theory based analysis of the new Epstein documents and his connection with Trump.

Deeper dives on the story:

Secular Talk

Drop Site News

We’re living in a time when politics has become pornographic…pure stimulus, pure confirmation bias, pure ideology. The postmodern conservative doesn’t seek truth; they seek arousal through outrage. Their politics perform themselves before they think themselves, cycling through prepackaged narratives that gratify resentment the way pornography gratifies fantasy or narrative…mechanically, repetitively, without reflection.

The Charlie Kirk incident made this visible…the narrative was already written before the facts even emerged. The algorithmic priests of the right sermonized their version of reality…identity reaffirmed, outrage consumed, truth irrelevant.

What defines postmodern conservatism? It isn’t coherence but performance…it’s fragmented pastiche identities held together by resentment and disavowal. They know it’s false but act as if it’s true. Their victimhood is the last refuge of meaning in a world hollowed out by capitalism and digital simulation. When truth becomes unbearable, narrative becomes narcotic. Postmodern conservatism is that addiction…the refusal to wake up from the simulated narrative they’ve been fed with algorithms.

Stay curious.

I wrote an essay recently on this…but i realized there’s more to say.

Anyway…i try to go deeper in connecting this idea of desire machines, status quo propaganda, and forms of radicalization.

And Twitter happens to be a great case study.

Stay curious.

I listened to his Turning Point speech…and I have some thoughts.

So…talking about Tucker Carlson and President Trump. I think Tucker is going to be the follow up guy to Trump. To put it simply.

Also…Tucker is better at playing politics…

Anway…in this one I talk about how they both weaponize aesthetics and catharsis in order to replace real potential political solutions (I’m speaking into the void on this one). They don’t want to solve systemic problems…their politics run on spectacle, not substance.

All i’m saying…think about what really gets the “elites” scared? It’s always someone who represents real change. Who often represents real change? Someone that is backed by the average voter AND has proposed solutions for systemic change.

Stay curious.

I’ve been doing a long term project that has Peter Thiel in my view. I saw that he did an interview. He said…

Douthat: It seems very clear to me that a number of people deeply involved in artificial intelligence see it as a mechanism for transhumanism…for transcendence of our mortal flesh…and either some kind of creation of a successor species or some kind of merger of mind and machine.

Do you think that’s all irrelevant fantasy? Or do you think it’s just hype? Do you think people are raising money by pretending that we’re going to build a machine god? Is it hype? Is it delusion? Is it something you worry about?

Thiel: Um, yeah.

Douthat: I think you would prefer the human race to endure, right?

Thiel: Uhhhhh…(followed by an uncomfortable silence).

Douthat: You’re hesitating.

Thiel: Well, I don’t know. I would—I would…

Douthat: This is a long hesitation!

Thiel: There’s so many questions implicit in this.

Douthat: Should the human race survive?

Thiel: Yes.

Douthat: OK.

Thiel: But I also would like us to radically solve these problems.

Which problems Peter boy? Huamnity itself? Do you see humanity itself as a problem?

Anyway here are some snippets from this episode…

And here’s what I want you to sit with in this episode: how often, in our current moment…in the way our institutions behave, the way Silicon Valley corporations talk, the way billionaires posture and position themselves, there’s this underlying assumption that their vision of the future is not just likely, but right. It's inevitable. It's correct. That it’s supposed to happen. That the world is naturally bending toward their plans, their desires, their aesthetic, their software.

It's all naturalllllllllll. (We are told)

But look closer…that “inevitability” they preach—it’s not a prediction. It’s a claim. A flex. A power move disguised as foresight. They speak as if the future were already written, when what they’re really saying is: "we should be the ones who get to write the future. I can't have you normies realize it because you'll mess it all up. But shusssssshhhhhhh let me cosplay my insecurities in the form of me being your daddy overlord."

Thiel is the example of my new category…the bishop. The one who hides behind the scenes, mostly, not always, hence he did an interview and look everyone thinks he's a psycho, so he's not being a very good bishop. But he's a bishop. It's the guy that guides a bunch of priest to say and do all sorts of really dumb things. That’s the mindset. That’s Peter Thiel.

Watch his interviews, read his essays, and it’s there—not even hidden. This quiet but constant esoteric entitlement. He thinks he's God. As if he is participating in some divine order. As if his role is not to serve the world, or even influence it, but to shape it in his image. And I find that deeply concerning—not just ideologically, but spiritually, and…you know…societally. Also, i find it concerning for everything involved in space and time. Super low stakes.

**

Because this isn’t about innovation. This isn’t about progress. Thiel is not here to tweak the code of liberal capitalism…he is here to run the final update. His vision is theological in scale and totalitarian in ambition. He doesn’t want to improve the system. He wants to end it…to replace history with a willed narrative, and to replace us with what he thinks should come after us.

He calls it perfection. I call it a billionaire tantrum after a psychotic break that had a touch of schizophrenic paranoia.

It’s not conservatism. It’s not libertarianism. It’s not even transhumanism in the sci-fi sense. It’s the quiet, deliberate engineering of a post-political, post-human, algorithmic future.

Stay curious.

Trump’s ICE raids and National Guard deployment in California expose the real machinery of power—distraction, narrative control, and the manufactured image...it's a spectacle.

So this started with a Substack note that semi-blew up, and it pushed me to expand on something I’ve been thinking about for a while: rebellion, aesthetics, and how edginess functions as a kind of political currency (or all of those combined do).

I talk about Red Scare. But this isn’t just about them. It’s about the death of irony, the collapse of aesthetics into ideology, and what happens when leftist politics forget how to maintain an edge in favor of an oversimplified and marginalizing ethic.

I talk jouissance (Lacan and stuff), performative rebellion, reactionary grifting, and the slow shift of “edgy” from leftist cultural critique to right-wing nihilism. I touch on why moral posturing turned the liberal left into the new status quo—and why Dasha and Anna’s (Red Scare ladies) vibe shift might be the most revealing political litmus test for our current cultural and political moment.

This episode is about how rebellion gets hollowed out, how irony can curdle into belief, and how our politics are increasingly built not from principles, but from vibes.

Are you ruled by reason…or by desire, rage, and the need for transgression? Is that really a base for a moral framework? Anyway…i’ll have more stuff around this idea. I need to further develop how nihilism is at the heart of the rot….

Stay curious.

Article that I referenced in the episode:

The jumping off point for this episode:

Society, at its core, thrives on a delicate balance between conformity and controlled deviation. The deviation is the accepted level of neurosis where society will not call you psychotic. It requires people to give themselves to authority at some level to function—to accept its norms, rules, and boundaries, even as…