March 1, 2026

It’s a new month and this typically means a reflection on the past month. Well, the first two months of this year have been so cold and freezing that I’ve basically been stuck inside, and too much inside my own head. I’ve gotten a lot of writing done, explored a lot of subjects, and yet, only read two complete books. From an intellectual standpoint, I feel very behind, but there is something freeing about going at your “own pace” even when it’s glacial. Yes I have spent way too much time in Fortnite, to the degree I actually dream of tycoon style creator islands. But I suppose that’s an upgrade for my nightly misadventures, introducing some whimsy into the bizarre machinations of my unconscious mind.

The direction I want to go right now: What words have become so overused in the current vernacular as descriptors of a particular ideology, political alignment, or ideal that have been rebranded so many times that they have not only lost their original meanings, but in their overuse have essentially become meaningless and can mean whatever you want them to mean? To me, the labels of ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal,’ ‘Republican’ and ‘Democrat’ mean absolutely nothing besides the ‘red’ or ‘blue’ jersey you can imagine a political candidate (usually someone who is entirely self-interested and looking to use their political position to rub elbows with people who will make them filthy rich) wearing in a ridiculous game of tearing up the midfield while the fans murder each other in the stands. Yes, I’m being sarcastic, but you understand the degree to which American politics are, indeed, the greatest spectator sport gone horribly wrong.

The real consequences of politics can have far-reaching effects. I’m not saying that politics are ineffective, because clearly they are doing something, even if it’s not productive. The issue is that identifying as ‘Republican’ and ‘Democrat’ is simply what side of the aisle you’re standing on. And that ties into the idea that people use ‘freedom’ for, to pass legislation that makes your supporters be able to live with a bit less friction, with often disastrous consequences. I think we do need to have a lot more than a bilateral political binary because this is how the extremes have become so powerful in today’s world. 

Yes, the machinery those labels control is very real. The labels are meaningless only to get people to take sides so that they can keep score, even if most people aren’t keeping track of the actual goals, which are happening in plain sight while most people are too busy fighting in the stands supporting their meaningless ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ flags. If you actually look at the definitions of conservative and liberal, you’ll find conservatives who push expensive social programs and liberals who want to return to 19th century agrarianism. It’s all about picking red or blue, and I choose purple. 

As for ‘elitism’ what ‘elitism’ truly is involves those who live at the extreme opposite ends of the political spectrum in order to make their lives feel meaningful. People are taught they need an ‘enemy’ and unfortunately, one of those enemies has become trans folks, to both ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ people, people like me are an easy target to blame everyone else’s problems upon. I’m working on trying to elucidate how to interpret ‘elitist’ behavior in today’s vernacular and how both sides of the political spectrum seem to interpret ‘freedom.’

What we end up with are two different faces of ‘elitism’: the economic and the cultural. Obviously, the economic elite have all the power, and as it turns out, are typically extreme in their political views because their position allows them the ‘freedom’ (there’s that word again) to operate often in the shadows, using their vast resources to incentivize a ‘cultural’ elite to take up arms against one another. But at the end of the day, both types of elites are happy to go to dinner parties together and enjoy each other’s polite company, because the war is fought among the masses, not in the ballrooms. It’s not that they don’t ideologically disagree with each other; they certainly do. But the whole “gentleman’s club” vibe of the elite has never changed. And when the ‘cultural’ elite get to rub elbows with the actual economic elite, it gives them purpose and the right to be an ‘expert.’ 

What’s sad is that anyone believes that social justice is an extremist view. Social justice should be a bipartisan issue. And yes, the word ‘elitist’ is thrown around far too liberally. As is the word ‘fascist’, although there are actual fascist tendencies being seen in many world governments today. It might seem to be a ‘conservative’ movement, but it’s really just fringe groups that have a lot more of a platform thanks to the existence of social media. 

The real issue is that most people aren’t careful enough with their word choices, when the elite know exactly how to weaponize the words like ‘freedom’ that have turned to silly putty. I’d argue ‘success’ and even something as seemingly straightforward like ‘intelligence’ have been so semantically bleached that they need to be reclaimed before the former means ‘your bank balance’ and the latter means ‘how well you use AI to distract, confuse, or con people out of their hard-earned cash and their time.’

I want to use my resources to help people; trust me, I’ve tried, and it’s not only thankless, but entirely fruitless. There are organizations Emily and I support, like Green Up Vermont and the 4K Fun Run, who have proven that the money goes to their intended purposes. But most nonprofits (not all but too many) are just tax shelters for the rich, even if there are quite a few that also happen to help real everyday people, even if by accident. 

I found gaming algorithms and stripping everything down to efficiency of the grind absolutely exhausting and soul-wrecking. It’s funny that many of the content creators I follow now say they feel like they’re in slow motion, that they read too slow, take too long to come out with a video. But I would say their intentional practice of taking their time is actually an advantage. When I slowed the hell down and started asking rough and tough questions about the true sources of my bitterness and frustrations, I recognize that even as someone who would be considered economically elite (seemingly by total chance of meeting Emily on a writer’s lift but the fact remains), I’m suffering just the way most everyday people are. I’m isolated, marginalized, and even ‘unalived’ by people who “loved me” previously because I’m trans and have so much more money than they do, people I would’ve happily helped if they hadn’t been so openly cruel. Especially those who say I went against God… like they’re authorities on that subject. Like they know the mind of their Divine Creator. FFS.

The question is, even if we reclaim these powerful words for ourselves, what then? I can write all about it in a book that maybe a dozen people will read. Still, I know there’s an audience for reclaiming the definitions of words we live by, and yet, don’t fully comprehend the meaning of… let’s add a few more to the pool that Neil Postman brought up in Technopoly, God rest his poor soul: ’ ‘truth,’ ‘fact,’ ‘wisdom,’ ‘money,’ ‘history’. Because our personal conceptions of ‘success’ have a lot to gain from those words having squishy meanings, too. We live in a world with ‘fact’ being a misrepresented statistic, ‘truth’ being your personal opinion, ‘wisdom’ being what that billionaire wrote in his book, ‘money’ being a fiat mode of exchange that is printed into oblivion, and ‘history’ being where we’ve been and what a lot of people would like to repeat.

I think of all these words, ‘truth’ is the one I most desperately want to reclaim. We have Trump’s ‘Truth Social’ which basically KO’d the word ‘truth’ the second that horrible platform launched. It’s funny because we hear about a lot of people beginning to ‘live their truth’ which is a good thing I think, but the fact that it’s seen as an act of bravery… does it mean that the God’s honest truth is, in fact, now an act of rebellion against what Stephen Colbert famously called ‘truthiness?’

It’s funny how often my gut tells me how full of BS someone I’m trying to take seriously truly is. As for “living my truth” I really dislike that phrase, it being a “shield against accountability.” (Gemini’s phrasing) If there’s one thing I do agree with grumpy cultural critics on, it’s people’s allergy to holding themselves accountable for their own actions. No matter what you might believe or think in your head, I judge people by their actions and hold them accountable for them, barring some extreme extenuating circumstances. I’m far from perfect. I can get very grumpy with the worst of them. I am extremely disillusioned. But here I am not ‘living my truth’ but trying to ‘live with accountability’ and rigorously aligning my own subjective perceptions with the objective, durable reality that we all actually need to live in day to day.

Authenticity is another word that’s been turned to absolute sludge. While it’s possible to be authentic, as in being honest with yourself and presenting that same honesty to the world, authenticity is now more of a performative thing. You just have to put on the air of authenticity, which to me, just makes people look foolish. Vulnerability as an aesthetic is laughable, but vulnerability as an act of truth-telling is wonderful. Unfortunately, we see far much more of the former than the latter. But the latter is much more durable and should outlive us all.

Even if I reach a dozen people with this ‘wisdom’ I’m cultivating, it’s better than wasting the time and attention of a million.

I am very much aware of how I’m teetering on creating my own little intellectual elite group of one. In fact, I’m trying to push back against this new “intellectual elite” forming on Substack, in particular. While the quality of work is frankly generally pretty good, you can see the postmodernist and nihilistic tendencies of academic types spill over into a lot of these essays. It seems the more institutionally educated a writer is, the more bleak their prognosis for the coming days. 

Let’s tackle ‘history’ next, because so many writers look to the past for ‘truth’ and ‘wisdom’ and some do, fortunately, rigorously ‘fact check’ before they come to some interesting, timely conclusions. Much of this amazing work is locked behind paywalls, though, and I respect that most people with my level of intellectual fortitude need the extra income to make ends meet (sometimes their Substack newsletter is their primary economic engine for sustenance and I also respect that). The fact that I am free to spend all the time I want in these autodidactic pursuits is a rare opportunity, which is why, inevitably, I wanted to distill all these long explorations down into chunks that could be read in 15-20 minutes, but without succumbing to reductionism and not requiring a glossary or extensive reading list. 

I don’t want to ‘Explain it Like I’m 5” but I do want to make things generally approachable while also occasionally nudging people to look up definitions to words they don’t know. And ‘history’ is full of so many things that don’t make sense from a modern perspective mainly because academics use fringy words to describe even the most commonplace things.

… I absolutely believe that it’s my flawed, imperfect nature that I must rely on to be relatable. I don’t discount the wildly incredible odds I overcame to have this position in life. And honestly, I don’t use my time nearly as effectively as I could… I often blame my chronic fatigue for not going further with my studies on a given day. I actually burnt out late last year while developing my various digital gardening frameworks and throwing everything at it like it was one of those Blendtec blenders. Will it blend? That’s the question! 

…

Metempsychosis is a word I discovered in Tale of Two Cities, book three, chapter two. It means “the supposed transmigration at death of the soul of a human being or animal into a new body of the same or a different species.”

Isn’t that the same as reincarnation? Just a much more specific nuanced version of it?

After discussing these questions with Gemini, it seems metempsychosis is the more interesting, and more plausible, of the two. Funny how we’ve adopted so many Greek terms but not that one, because who else but the Victorian elite would want to push a term that promises upward mobility for the “moral” and “virtuous” which often enough, weren’t the elite…