Our Era of Oligarchic Tone Deafness Can't Last Forever
Typical social media feeds offer up to users a constant stream of wealth porn while ordinary Americans’ cost of living continuously rises. But somehow our elites and their media surrogates balk at the gall of populist responses.
The contrast between your lived experience and your social media feed’s wealth porn and status-quo-worshipping political commentary can make you feel insane. But it’s conditions themselves that are extreme, and unsustainably so. (Ben Jared / PGA Tour via Getty Images)
Almost nobody can afford the basic necessities of life. But here’s the news the algorithm is feeding us:
Donald Trump opened the White House for his donor’s gladiatorial extravaganza — just ahead of that donor’s push for new federal policy that would allow him to monopolize boxing.
Barack and Michelle Obama have built an $850 million shrine to themselves and are trumpeting its self-portraits and audiovisual displays about them and their lives.
After helping cover up her husband’s cognitive decline and creating the conditions for Trump’s return to the White House, Jill Biden isn’t apologizing; she’s instead now on a recrimination tour to try to sell books.
Multimillionaire celebrities were given free tickets to Knicks games whose tickets were reportedly selling for $200,000 a pop in a city where one in four people live at or below the poverty line.
Jeff Bezos is campaigning to avoid paying more taxes, and Mark Zuckerberg just docked his $300 million yacht near the Seattle office where he just did mass layoffs.
Elon Musk just became the world’s first trillionaire, thanks in part to rule changes that effectively force anyone fortunate enough to have a 401(k) to invest their savings in his government-subsidized money-losing company.
Those jubilant headlines and viral social media posts aren’t merely jammed down our throats along with $5-a-gallon gas prices and ever-increasing health insurance and grocery bills. They are algorithmically force-fed to us with a side of corporate punditry expressing shock and horror that candidates like Graham Platner, Abdul El-Sayed, and other populists down the ballot are promising to burn this entire rotting system down to the studs.
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