Monsters in a Kingdom of Kitsch, with Cy Canterel

There's an unreality about this political moment. It makes it hard to hold people's attention, to create any kind of focus on any issue or event or action. People don't know what's real, what's certain, what's not just for dumb show.

And that is both by design, and the output, of totalitarian thinking. Aesthetics are ever-present in politics - the color of a suit, or whether someone even wears one can fill a news cycle and constitute a scandal. Fascist and authoritarian ideologies are aesthetic all the way down. They are both authentically held by people who can not tolerate discomfort with themselves, other people, the way things are, or the way things seem to be headed... and they are a convenient cover for people who have real material goals and know that spectacle will dazzle people long enough for them to get away with just about anything.

And this has me obsessing about one of my favorite books, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and working through it in a conversation with Cy Canterel, a feral scholar, TikToker, and writer who thinks a lot about systems, aesthetics, sense-making, and how it all works.

In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's killing, I reached out to Cy to talk about kitsch - something she has written about, and about her concept of a Hater's Discourse, and how this might explain the moment we're currently in.

And then I revisited some of that conversation after the incursion into Venezuela and the murder of Renee Nicole Good. It felt like the right time to talk about this, given that it seems like we're all struggling with how to reckon with real things that seem fake.

Some links for your enjoyment:

Cy's piece on Kitsch: https://open.substack.com/pub/cybelecanterel/p/lost-in-the-kingdom-of-kitsch

Cy's piece on the Hater's Discourse: https://cybelecanterel.substack.com/p/a-haters-discourse

Cy's video on Blackpill Aesthetics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcw02sEslog

Ryan Broderick's piece on Garbage Day, "The Rise of the Troll State": https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-rise-of-the-troll-state

Don Moynihan's piece on Can We Still Govern?, "Life Under a Clicktocracy": https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/life-under-a-clicktatorship