Well,

it happened: President-elect Trump has won 291 electoral votes, exceeding the 270 needed to win the presidency, with many analysts, reporters, etc., viewing it as a shock reminiscent of 2016. Seeing I’m not a political analyst and simply a writer, I will be staying out of all of the reasons why VP Harris and the Democrats lost this go around. I have my thoughts, which will likely percolate and bubble up here and there but, for now, I’m steering clear, more concerned with what’s ahead. So, as political commentators, podcast hosts, and roving bands of social media posters range from platform to platform to write thought pieces and share shallow quotes inspiring hope or dismay, I can only exhale, look out my window, and sigh again.

What else is there to do right now in this moment? What else is there to do when hope is suddenly forced to be a distant memory, yet knowing that cynicism and defeatism are precisely how the other side wins? What else is there to do when a country's economic policies have systematically made survival harder with each passing decade, only to tell you to "keep fighting the good fight?"

And there’s so much more, but even putting it into writing feels futile at the moment…and I hate feeling like that. It’s what I do. It’s what I am. It’s truly the only way I know how to fight the tyrannic autocracy we are likely all about to enter.

So, I don’t know what to do right at this moment. I really don’t. But I guess the only thing I truly believe and do know is that these next four years will be the true test to see if this little experiment called America really works. For now, I’m left only with this quote, “Action absorbs anxiety.”

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

• Intro to my essay, “Project 2025’s Schedule F, Dana White, and the NELK Boys”
• My short story, “Money”
• Things I’m reading/read this week.

Project 2025’s Schedule F and the Potential Manosphere Content Creator Pipeline

One of the absolute joys of waking up Wednesday and realizing that now President-elect Trump was, in fact, returning to the White House in January 2025 was remembering all of the bad, evil shit he’s been spewing and promising the last four years. I simply forgot, as I’m sure most of your brains work. I could only hold and handle so much bad, evil shit on any given day, especially when it included the following: insane, economy-crushing mass deportations, gutting all Federal agencies, whatever the fuck RFK Jr. is talking about, nation-wide abortion bans, and believing Hannibal Lecter is a real person.

Throw in Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden, which drew immediate comparisons to the infamous Nazi rally of February 20, 1939 and the whole mic/cock gagging thing and yeah, I needed to be fucking selective about what I let in.

But there was one comprehensive policy initiative that I completely and utterly blanked on that, considering the gravity of it and the fact that a few initiatives of the plan have already happened (a few under Biden’s watch) with others on the way, I probably shouldn’t have. The initiative in question is none other than the Heritage Foundation’s conservative agenda for the Trump administration, Project 2025. John Oliver explains at length below.

The initiative’s overarching goal is to ultimately reshape the federal government by implementing conservative policies across all sectors, including immigration, education, and energy. Its scope and implications for the structure and function of the U.S. government as we know it - especially when you consider figures like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel (along with Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller) hissing into Trump’s ears for the foreseeable future - will be changed, I don’t know…forever?

This essay isn’t entirely about breaking down Project 2025 and analyzing every horrifying bit. I want to focus specifically on the executive order issued by the Trump administration in October 2020 and what happened during Trump's victory speech in Florida on Wednesday morning when UFC CEO Dana White shouted out a fun and vile bunch of YouTube creators, Twitch, and Rumble, streamers, and podcast hosts.

You’ll probably recognize a few of the names.

White declared: "I want to thank some people. Real quick. I want to thank the NELK Boys, Adin Ross, Theo Von, and Bussin' With The Boys. And last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan."

If you aren't immersed in social media, YouTube, or the "manosphere" podcast ecosystem, most of these names - except perhaps Joe Rogan - may be unfamiliar as their target audience is primarily men aged 16-35. If you do recognize them, I want to stress that this is not an essay intended to attack any gender or demographic. Instead, as a writer, social theorist, and cultural commentator, I aim to connect dots by leaning on history to draw parallels. My goal is not to be deterministic but to engage in a conversation on the page.

With that out of the way, Dana White’s call out of this crew proves their growing influence not only culturally, but politically and more importantly, ideologically, revealing a pattern: these content creators aren't just building audiences and talking about farts - they could be cultivating potential loyal recruits to whatever Schedule F morphs into in the coming years. Should Trump re-instate and implement Schedule F (he surely will), which would strip civil service protections from thousands of federal employees perceived as disloyal to the president, and thus allowing for their potential replacement with loyalists and ideologues, these influential figures and their followers could actually become a ready-made talent pool of culturally aligned replacements. It's not just a policy proposal - it's a potential pipeline for installing loyalists throughout the government as it is seemingly going to be gutted January 20th, 2025.

Care to read more? So You've Decided to Become Isolated & Weird Newsletter is a reader-supported publication, so to receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber for the full essay.

Money, a Short Story

The machines hummed hymns in de-valuing harmony as sheet after sheet puked out reams of the all-mighty dollar.

Who were we before this? Who were we before we needed little slips of paper just to keep ourselves from killing each other? Who were we before value became something we would kill for?

Since 1879, Crane & Co., a reputable currency paper manufacturer, had been providing the materials for the answer. Once the paper was ready, the currency notes designed and the background colors and images printed using offset printing with pigment, resin, and solvent ink – materials derived and transformed from Earth's resources - it was time to take over time.

Then, Intaglio Printing went in and added fine, beautiful, alluring details like portraits and scrollwork, while letterpress printing applied serial numbers and seals; like the Church with their mosaics and paintings evoking emotions and fostering a deeper spiritual connection to keep you there wanting, needing more. The high-speed cutting machines then divide the currency sheets into individual notes for all. And for over a century, this process continued, with new security features and government safeguards to counteract potential tampering and counterfeiters were incorporated, everywhere, because without the money, without the imposed, fantastical values of status and riches that come with it, without the illusion of feeling fleetingly immortal, what are you really here for?

And as thousands of machines tirelessly produce plate after plate according to this plan, the dollar underpins the American financial system, promoting economic stability and legitimacy for seemingly ever. However, like Icarus, America overlooked its overreach and disrupted the currency's equilibrium. You knew it would end like the Portuguese Escudo, like the Spanish Real, the Dutch Guilder, the French Franc, and the British Pound Sterling, driven driven driven by greed and corruption and letting, finally, the wolves in the hen house to really bring it all down for good. The dollar, akin to Icarus' wings, inched ever closer to a metaphorical sun, and it took everyone who had stupidly fallen in love, with it.

Soon, the wind whispered. Soon, the clouds warned. Soon, the sun said, all three entities indifferent to it all.

Things I’m Reading/Read This Week

The Paris Review No. 249 - Fall 2024

This year ‘virtually certain’ to be hottest on record, finds EU space programme, the Gaurdian

Thoughts on the Day After, Josh Marshall

Be safe. Be well. Take care of yourself and your loved ones. I’ll end with this quote, recognizing it is fiction, but helped me, for a moment, all the same.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

So You've Decided to Become Isolated & Weird Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.