On Cynicism
And remembering bell hooks
Disclaimer: This is a short and chaotic piece because I just had some things to get off my chest but longer research pieces are coming back next month.
It’s Inauguration Day and I’m up early, feeling restless and anxious. I clearly hate myself because I’m watching the Prime Video stream of the inauguration (an in-kind donation from Amazon to Trump). This past week has been packed with more chaos than we are built to handle: a tenuous ceasefire in Gaza, a deepening TikTok-Trump alliance, a Trump shitcoin that peaked at a $15 billion market cap. And today, Trump is expected to sign over 200 executive orders on a range of issues from gender identity and pronouns to immigration. Is this just how it’s going to be from now on?
I am struggling with cynicism. I don’t like the taste or feel of it. I don’t like who it is turning me into. I was raised by my grandparents with love, to believe in love, to nurture love. It was a quiet love, the mundane kind that cocoons you in warmth, safety, and stability.
I was raised in the American left by older activists in college, mostly Palestinian women, with love. The protective love that has your back from street protests to finals week. The fierce love that is rooted in justice and hope, and a belief in love to open up our political imagination in unlimited ways.
And yet, here we are on January 20, 2025 watching hate dressed up as democracy.
I think it was the picture of the Vances in their designer clothes, preening for the cameras, that broke me. On paper, this is peak American dream: a millennial biracial couple with their own rags to riches story and now at the top. But this is a mirage - J.D. Vance is a faux populist who was mentored by tech billionaire/Christian nationalist, Peter Thiel, and a racist who spread dangerous stories about Haitians in Ohio eating pets.
I feel bell hooks deeply in my bones watching this charade: “I feel our nation’s turning away from love…moving into a wilderness of spirit so intense we may never find our way home again. I write of love to bear witness both to the danger in this movement, and to call for a return to love.”
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This is an absolutely insane quote to give to a prominent newspaper about Donald Trump’s election as a “top banker.” But this is something that would be totally normal from u/SenpaiGod99 on r/wallstreetbets. It took barely a little more than a decade for the most fringe parts of the Internet to infiltrate the Republican party and now mainstream culture. (Note: for an excellent breakdown of how Steve Bannon made this happen, check out Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie’s book “Mindfuck”).
I’m not surprised to see Wall Street returning to their 80s roots after cosplaying as liberal for the past few years. Goodbye DEI and ESG, hello again cocaine and Patrick Bateman.
Finance bros love a strongman. Remember when Logan Roy said, “I’m gonna grind his fucking bones to make my bread” to threaten his own son? That line was such a perfect encapsulation of a billionaire media and finance mogul. Publicly, private equity guys will use more polite language like “creative destruction”; what this means is we will fuck you, lowly workers, by whatever means necessary to maximize our profits.
I’ve had to sit across from these guys and try to negotiate in good faith on behalf of workers. That was in the afterglow of the Obama administration when they felt cultural pressure to behave. But are the gates of incel hell now wide open with MAGA in power? If I had to sit across those same guys now, would they feel more “liberated” to behave like Top Banker?
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I’m watching CEOs from tech, banking, and finance entering the Capitol Rotunda. This is the most powerful and wealthy group of men in the world. They have the ability to make and break how society, the economy, and governments function. And yet, they have so many grievances about literally everything – how mean governments are to their businesses, how gross unhoused people are, how their annoying employees are demanding to work from home, how traumatizing they/them pronouns are.
They are all Logan Roys and Top Bankers. They are also the new strongmen in power. And sadly, they are such hateful losers.
Whenever I complained about how bad things were, my grandma would remind me that it’s because we were living in the Kali Yuga, the Hindu age of darkness. She said that we had to be patient and wait for Kalki, the 10th avatar of Vishnu, to arrive. Kalki is prophesied to be the bearer of light and justice; he will eliminate the greedy, the wicked, the evil ones, and usher us into a new age of peace and righteousness.
Our holy books say that Kalki will be here in 432,000 years. So, I need a plan B.
I am sitting with how to answer bell hook’s call for a return to love, while battling the cynicism from the current state of things. I know that our collective cynicism and loneliness are profit streams for the tech oligarchs who are in charge now. And I refuse to give them that out of pure spite. In the meantime, I am here for you, for me, for all of us, because as abolitionist Mariame Kaba said, “We do this ‘til we free us.”
