The View From My Desk for January 26th, 2025

The date is January 26th, 2025, and the skies are clear, but the gentle snow flurries that plagued the city all day yesterday have settled onto the roads, making them unexpectedly icy and slick for such an otherwise ideal winter day.

We’re through the first week of the new Donald Trump presidency and the news has been as ghastly as it was predictable. The rollout of low-grade atrocities and affronts to democracy have been steady and consistent, with the only real surprise being how many people are seemingly shocked that the things he said he would do are now being done. It makes for a depressing state because sensible people, people I would have otherwise assumed would have known better, are now expressing their distress and disappointment in what I can again only remind them is the first week of a four year circus. While the phrase ‘I told you so’ is never polite, it is evergreen.

One surprise is the near instant arrival of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on streets throughout the country, and notably, their heavy presence here in the Salt Lake Valley over the last few days. The valley itself has a significant Hispanic/Latino population — something like 17% as of the last census — and it’s been surreal seeing tactical armor fascists on the streets stopping or throwing side-eyes at a large percentage of people just passing by. One common note from historical records regarding World War II Germany was just how quickly things seemed to shift; almost overnight, hostile forces appeared on the streets to start harassing regular people going about their days. A modern reader might think, ‘Yeah, overnight, they just appeared out of nowhere,’ but that’s certainly how it’s felt this week.

There are two people in my larger social circle (i.e., I talk to them a couple times a week, maybe) whose experiences are relevant here.

T is a white man, mid-20s, classically handsome, tall, intelligent, and gay. He voted for Trump because his family voted for Trump, and he bought into the idea that he would be more ‘secure’ or ‘stable’ under a Trump administration. Conversation with him this week has been challenging as he’s seemingly torn between two points: a stubborn confidence that this is ‘all theatrics’, and that nothing serious is happening, and a slow creeping fear that this might be a bit more serious than he anticipated. He suddenly finds himself worried that, as a gay man, he might be on the political enemies list of a regressive, right wing authoritarian government — yeah, no shit, bud. As satisfactory as it might feel, I haven’t told him he’s intellectually stunted, or a traitor to his own community; I think that’s a realization he can probably come to on his own in the upcoming weeks. But as a stalwart supporter who thought he would be ‘one of the good ones’, the cracks are already forming.

E is somewhat similar — mid-20s, a good looking guy — but is notably non-political, and Latin American. He’s in the United States legally, with all the paperwork filed and submitted years ago (not that it matters), and he’s scared shitless to go outside. In the past he’s expressed that he doesn’t really care for politics; it’s ‘not that big of a deal’. But his job is highly public facing, in a very heavily trafficked location downtown, and he sees (and is seen) by thousands of people every day. Since this past Monday, one of his coworkers has already been visited by some sort of non-official official government employee enquiring about his immigration status (despite that his coworker is also here legally), and it’s sent something of a shockwave through their specific workplace. Anyone a shade darker than porcelain is (correctly) worried that they’re due for a visit as well, and even though their papers are in order and in theory there’s nothing wrong with their status as Americans, it presents a chilling effect on their overall behavior. E hasn’t left the house this week aside from going to work and returning. His English is fine but a little broken (it’s the fourth one he knows, I can’t imagine trying to keep fourth languages straight) and he’s nervous that he’ll say the wrong thing, be misunderstood, and find himself in a room for a dozen hours while a bunch of wage slave rent-a-Stasi look for reasons to send him back to a country he hasn’t been to in a decade. The fear is real. It’s understandable. And this is week one.

In the past I’ve told people that, despite being politically active, I have a certain degree of insulation from a lot of the worst of what this administration is proposing. And that’s still true — I’m white, middle class, and a productive consumer. But consequences are also coming for me and people like me, I’m more sure of it than ever, and I don’t think there is really anyone save the extravagantly wealthy who are going to be fully immune to what’s going to come. And that’s terrifying.

A step away from such weighty matters (total tone shift here, folks, bear with me, yeesh), I started new non-fiction book about political action called The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One. It came as a recommendation from an acquaintance who said that he thought I might find it interesting, and I absolutely have. The premise is that modernity and post-modernity have both failed us as cultural forces shaping the world, and that a new intellectual map of the world needs to be drawn in order to better understand where we are and shape where we’re going. I’m about a quarter of the way through the book, and as I understand it so far, the premise is that we need to reinvent society around the goal of listening to the individual needs of citizens, and to create social structures that empower those individuals to grow and mature intellectually and emotionally into healthy, well-adjusted people, which will in turn allow them to make political decisions and take actions that are meaningful and in the best interest of the world in general. The book is somewhat amusingly written to be very confrontational — the author, Hanzi Frienacht (who I’m not convinced actually exists, and isn’t just the pen name for either a lone or small group of Nordic intellectuals) takes pride in attempting to upset or goad you throughout the text. Even the reviews on several book websites mention how bracing and controversial some of the assertions are. Maybe it’s just me, but there’s nothing I’ve read so far that strikes me as aggressive or challenging, it just seems… correct? I don’t know, maybe that will change as I get further in, but so far my reading has been highly enthusiastic and I find myself thinking, ‘Yeah, that makes perfect sense, it’s good that someone wrote this down because I’ve thought that before’. Hopefully that means I’m simpatico with the text and not that I’m just misreading it like a dunce, but anything’s possible. I’ll report back on how I feel about it when I’m done, but so far I think it’s a pretty easy recommendation for anyone looking to understand how we might eventually manage our way out of the hole we societally keep digging ourselves into.

My views this week have been a little more across the board. Since the passing of David Lynch (rest in peace, transcendental king), I decided to rewatch both Mulholland Drive and Wild At Heart, two favorites from his oeuvre. Both are still absolute bangers (and Mulholland Drive remains beautifully inscrutable), and I’m glad we got as much output from Lynch as we ultimately did. For new viewings, I sat down to watch Look Back and Grafted, two wildly different films. I found Look Back to be delightful, even if I wasn’t entirely sold on some of the choppiness of the art style. It’s a beautiful story told compactly and efficiently about the creative process, friendship, the risks of putting yourself out there, and perseverance through grief. Unfortunately, it’s also an anime, so that will lose a large portion of viewers, which is a shame. It’s charming and reminiscent of other hallmark modern anime classics such as perpetual favorite Your Name, and clocking in at under an hour, I would definitely say it’s worth your time. Grafted was fun in a different way — a grotesque body horror film about peer and societal pressure amongst teen girls, it’s goopy and horrifying and clever in all the right ways. For me personally, the opening five minutes of the movie are the strongest from a strictly horror perspective, and I think I would have probably situated what is essentially the best bit of body horror in the movie a little later into the film to keep the momentum going, but that’s just a nitpick. The entire thing is darkly funny and very gross (almost on par with last year’s champion of body horror goop, The Substance) and is also probably worth your time if you enjoy a good gross movie.

Another personal favorite, musician Jason Isbell, has a new single out that I haven’t spent as much time with as I’d normally like, but it worth a listen if you’re into the American singer-songwriter alt-country type thing. The track is titled Bury Me, and it’s included here for your easy access. Take a listen. For my money, I still think Isbell is one of the great modern American lyricists: the lyrics of perennial favorite 24 Frames (‘You thought God was an architect, now you know he’s something like a pipe bomb ready to blow’) will forever buy him enough grace with me to listen to all his releases, even if just for the lyrical content.

That seems like everything I’ve got this week, so I’ll wrap it up. As always, thank you for checking in with me this week. Best wishes, stay curious, and call your parents (if you can).