to its most important choice: whether to ally with the powers of the state—as Big Tech did during the COVID era, becoming the useful pawn of an authoritarian censorship apparatus—or to rapidly course-correct and ally itself with decentralized authority.
There is no greater decentralized authority than that of the family. And the philosophy of the early internet is at its nature, too, one of decentralization. It prizes creative destruction—birth and death and birth again—of ideas and companies, and the freedom that comes from ensuring that no central authority can ever control, stifle, or break the long arc of creation and innovation. This is fundamentally the philosophy of technology, and one we must ensure is embedded in our most consequential technologies going forward.
So far, so good.
We must also normalize working from home as a benefit for mothers of young children. Not a right, but a benefit. It is more important than fertility benefits, maternity benefits, child care benefits. I single out mothers here because we can’t ignore the trends showing that women workers are essential to the growth of the American economy—and we desperately need more of those working women to become mothers.
As someone raised in part by a mom who worked from home, I agree.
I was recently asked how I would make motherhood high status if given the opportunity, and many people were surprised by my suggestions. I didn’t mention tax incentives, reducing the cost of childbirth, or increasing the housing supply—all important parts of a pro-family agenda that others are better equipped to discuss. Instead, my suggestions were small, focused on seemingly insignificant changes to the culture, which can have an outsize impact on altering the status hierarchy of daily life. We are living in an age of memetic power and memetic war. Meme it and we will be it, the operating principle goes. This means that we need a society that praises the family in little ways, both on screen and off.
I would argue that technology is already doing a better job of this, as many platforms and popular influencers now celebrate motherhood, homeschooling or family-centric ways of living. But the physical world can help signify these priorities as well, through things like changing the name of “carpool lanes” to family lanes, making it a norm that families always board first in all forms of transportation, and ensuring that parking lots have family-reserved parking for the safety of mothers and children.
Nope. She lost me.
I've long had complicated thoughts on the concept of family. As a gay man, I've grown to resent the privileges granted to people who, by virtue of who they fuck, have kids (i.e. straight people). All those little concessions made for moms and dads and their children. Parents get away with murder in this culture, and the entitlement we teach them to expect is an astounding thing to behold.
Of course, my friends with kids don’t see it. It's like that analogy of culture being the water a fish swims in: the fish doesn’t know what water is, having always lived underwater, until it’s pulled from it. In the same way, we’re only made aware of our culture in its absence. Parents come of age expecting that the rest of us will make thousands of little compromises on their behalf. Not knowing any other way, those parents come to believe they deserve those concessions.
But as a dear friend once put it, "how is it my fault you fucked up your birth control?"
And yet my thoughts on the matter have evolved. I've learned to recognize the importance of strong family units in a healthy society. As I've grown, I've come to realize my immediate family unit was the greatest privilege I've been given. As a direct consequence, my childhood was idyllic. I owe much of my sense of security, safety, and confidence to my parents.
I've noticed too that as I get older, the friends that tend to really 'stick' are those that come from similar backgrounds — nuclear families (though not exclusively) with two parents who remain married (though there are some exceptions). It's not something I was conscious of when choosing my friends, but I wonder how this shared background has enabled certain relationships to last while others seem to fall away?
As I travel around the country, I meet a lot of angry, damaged, hurt people. The influence of trauma on the American public cannot be overstated, and I'm shocked by the trauma some have had to endure. Abuse, neglect, poverty, violence… It's astounding what so many people carry around in their minds and in their bodies.
While I once held resentment toward the privileging of 'family' in our culture, a bit of reflection helped me realize that I myself owe everything to a strong, healthy family — so why wouldn't I want to support the development of that same thing for everyone else?
Still, I have my limits, and I draw the line at “family lanes.”
Inside the Explosive Meeting Where Trump Officials Clashed With Elon Musk
Mr. Rubio had been privately furious with Mr. Musk for weeks, ever since his team effectively shuttered an entire agency that was supposedly under Mr. Rubio’s control: the United States Agency for International Development. But, in the extraordinary cabinet meeting on Thursday in front of President Trump and around 20 others — details of which have not been reported before — Mr. Rubio got his grievances off his chest.
Mr. Musk was not being truthful, Mr. Rubio said. What about the more than 1,500 State Department officials who took early retirement in buyouts? Didn’t they count as layoffs? He asked, sarcastically, whether Mr. Musk wanted him to rehire all those people just so he could make a show of firing them again. Then he laid out his detailed plans for reorganizing the State Department.
Mr. Musk was unimpressed. He told Mr. Rubio he was “good on TV,” with the clear subtext being that he was not good for much else. Throughout all of this, the president sat back in his chair, arms folded, as if he were watching a tennis match.
After the argument dragged on for an uncomfortable time, Mr. Trump finally intervened to defend Mr. Rubio as doing a “great job.” Mr. Rubio has a lot to deal with, the president said. He is very busy, he is always traveling and on TV, and he has an agency to run. So everyone just needs to work together.
The meeting was a potential turning point after the frenetic first weeks of Mr. Trump’s second term. It yielded the first significant indication that Mr. Trump was willing to put some limits on Mr. Musk, whose efforts have become the subject of several lawsuits and prompted concerns from Republican lawmakers, some of whom have complained directly to the president.
You hate to see it.
Interesting how there's no mention of this cabinet meeting over at NewsMax, Fox News, or most of the other conservative news sites.
Maybe the Times just got a scoop, but maybe the right-wing media doesn't want to cover this squabbling. Which do you think is more likely?
I was talking with a friend recently — a very intelligent, thoughtful, skeptical friend — and when I mentioned the Times, their response was to laugh. "Too left-wing — I don't trust what they say."
I don't disagree that the Times is pretty darn Liberal, but does that mean we can't trust anything they print?
I had a similar encounter with an adult man enrolled in a creative writing MFA program not that long ago. I sent him a link to an episode of Honestly with Bari Weiss and his response was, "I don't listen to that right-wing intellectual dark web stuff."
Huh. So here I have two people, each on opposite ends of the political spectrum, neither of whom are willing to engage with the ideas presented in media they don't like. Wouldn't so much as read or listen and engage with the ideas contained therein.
Now, let's be generous: maybe they just didn't want to read or listen to what I sent them. To be honest, I read or listen to things people send me maybe half the time. But now let's take them at their word: they don't want to engage with the ideas contained in the piece because it wasn't being delivered to them from a person or organization they liked.
Why does it seem we've given up on the pursuit of truth? Why does is seem that no one cares about facts or objective reality if they happen to conflict with their worldview? I posit that this is the reason people are resistant to media from outside their bubbles: they don't want to believe that maybe, just maybe, they don't know everything — or gods forbid, they might be wrong.
How do we have a society when people start willingly closing their eyes to reality — and that goes for Democrats and Republicans alike?
The answer: we don't.
She’s a Foot Soldier in America’s Losing War With Chronic Disease
About half of the county’s 22,000 residents were obese, a quarter of them smoked cigarettes and almost 20 percent were diabetic — numbers that had become increasingly typical in rural America, where working-age adults were dying at higher rates than they were 20 years earlier, according to data from the C.D.C. People in the country’s poorest places were now almost twice as likely to develop chronic disease as those who lived in wealthy, urban centers on the coasts, helping to create a political climate of resentment. Mingo County had been solidly Democratic for much of its history, but more than 85 percent of voters supported Donald J. Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
When we have billion-dollar corporations focused solely on generating profit, each advertising directly to the people, what did we expect would happen?
When Google and Facebook — advertising companies, not social media companies — have direct control over the algorithms that show us what they want us to see, all in the service of giving Mars and Pepsi and ConAgra and Monsanto and every other enormously wealthy corporation the ability to advertise to us right on the computer in we keep in our pocket, what did we expect would happen?
In a society organized around the accumulation of money and wealth above all else — above morality, above compassion, above human life, above happiness — what did we expect would happen?
This crisis we Americans find ourselves in — can we agree we're in a crisis? — has been a long time coming. When Reagan deregulated in the 1980s and Republicans cheered "trickle-down economics," when Bush 1 negotiated NAFTA and Clinton signed it, what did we expect would happen?
We Americans have prioritized access to cheap goods over the health of our economy and our citizenry. Saving money is the only thing we care about, and in the process we sold out our rural towns and factory cities, we sold out our fellow citizens who might not have the ability to control their impulses. Perversely, this doesn't affect those of us who can, and certainly not most of us fortunate enough to have an education. (And thus tend to skew to the Left.)
This country is grounded in a delusion that we are each in control of our lives. We call it individualism, and it's right there in the foundational document of America, the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. We tell ourselves this story that we're all equal to one another and thus we're all equally able to control our impulses, nevermind the science that says otherwise.
We unleash these million- and billion-dollar profit-seeking corporations on the most vulnerable populations, all under the guise of 'liberty.' Let them buy whichever sugary drink they want! Let them pick which fast food restaurant they can afford for dinner! And if they don't buy healthy food, let's blame them for it — after all, we choose to (and can afford to) eat our vegetables, so they must just be stupid (or lazy).
We Americans are so thoroughly convinced of the delusion of individual liberty (ignoring neurology, genetics, and environmental circumstance) that we use it to blame the poor, uneducated, and unhealthy for their poverty, ignorance, and sickness.
It is unspeakably cruel.
I've been sitting in this tiny cottage in central Idaho, sick as hell, for the last four days. I was hit with some kind of virus unlike anything I've experienced as an adult — extremely elevated heart rate, nausea, diarrhea, heart palpitations, an inability to feel warm (of which I was reminded is actually my body's response to an elevated temperature — which according to my watch, topped out at 104 degrees). It was the most unnerving feeling I've had as an adult — the complete loss of control of my body. No amount of controlled breathing could bring down my heart rate, no amount of focus would prevent my heart from skipping beats. I was convinced, very early that first morning, that I might not make it through the night.
All this at the conclusion of a day that was otherwise sublime. I ran errands that morning, tried out a new restaurant for lunch (perhaps it was food poisoning?), and drove to a hot springs in the mountains that night (or maybe a norovirus I picked up from the water?) where I sat in solitude for hours, reading Alan Watts' The Wisdom of Insecurity. I remember thinking there in the water that if I were to die there & then, I would die at some kind of peace.
Shitting my brains out on the toilet twelve hours later, I couldn't have felt any less at peace with death — certainly not in such an undignified way. In a hot spring in the mountains, alone? Yes. On the toilet in an Airbnb in a remote mountain town, surrounded by other people in houses just a few feet away, yet still alone? Absolutely not.
Funny how we carry around these precious little delusions. We invent these elaborate constructions about the way we think the world works, the stories we tell ourselves of who we are and what we mean to one another. None of it is real, of course, none of it grounded in anything external to ourselves. All these narratives we conjure are subjective — they exist only in our heads.
I have a few things on my mind that I have been wanting to work out on the page. A few topics where I feel I've been wrong or merely where my thinking has evolved over the time I've been writing here. Politics, artificial intelligence, death, my personal relationships. Yet I've been reticent to do this — why?
In the two years I've maintained Dispatches, it's been curious to watch the way my writing has brought some people closer, including a few folks I've never had the pleasure of meeting in person. More interesting is how my writing has pushed others away, particularly when I write about politics. Last summer, when faced with what felt like (and by all practical accounts was) a binary choice between Biden or Trump, I supported RFK. Friends I've known for years reacted with anger, derision, condescension, disbelief, their noses turning up and away. Eight months later, a few still refuse to speak to me.
I'm interested in those responses and what it says about our culture at this present moment. I think I've been fairly magnanimous with my opinions on the rest of the political spectrum (though not at the expense of humor). You're welcome to disagree. Yet as I've watched the first month of the second Trump presidency unfurl, I'm astounded by the reactions of those on the Right and the Left. It's like I'm witness to two entirely different realities, and I've begun to feel as though I might occupy a unique position in our culture — an interlocutor.
I was in the shower the other day, before the virus, when a question came to me: who is my intended audience? When I'm writing here on Dispatches, who am I writing this to?
Thinking on it, the most likely answer, however broad, was 'urban liberals.'
I spent my younger life living in cities, but about ten years ago, I realized they no longer made me happy (and perhaps never did). As expressed before, I felt the creeping gnaw of groupthink descend on liberals everywhere once Obama was elected, and though I couldn't have expressed it so clearly then, it was profoundly unsettling. Attending grad school in Portland was a hell of an experience — one I would not trade — but I started to notice how smug and certain many people around me were of the way they saw the world. There was a right and wrong way to live, and they were convinced they were living the right way.
At the time, I wasn't sophisticated enough to articulate my unease, but I was nonetheless compelled to leave. I feel no comfort surrounded by people that think as I do, and if I'm honest, I fear for those who aren't themselves bothered by orthodoxy. Yet there's something that compels most humans to feel secure in their worldview, to surround themselves with a community where they feel safe and protected. Inevitably, this invites groupthink. It's largely why a city like Portland exists (and needs to exist): a lot of people who live in these liberal enclaves have felt driven from their homes elsewhere — small, rural, conservative, often religious places where the intolerance of difference was rampant, repressive, and toxic. I grew up in one of those towns. I was gay, though not yet out, and the hatred, bigotry, intolerance I felt from my "community" was palpable.
No wonder people left and moved to cities. No one wants to feel hated or judged for what they are, and let's not mince words: for a long, long time, the provenance for that bigotry was conservatism. Mainly, though not exclusively, religious conservatism. It's right there in the name…conservative.
But things in this country have changed over the last twenty years. The culture is far more tolerant than it once was. I see this first-hand, living most of my adult life in small, rural towns across the Mountain West. Plainly, my sexuality no longer seems to be a point of contention. Sure, there are (and will always be) times when it comes up. Every time I walk into an auto parts store, I have to fight the instinct to deepen my voice and slow my gait a beat or two. I know how I look and sound — I'm thin, wear clothes that fit my body, and have a voice that once you hear it, can't be unheard as 'gay voice' — and in order to get the guys (always men) behind the counter to really listen to my questions, I can't help but code switch. But largely, my need to do this has faded with time. Some of this has come with age and with feeling secure in who I am, but some of it is the culture having changed. I rarely feel threatened over my sexuality like I once did.
But my point is this: I was subconsciously writing for urban liberals because they were the bubble from which I was escaping.
Or maybe I was writing to them because I blame them for the broken systems in which I live. Each time I hear a liberal react to something Trump does with horror or disbelief, a bit of rage flares. Where the hell have you been, I wonder. They aren't living where I am, that's for sure. Everywhere I go, in every small town across this country (aside from those clustered near moneyed enclaves), there's been strong support for what Trump is attempting to do — gut the federal government — for years. Years! So how can so many liberals be so shocked that Trump is following through on it?
It all comes down to trust. For years, I've watched friends and family — all well-meaning, thoughtful, loving people — put their faith in certain institutions. Often the same institutions I have some measure of faith in, too. Old-fashioned shoe-leather journalism: newspapers, cable news, etc. Education: many people in my life have at least a bachelors, and many of them have gone on to get a masters degree, too. And let's not forget government. Three foundational institutions in our culture that have served many of the people I know.
But most of my friends and family are not living in poverty. Most of my friends and family did not grow up in poverty. Most of my family and friends grew up with two loving parents that have remained married. And while most of my friends cannot afford a home, almost all have them have careers that might allow them to one day.
The people in my life are not a representative cross section of America.
But I would argue I live amongst a very representative cross section of America. My town, as well as the other small towns I've lived in over the years, are husks of what they once were. The husks of old lumber or paper mills dot these towns, empty buildings line the streets. Abandoned railroad rights-of-way hash the landscapes I love. It's obvious that better days are in the past, not the future.
I'm not here to litigate the economic reasons for this (though I would happily criticize the effects of NAFTA on rural America until I'm blue in the face), but we cannot deny it has happened. And when people in these towns are left without purpose, without a strong community, when their kids move to cities because there are no jobs at home, what do we expect people to do? Be happy with it?
There's this unreasonable expectation liberals have of people in rural America — that if things aren't working out for them economically, "just leave." Worse still, "learn to code." Remember when Hillary told the coal miners of West Virginia the government would put them out of business? What a condescending, tone-deaf thing to say. People of all kinds take pride in their work, however dangerous or outdated it might be, and to tell them we'll put them behind a desk, well, that sounds like hell to me. I'll pass on that promised monotony. Liberals, almost always more educated and better-paid, seem to think everyone wants to live as they do.
It's this condescension that rural people find so distasteful. I find myself recoiling from some things my liberal friends say — things that just slide out of their mouths — about rural people. Because people in rural spaces are more conservative, often more religious, often less racially diverse, they're labeled as 'stupid' or 'backwards.' I've seen this in my own profession — institutions like the New York Times send reporters into the rural areas once every four years to figure out just why on earth they could vote for someone like Trump. And that they have to send reporters out is precisely the issue: they aren't here already. Rural spaces are ignored, forgotten, and left behind.
What do you think this does to the trust people had in institutions like journalism and media? When you turn on the TV, your life is no longer reflected. Not forty years ago, much of the culture looked and sounded like you. I think it's undoubtedly a good thing to have more diversity in media and culture — white, middle America was for too long the default — but the culture has swung so far in the other direction. Now, rural white people are too often coded as dumb, unintelligent, ignorant, hateful. And while it certainly felt that way back in my home town growing up gay, I can promise you things have changed. Just because someone isn't "educated" doesn't mean they aren't intelligent, and it certainly doesn't mean they're stupid.
A vote for Trump does not mean someone is hateful or ignorant. That's what liberals still cannot seem to grasp.
But let's get back to trust.
What happens when every institution you once trusted no longer serves your best interest?
What happens when journalism no longer covers your town, or the issues you care about? What happens when the town newspaper folds, and now the only news organizations left are headquartered in faraway cities?
What happens when the universities you work tirelessly to send your kids to are full of people that think you are racist and bigoted just for being white? (Lest anyone say this doesn't happen, I can attest to this one personally, and at more than one university.) When they teach queer theory and identity politics and your children no longer share your values? I'm not advocating for or against those values, but just imagine watching younger generations move away for an education and economic opportunity, never to return? What do you think that does to a community?
I'll spare you the guesswork: it breaks the heart — and back — of the community.
And let's not get started on banks or the stock market or the government selling out your jobs to other countries.
And then the liberals talk about you with open condescension and derision.
Who would you trust?
My country, the United States, is in a mess.
We're in a precarious spot, teetering on the edge of an oligarchic dictatorship. Elon Musk is rampaging through the federal bureaucracy — a bloated, over-stuffed bureaucracy that needs to be audited and thinned, by the way! — with all the grace and magnanimity of an angry middle-schooler. It didn't have to be this way. But for so long, those on the Left insisted that the concerns of so many Americans were unjustified, irrational, unwarranted. The government wasn't too bloated, it was working for you, the economy is strong — just look at the stock market.
But the uncomfortable truth so many of these aghast liberals can't seem to wrap their minds around is this: the system hasn't been working for other people for a long, long time. The system has benefitted the wealthy, the investors, the corporations, the landowners, the banks we Americans bailed out in 2008. Both the Left and the Right give tax breaks to the already-rich and routinely sell out the poor. This has been happening for decades.
Do I think Trump is going to reverse this trend? Of course not. My family stands to benefit financially from another Trump term, just like we did during his first. I don't think Trump gives a rat's ass about anyone other than himself, and he give power and money to anyone that tickles his fragile ego. Musk, Putin, and every other grifter, despot, or billionaire. Let's not bullshit ourselves — we all know someone like him. Maybe a kid we went to school with, maybe some insecure guy at work. A deeply insecure man with a fragile ego is a dangerous thing to behold, for he will do anything to avoid feeling the ache of his insecurities. Anything.
As I've said before, we are all now at the mercy of his fragile ego. But the blame for this rests solely on the backs of over-educated liberals, on backs of the people who conflated their education with intelligence. Their entire ideology was supposedly grounded in the principles of Enlightenment — reason, empowerment of the individual, the goddamn social contract. Yet the beckon call of neoliberalism — the profound allude of money and comfort and (a false sense of) certainty — proved to be too strong, and they sold out their fellow citizen. Worse still, they continue to blame him for his failure.
I don't have a tidy conclusion to this musing, but I can say this much: I'm tired of subconsciously writing to an audience of people that seem to have no sense of curiosity, to people too afraid to venture out of their enclaves and ideological bubbles, to people who turn their nose up at an article or a podcast just because it doesn't fit their already-determined ideological and political worldview. I'm tired of translating for people who themselves express so little compassion for their fellow citizens, despite making so much noise to the contrary.
This profound incuriosity isn't confined to the Left, of course. But there's an unbearable hypocrisy to anyone loudly proclaiming to care about others, yet so obviously not giving a single shit about those who don't think as they do.
Maybe some day soon I'll have more sympathy for liberals, but not today.
