from the the-end-of-inevitability dept
Tuesday, Republicans got crushed in elections across New Jersey, Virginia, and New York. Not close races. Not razor-thin margins. Massive defeats in states they’d convinced themselves were winnable after Trump’s 2024 victory.
Bret Baier—on Fox News, to Fox & Friends—had to explain to his audience how bad it was. “It’s a big loss,” he said. Not just the results, but “the spreads are surprising.” Young women “overwhelmingly” supported Democrats based on the economy and “those ICE images.” Based on how they “feel about the economy” versus “how Wall Street’s doing.”
Trump posted cryptically: “AND SO IT BEGINS.”
He’s right. Something has begun. Just not what he thinks.
The simulation is collapsing.
Not literal Matrix-style unreality. Something more precise and insidious: the manufactured consensus that authoritarianism was inevitable, that resistance was futile, that most people had become—or would become—what the sociopaths are.
After November 2024, they built an entire world out of lies. Silicon Valley CEOs who’d backed Harris immediately bent the knee. Zuckerberg congratulating Trump. Bezos killing the Post endorsement then offering “extraordinary” praise. Tim Cook presenting gold-plated tribute in the Oval Office like some feudal vassal paying homage to his lord.
My friends transformed into MAGA supporters. Not before the election—after. Weather vanes turning with the wind. People who calculated that MAGA had won the culture war and wanted to be on the winning side. They didn’t believe—they capitulated.
The triumphalists declared it complete. Musk proclaimed it “inevitable.” Bannon celebrated “full-spectrum dominance.” Andreessen announced “morning in America”—liberation from the terrible oppression of having to pretend to care about other people at dinner parties. The wealthy sociopath’s dream made manifest: a world where cruelty doesn’t even require justification anymore, where kindness itself becomes the performance and contempt becomes authenticity.
They expected universal capitulation. They thought everyone would become what they are. They were wrong.
The protests started smaller than 2016, and the triumphalists crowed about liberal demoralization. See? They said. Resistance is dead. Accommodation is wisdom. But they weren’t watching the actual trajectory. From February to April, protests grew over sixteen-fold. Tesla’s market value dropped precipitously, aided by sustained consumer boycotts. Artists refused cooperation. Museums defended autonomy. Universities resisted federal interference.
But the simulation held. The platforms they controlled kept amplifying the narrative: resistance is failing, Trump is consolidating, the fight is over. Every algorithm calibrated to make resistance seem isolated and futile, every feed curated to make you feel alone in your outrage.
Until Tuesday.
When the votes came in, Fox News had to explain to its own audience that Republicans lost. Badly. Not in spite of Trump’s power, but because of what Trump’s power is doing to people. The manufactured consensus that authoritarianism was inevitable met reality, and reality said: No.
Manufactured consensus only works until lived experience contradicts it. Tuesday, lived experience voted. That’s what collapsed the simulation.
Look at what they’ve been building, what they’ve been selling, what they’ve been trying to make you believe.
The technocratic liberals built their simulation of competent management. “The data shows everything is fine. Trust the analysis. Wait for Republicans to overreach.” They treat democracy as an optimization problem, citizens as data points. They look at aggregate metrics—GDP growth, stock market performance—and conclude everything is working while people experience catastrophic precarity. When you say “I’m struggling,” they respond “actually the data shows recovery is strong” as if your lived experience is a statistical error requiring correction. This isn’t bad communication. This is the technocratic frame revealing itself as fundamentally broken.
The neo-reactionaries built intellectual infrastructure for natural hierarchy. Peter Thiel writing that democracy and freedom are incompatible. Curtis Yarvin publishing blueprints for monarchy. JD Vance—now Vice President—citing Andrew Jackson’s defiance of judicial review as a model, talking about going “extra-constitutional.” They’re not hiding this. They’re publishing it. They’re proud of it. They think they’re the brave truth-tellers who see through democratic delusion to the natural order of dominance.
The sociopaths convinced themselves their framework was correct. Shaun Maguire donating to Clinton in 2016 because he was “scared out of my mind about Trump,” then donating $300,000 to Trump in 2024 after his felony conviction—not because Trump changed but because Maguire decided principles were the obstacle. When Erika Kirk offered forgiveness at her husband’s memorial, Trump mocked it and the crowd erupted in delighted laughter. They were celebrating the rejection of grace itself.
After November 2024, they thought they’d proven their framework. That winning without kindness proved kindness is weakness. That seizing power without morality proved morality is performance. They built an entire simulation around that proof.
And the fascist executive deployed federal power not to govern but to dominate. ICE at the Super Bowl to intimidate Latino cultural celebration. Warrantless mass detentions in Chicago—federal agents detaining American citizens without individualized probable cause, children zip-tied together, people sorted by race. American cities described as “military training grounds.” Stephen Miller calling judicial review “insurrection.”
Their simulation said performance of dominance equals actual consolidation. That threats produce submission. That fear guarantees compliance.
Every simulation met the same reality Tuesday: it’s collapsing. Every lie met the truth. Every manufactured consensus met actual human choice. And the people who built their entire world out of those lies are about to learn what happens when reality vetoes the simulation.
This is what should terrify them: they own Twitter, they influence Facebook, they’re capturing traditional media. They have unprecedented control over information flows. They thought this meant they controlled outcomes.
They were wrong.
Simulation only works when reality doesn’t contradict it too obviously. You can manufacture consensus that resistance is failing when resistance is invisible. You can create the appearance of overwhelming support when people can’t see evidence otherwise.
But you cannot simulate away your own groceries costing more. You cannot simulate away federal agents conducting warrantless mass detentions in your city. You cannot simulate away ICE deployed to cultural events you attend. You cannot simulate away economic precarity while billionaires build 90,000-square-foot ballrooms funded by oligarchs etching their names into the people’s house. You cannot simulate away your electricity bill going up to fund AI systems you didn’t ask for.
Reality has veto power over simulation. Eventually. Always. No matter how many platforms you own, no matter how sophisticated your algorithms, no matter how much you’ve invested in manufacturing consensus.
The oligarchs thought owning platforms meant controlling reality. They’re learning the difference. Platforms control information flow. Reality controls lived experience. And when the gap between simulated consensus and lived experience becomes too large, the simulation collapses.
This is why their project was always fragile. Not because they’re weak—they’re not. But because simulations require maintenance against reality, and reality keeps happening regardless of what oligarchs want.
While Republicans got crushed Tuesday, something else emerged that should make every tech oligarch nervous. Eighty percent of consumers worry about data centers driving up their electricity bills, according to recent surveys.
This isn’t abstract environmental concern. This is “my power bill is going up to fund Altman’s AGI fantasy” rage waiting to happen.
Data centers now consume roughly four percent of U.S. electricity—estimates suggest this could reach six to twelve percent by 2028, according to projections from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. And Sam Altman admits he doesn’t even know how much power AI will need. As he concedes, AI’s future power needs are unknowable. Yet locked-in contracts risk raising household bills today to fund bets that might never pay off. “If a very cheap form of energy comes online soon at mass scale, then a lot of people are going to be extremely burned with existing contracts they’ve signed.”
Read that again. They’re gambling with the electrical grid. They’re driving up your power bills. They’re making massive infrastructure investments. And they admit they don’t know if any of it will work. This is speculative extraction made concrete. Your electricity bill subsidizing oligarchic bets on computational supremacy.
And most people are “more concerned than excited” about AI, according to Pew surveys. Employers are wielding it to cut headcount rather than augment productivity.
Add this to federal agents terrorizing communities. Add this to grocery bills rising while Wall Street celebrates. Add this to housing costs making home ownership impossible. Add this to economic precarity while oligarchs build ballrooms with your tribute.
Popular rage at extraction is becoming politically operational. Young women voting against Republicans based on “those ICE images” and economic concerns that include energy prices. The material reality of what oligarchic rule actually means—not abstract threats to democracy but concrete increases to your power bill so Sam Altman can pursue projects he admits might not work.
The simulation required people to believe AI was serving them. Tuesday suggested they’re starting to see it’s extracting from them instead.
Tuesday night I watched CNN analysts pearl-clutch over Zohran Mamdani’s victory speech in New York. Not divisive enough, apparently—or too divisive, depending on which pundit. They were horrified he gave Trump “the middle finger.” They wanted conciliatory messaging. They wanted him to reach across the aisle. They wanted him to moderate his tone.
Never mind that Trump and his officials have threatened to strip Mamdani of his citizenship. Never mind that Shaun Maguire called him a liar advancing an “Islamist agenda.” Never mind that Stephen Miller has called judicial review “insurrection” and that ICE has conducted warrantless mass detentions of people who look like Mamdani.
The analysts wanted conciliation. They wanted prose, not poetry. They wanted him to understand that Muslims who win elections are supposed to apologize for winning.
Here’s what Mamdani said instead:
“This is not only how we stop Trump; it’s how we stop the next one. So, Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up.”
And then he explained exactly what he meant. Not threats. Not violence. Policy.
“We will hold bad landlords to account because the Donald Trumps of our city have grown far too comfortable taking advantage of their tenants. We will put an end to the culture of corruption that has allowed billionaires like Trump to evade taxation and exploit tax breaks. We will stand alongside unions and expand labor protections because we know, just as Donald Trump does, that when working people have ironclad rights, the bosses who seek to extort them become very small indeed.”
This is what they cannot tolerate. Not rudeness. Not divisiveness. Not lack of decorum. Fighting back through democratic power used to break the concentrations that produced Trump in the first place.
The CNN analysts want him to play by rules that no longer exist. To extend courtesy to people threatening to strip his citizenship. To moderate his ambitions so he doesn’t offend sensibilities of people who think Muslims shouldn’t hold power at all. To accept that the price of access to power is agreeing not to actually use it.
But Mamdani didn’t run to access power. He ran to wield it. “To every New Yorker in Kensington and Midwood and Hunts Point, know this: This city is your city, and this democracy is yours too.” Not can be yours if you’re properly deferential. Not might be yours if you moderate your expectations. Is yours. Right now. Through democratic choice exercised despite every dollar spent to prevent it.
“No more will New York be a city where you can traffic in Islamophobia and win an election.”
That’s the line that broke their brains. Not because it’s divisive but because it names what they need unnamed. That you can traffic in Islamophobia and lose. That Muslim immigrants can not only vote but win. That working people can not only organize but govern. That the simulation claiming oligarchic rule is inevitable just collapsed in the city that produced Trump himself.
“After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him. And if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power.”
This is what they mean when they say he’s divisive. He’s dividing power from those who’ve hoarded it. He’s dividing dignity from those who’ve denied it to others. He’s dividing the future from the past where people like him were supposed to accept subordinate status gratefully.
The analysts wanted prose. Mamdani gave them poetry and a governing agenda. They wanted moderation. He gave them rent freezes, free buses, universal child care. They wanted conciliation with people threatening his citizenship. He said: “To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.”
The simulation required that Muslims who win elections apologize for it. That democratic socialists moderate their ambitions. That young brown men with accents know their place. That anyone threatening to actually use democratic power to break oligarchic concentrations understands the unspoken rules limiting how far you’re allowed to go.
Mamdani gave them four words instead: Turn the volume up.
This is what the collapse of the simulation looks like. Not just winning. Winning without apologizing. Winning and immediately announcing you’re going to use the power you just won. Winning and naming exactly whose power you’re going to challenge and why. Winning and refusing to pretend that the people who tried to destroy you deserve your deference now that you’ve beaten them.
The CNN analysts are terrified because they can see what comes next. If you can win in New York while being openly Muslim, openly socialist, openly aligned with working people against oligarchs—if you can win while promising to actually fight concentrated power rather than manage it—if you can win without apologizing for any of it and then immediately announce you’re turning the volume up—then the rules they’ve spent their careers defending don’t exist anymore. Then the simulation they’ve helped maintain just collapsed. Then everything they told you was impossible is happening right in front of them.
The conciliatory message they demanded? Here it is:
“Together, we’re going to freeze the rent. Together, we’re going to make buses fast and free. Together, we’re going to deliver universal child care.”
That’s the conciliation. With the people who elected him. With the working people who’ve been told power doesn’t belong in their hands.
There is no conciliation with oligarchs who funded tens of millions in attack ads. No reaching across the aisle to people who suggested he practices religious deception. No moderation of ambitions to make comfortable people feel less threatened. No apology for winning.
“The conventional wisdom would tell you that I am far from the perfect candidate. I am young. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.”
This is what they cannot tolerate. Not the policies—those can be negotiated, compromised away. The refusal to apologize. The insistence that power won democratically should be used rather than hoarded politely. The clarity that you don’t defeat oligarchy through conciliatory gestures but through dismantling the conditions that produced it.
Mamdani looked at those rules and said: Turn the volume up.
That’s what Tuesday proved. That’s what happens when the simulation collapses and someone refuses to help rebuild it.
The doomers who declared the fight over after November 2024, who treated every authoritarian move as proof of inevitable consolidation—they were unknowingly maintaining the simulation. Not through malice but through genuine despair that itself became accommodation.
When you declare “it’s 1933, consolidation is complete, resistance is futile,” you validate the authoritarian narrative. You discourage mobilization. You make the simulation self-fulfilling. You become part of the machinery of manufactured consensus, another voice telling people that fighting back is pointless.
The doomers measured the wrong thing. They saw oligarchs bending the knee and concluded everyone would bend. They saw establishment accommodation and decided resistance was dead. They saw platform control consolidating and assumed manufactured consensus would hold.
What they missed: protests growing over sixteen-fold from February to April. Tesla’s market capitalization dropping amid boycotts and other market pressures. Cultural institutions defending autonomy. Universities collectively resisting. And now, massive electoral defeats that prove the simulation was always false.
The simulation of inevitable authoritarian victory required people to believe it was inevitable. Despair maintained the simulation. Fear became the enforcement mechanism. And everyone who surrendered to that despair, everyone who counseled acceptance—they were doing the oligarchs’ work for them.
Tuesday shattered that. Tuesday proved that sustained organizing works even when every doomer said it wouldn’t. Tuesday showed that most people haven’t become sociopaths even when every cynic said they would.
The doomers were wrong. Not about the threats being real—those are real. But about resistance being futile. About accommodation being wisdom. About the fight being over.
Tuesday validates something that should reshape how we think about politics. Defend the framework—courts, rights, process—and fight the concentrations—monopoly, captured platforms, extractive grids. That combination wins.
Not “liberal” as progressive cultural positions. Liberal as the framework that makes democratic self-governance possible: constitutional constraints, rule of law, democratic process, free expression. The institutional space where people can reason together when no one has privileged access to truth.
Not “populism” as demagoguery. Populism as fighting concentrated interests—using democratic power to break economic concentrations, returning agency to citizens, delivering material wins that make people’s lives tangibly better.
Young women voting based on “those ICE images” and economic concerns aren’t making separate calculations. They’re recognizing that federal agents terrorizing communities and economic structures serving oligarchs while abandoning workers are the same problem: concentrated power—governmental and economic—dominating everyone else.
This is what voters responded to. Not careful positioning between technocratic management and authoritarian force. Rejection of both. Rejection of the entire framework that says ordinary people need to be managed by experts or dominated by strongmen.
They’re saying: We don’t want experts telling us the economy is good when we’re struggling. We don’t want federal agents terrorizing our communities. We don’t want oligarchs rigging the system. We don’t want our power bills going up to fund speculative AI projects. We want leaders who will fight concentrated power—governmental and economic—using democratic means.
That’s not the simulation either side was selling. That’s reality breaking through. That’s the actual democratic impulse that both technocracy and authoritarianism claim is impossible, proving them both wrong simultaneously.
Putin is paralyzed by the conservative corrosion that comes from staying in power too long. He sees the opportunity to accept Trump’s advances, partly reintegrate with the West, use that to undermine Western democracies from within. He can’t take it. Too rigid. Too defensive. The dictator who restored Russia to imperial glory can’t make the strategic move that would consolidate it because the psychology that gained him power has destroyed his capacity to use it strategically.
Trump is performing dominance rather than building institutions. Humiliating Musk publicly. Threatening Vance. Conducting arbitrary displays of power that prevent the stable hierarchies authoritarianism requires to consolidate. When millions of Americans took to the streets in “No Kings” protests, Trump posted AI memes depicting himself as king and declared they were “not representative of the people of our country.” Seven million Americans. Not representative. This is narcissistic performance mistaking mockery for power.
Musk discovered that wealth buys subordination, not partnership. The richest man on the planet reduced to rage-tweeting after Trump demonstrated he’s subject, not equal. Every other billionaire watching that humiliation and calculating: that could be me. The system I’m funding to crush others will eventually crush me too.
Tuesday added decisive evidence. They can’t maintain simulations when reality contradicts them too obviously. The triumphalists expected universal capitulation. They got massive electoral defeats. The simulation of inevitable victory met reality: it was never inevitable.
And authoritarian psychology can’t process this. They can’t accept being wrong. They can’t admit the simulation was false. They can’t recognize that most people aren’t sociopaths and won’t become sociopaths.
So they’ll escalate. Authoritarians escalate when performance fails. That isn’t consolidation; it’s a tell.
The simulation is collapsing. They will try to restore it through force. When authoritarians discover that performance doesn’t produce submission—when oligarchs learn that owning platforms doesn’t control outcomes—when sociopaths realize most people won’t become what they are—they escalate.
More aggressive use of federal power. ICE raids will intensify. Warrantless detentions will expand. The threats to use military force against American cities will move closer to implementation. Stephen Miller calling judicial review “insurrection” will become operational policy—openly defying courts, testing how far they can go.
More sophisticated platform manipulation. The oligarchs will study what went wrong. They’ll refine the algorithms. They’ll deploy AI more aggressively. They’ll try to rebuild the simulation using every tool they control.
More explicit threats. Trump mocking protesters with AI sewage memes was performance. What comes next will be more direct. Threatening investigations of opposition. Using federal agencies against political enemies. Making the costs of resistance tangible and personal.
More oligarchic capture. Tuesday showed controlling platforms isn’t enough when people’s lived experience contradicts the simulation. So they’ll try to control more. More media. More institutions. More economic leverage. The protection racket will become explicit: capitulate or face consequences.
More desperate attempts to fragment resistance. They’ll sow division within opposition coalitions. They’ll amplify conflict between progressive and moderate Democrats. They’ll fund primary challenges against anyone who doesn’t accommodate.
This is the pattern when simulations collapse. The people invested don’t accept reality—they try to force reality to conform through escalating coercion. They double down. They raise the stakes. They try to rebuild the simulation through fear since consensus failed.
The threat is genuine. The escalation is real. The danger is existential. They have enormous resources. Real power. Actual tools of coercion.
But here’s what makes them fragile: every escalation that doesn’t produce submission reveals their weakness. Every threat that doesn’t generate compliance shows they’re not as strong as claimed. Every display of force that produces more resistance proves the simulation was always false. They’re trapped in a death spiral where force reveals fragility reveals more force, and Tuesday started that spiral in a way they can’t stop because they can’t accept that they were wrong.
The simulation is collapsing. That’s when this gets most dangerous. They will escalate. This will get worse before it gets better. The threat is real. The stakes are existential.
But Tuesday proved the simulation was false. They’re not as strong as they claimed. Resistance is not futile. Most people haven’t become what they are.
Hold both truths. The danger is real and resistance can work. The escalation is coming and it emerges from fragility, not strength.
Keep organizing. Build alternatives. Live well so you can last. When they escalate, name it as weakness—not fate.
Sustain the organizing that’s working. This trajectory matters because it proves sustained organizing produces outcomes even when oligarchs control platforms and authoritarians control government. Don’t let the coming escalation fragment what’s working. They want resistance to collapse into reactive outrage. Maintain the discipline. Keep building power through participation.
Build resilience for the long fight because this is years, not months. You cannot sustain resistance through constant crisis response. You need grounding in what makes life worth defending—relationships, beauty, work that matters, dignity maintained under pressure. Living well is not retreat from resistance. It’s the foundation making resistance sustainable. The person who protests and organizes and fights and then comes home and loves their children well—that person can sustain this for years. The person who lets fear fragment them burns out. They want you fragmented. They want you exhausted. Living well is resistance because maintaining your humanity is refusal.
Expose the escalation as evidence of fragility. When they lash out, name it clearly: They’re escalating not because they’re winning but because Tuesday proved they’re losing. Every aggressive move, every threat—these aren’t signs of consolidation, they’re signs of fragility. Make that visible. Help people see that escalation emerges from weakness.
Make the connections explicit because your power bill going up, federal agents in your city, groceries costing more, housing unaffordable, oligarchs building ballrooms—these aren’t separate problems. They’re the same problem. Concentrated power extracting from everyone else while claiming it serves the common good. Tuesday proved voters are starting to connect these dots. Keep making the pattern visible.
Build alternatives to oligarchic infrastructure because they control the platforms but platforms aren’t reality. People are organizing in physical space. Building networks that don’t depend on billionaires’ servers. Creating economic alternatives through boycotts and mutual aid. Defending institutional autonomy. Accelerate this. Every network built outside oligarchic control is infrastructure for sustained resistance they can’t shut down.
The simulation is collapsing. Reality is reasserting itself. And we get to choose whether to recognize that or surrender to the reconstruction of the lie.
The doomers will say Tuesday changes nothing. That one election doesn’t matter. That they’ll escalate and win anyway. They’ll maintain the simulation through pessimism the way oligarchs try to maintain it through platform control—by making you believe fighting back is pointless.
The optimists will say Tuesday proves everything is fine. That institutions are holding. That normal politics will contain threats. They’ll treat Tuesday as return to normalcy rather than breakthrough requiring sustained intensification.
Both are wrong because both refuse to see what Tuesday actually proves. The simulation of inevitable authoritarianism was false. The manufactured consensus that resistance was futile was false. Reality vetoed the simulation. Not completely. Not everywhere. Not permanently. But decisively enough to prove the simulation was always fragile, that reality always had veto power, that we always had more agency than they wanted us to believe.
But the simulation was never reality. It was manufactured consensus maintained through platform control, elite accommodation, and cultivated despair. And manufacturing consensus is easier than manufacturing reality, which means they will try to rebuild it through force.
Whether that works depends on whether enough people recognize what Tuesday proved—the simulation was always fragile, reality always had veto power, we always had more agency than they wanted us to believe.
They need you to doubt what you saw Tuesday. They need you to question whether it matters. They need you to accept that they’ll just escalate until resistance becomes impossible. They need you to believe the simulation even after reality contradicted it because if you keep believing, you make their victory inevitable through your own surrender.
That’s the choice. See what Tuesday proved or accept the lie they’ll try to rebuild.
Two plus two equals four.
There are simple truths that withstand every simulation, every manipulation, every sophisticated argument for why you should doubt what you know.
Federal agents conducting warrantless mass detentions violates the Fourth Amendment. Using ICE as cultural enforcement is authoritarian. Treating American cities as “military training grounds” is fascist rhetoric. Young women voting based on “those ICE images” are recognizing reality. Your electricity bill going up to fund speculative AI projects serves oligarchic extraction. Massive Republican defeats after Trump’s 2024 victory prove the simulation was false.
Most people still recognize these truths even when oligarchs control platforms and authoritarians control government. Tuesday proved it. The simulation collapsed when it met reality because these truths are weight-bearing. They hold. They cannot be spun away or optimized out of existence or threatened into nonexistence.
Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And no amount of platform control, no sophistication of manipulation, no escalation of threats can make these truths less true or make people stop recognizing them.
Tuesday proved the simulation was false. Today we choose whether to fight from that truth or surrender to the reconstruction of the lie. There is no neutrality. Your choice—made through action or inaction, through organizing or accommodating—determines whether the simulation gets rebuilt or whether reality continues to assert its veto.
The simulation is collapsing. That’s the wire starting to fray. The manufactured consensus that authoritarianism was inevitable—that’s what’s breaking down. The triumphalist narrative that resistance was futile—that’s what Tuesday shattered.
But fraying isn’t breaking. They will try to repair the simulation through force. They will escalate to make reality match what they claimed was inevitable. They will lash out because Tuesday proved they’re not as strong as they claimed.
Whether the wire holds depends on whether we keep walking it. Consciously. Understanding what we’re doing and why. Together. This isn’t individual heroism, this is sustained collective action. With discipline. Not reactive outrage but organized power-building that compounds. With resilience. Maintaining what makes resistance sustainable. With clarity. Recognizing escalation as evidence of fragility, not strength.
The wire is holding. But only because people are choosing to walk it despite every force conspiring to make them fall. The wire holds through conscious choice to keep walking it together even when everything tells you to stop.
May love carry us home.
Not as sentiment but as practice. Not as naivety but as recognition that the only force strong enough to sustain resistance across the years this will require is love for what we’re defending. Not weakness but the disciplined refusal to become what we’re fighting.
Because the sociopaths are shocked that most people aren’t sociopaths. The simulation is collapsing because reality kept asserting itself. Tuesday proved that sustained organizing works. But the sociopaths will try to prove their simulation was correct through escalated force. They will make the costs of resistance tangible and personal. They will try to make you become what they are through fear.
Love is what prevents that transformation. Not love as feeling but love as commitment. To children who deserve a world where democracy works. To communities that deserve safety without terrorization. To dignity that belongs to everyone. To truth that matters even when platforms lie. To justice that requires fighting concentrated power. To beauty that persists. To each other—sustaining solidarity when everything conspires to fragment it.
That love is what makes resistance sustainable when fear would make it collapse. That love is what kept people organizing while the doomers counseled surrender. That love is what produced Tuesday’s results. That love is what will sustain the fight when the escalation comes and the threats become personal.
Jefferson warned that humans accommodate tyranny. For a while it was sufferable. Federal agents in Chicago. Children zip-tied. ICE at the Super Bowl. American cities as “military training grounds.” Economic precarity while oligarchs build ballrooms. Power bills rising to fund AI speculation. Each violation normalized. Each evil deemed bearable.
Tuesday, voters said: no further. Not everywhere. Not uniformly. But in enough places, in decisive margins, to prove that the sufferable has become insufferable for enough people to start changing outcomes.
The ground approaches only if we let it. And Tuesday proved we don’t have to let it. They will escalate. They will lash out. They will try to make you afraid. But Tuesday proved what’s been evident all along: most people haven’t become sociopaths. And when reality contradicts simulation decisively enough, reality wins.
The simulation is collapsing. Hold the center. Walk the wire. Build the alternatives. Sustain the organizing. Maintain your humanity. Choose love over fear. Choose clarity over despair. Choose sustained resistance over accommodation masquerading as wisdom.
The wire still holds. Not because the forces trying to break it are weak but because enough people have chosen to walk it together. Not because victory is guaranteed but because the alternative—surrender to oligarchic rule by people who admit they’re gambling with your power bills to fund projects they admit might not work—is unthinkable.
Two plus two equals four. The simulation is collapsing. And we get to choose whether reality continues to veto manufactured consensus or whether fear rebuilds what truth tore down.
Choose reality. Choose resistance. Choose each other.
The circus continues. And this time, we’re changing the show.
Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.
Filed Under: authoritarianism, donald trump, election, fascism, liberalism, simulation, zohran mamdani
