Posted by By Co-Editor in Chief, Josh Quinn
On September 7, 2024, then president-elect Donald J. Trump spoke in front of a Milwaukee crowd and loudly announced, “Trump is never wrong. I am never, ever wrong.”
Equal parts ridiculous and preposterous, I wish I had an argument to refute his presidency. I wish anyone had an argument eloquent enough to refute the American people’s decision. But considering that Donald J. Trump is once more president of the United States of America, my opinion is ridiculous and preposterous. So which one of us is right?
Well, what I’m trying to say is: How do you spell truth?
We live in an era marked by an increasingly divided society. Here’s an example: walk by Elting Memorial library on a day warmer than 75 degrees, if you don’t see a protest about something, either you’re an idiot or I’m crazy. Get it? The bleeding heart of America, we can argue across the street from each other, or even online, but never face to face.
74% of our generation uses social media as their way of getting the news. Objective truth– that great equalizer of American politics–is now in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. Sure, maybe we needed to shake the boat and move away from newspapers and magazines, but something tells me silicon valley doesn’t have the spirit of the constitution on the mind.
What I’m trying to say is: How do you spell money?
Flash forward to March 28, 2025 and here we stand, that shining city upon the hill. Responding to the 47.4 million Americans who are unsure of where their next meal may be, our government shares images on X.com, a site owned by a government official, which were generated by a machine, and it hardly even makes the New York Times.
So how did America fall apart? And how did we do it so efficiently?
Let me tell you what I think, because at this point, that’s all we have. I think we’ve generated a perfect storm of a disconnected society. One made of billionaires who genuinely want to end the world, academia disconnected from reality, and finally, a shocking number of people who are lonely and pissed off.
How much time do you spend on Tiktok a day? How about instagram? The average time staring at feeds is 2 hours and 37 minutes per day. Now I could list the number of years that means we are spending doing jack, but I’m not going to, the point is, it’s a lot. We spend too much time on social media, and we all know it. But we don’t have anything better to do. And that’s the real kicker. As former Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy declared in the Spring of 2023, we have a loneliness epidemic. In other words, we’re so lonely it’s sickening.
Who here thinks the world is ending?
Accelerationism is a fancy word for a philosophy which could quite easily end the world. Based on the idea that if everything collapses we may as well make it collapse a lot faster, accelerationism is a philosophy most akin to a kid who likes to knock down sand castles because “the wind was going to do it anyway.” Theorizing that our society will collapse either way, accelerationists seek to end it extra fast.
“That’s fine, I’m sure it’s just some fringe philosophy,” I bet you’re thinking to yourself. Wait until you hear about the Department of Government Efficiency and Mr. Musk’s connection to a movement which desires the collapse of society. You could point out his former business partner, Peter Thiel, who explicitly said he was “on the side of accelerationism,” or you could just look at what Elon Musk is currently doing. After all, a department based on cutting programs would logically increase the rate at which technology is deregulated. And unregulated AI, yeah I’ve never seen a movie about that one.
Knock-out hit from the republican party! Can the democrats get up? They’re up! And, wearing pink?
One of the richest men in the world sent an all-women crew into space. For a cheap $115,000 down payment equality between the sexes was one step closer to being achieved, and the richest man in the world was just a little bit richer. And that’s the problem isn’t it– having to pick between gender equality and the richest man in the world? Because there hadn’t been an all female crew launched into space before, but that rich man who sent the women into space? He owns the Washington Post and Amazon. Basically, I think Jeff Bezos might be the best performance artist of our lifetime. The guy owns the third largest newspaper in the world and an e-commerce monopoly, but he sends the first all-female crew into space.
What I’m trying to say is: How do you spell art?
Is it to the tune of a $1.4 million canvas? Or the thwap of Jackson Pollock as he flailed his paintbrush? Maybe it’s neither, maybe it’s both. Deep down I’ll bet you most people hate modern art, and think they could have taped a banana to a wall.
Take for example, Jean-François Lyotard explanation,
“[Postmodernism] puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself.” In real world terms, postmodernism denies what most of us think of as given, and embraces contradiction. It is a literary and artistic rejection of assumed presentation.
Why was the canvas sold at $1.4 million? The same reason why Trump is never wrong, and why a popstar flew in space. Because it rejects objectivity, it rejects form. The blank canvas and Donald Trump simply ask America one very expensive question:
How do you spell truth?
The Maroon 