If culture is the mirror that reflects the state of society, right now we’re all looking a little dishevelled – and struggling to find the energy to care. The signs have been there for a while, with rumblings initially picked up by trend forecasters’ finely tuned cultural seismometers. In 2021, Sean Monahan coined the term “the vibe shift” in his Substack to explain the transition from the self-controlled, self-improvement-obsessed worthiness of the 2010s to the messy decadence of the 2020s. Three years later, it feels like that earthquake has finally hit.

…The issue with foregoing all meaning and leaning into nihilism is that you can end up in some ethically dubious situations. When Nietzsche wrote his dire prediction for humanity’s future, “there can be no doubt that morality will perish”, he was surely thinking of the spectacle of convicted con artist Anna Sorokin and her ankle tag appearing on Dancing with the Stars. Our collective obsession with stories about scamming has morphed into an ironic open-armed embrace of the scammer.

The question is, are we really having a good time? In the third season of HBO’s Industry (the New Yorker’s pick for TV show of the year), copious amounts of drugs, alcohol and sex fuel the endless accumulation of money and power, but none of it basked in the glow of the 80s’ “greed is good” film and TV. Instead, each scene plays out as if lit by the most unsparing strip lighting. Characters don’t lounge opulently puffing on cigars inside high-end New York restaurants, instead huddling outside London office blocks chugging on cigarettes as if to stave off the next panic attack.

If the 2010s were a battle cry against the excesses of capitalism, social injustice and climate breakdown, popular culture in 2024 seemed to have given up the fight. Of course, the cultural pendulum will no doubt swing back again. In his missive on the next “vibe shift”, written after Donald Trump’s re-election, Monahan writes: “The vibe shift this time is a story about progressive millennials realising that when they declared total victory for their politics in 2020 – it was a pyrrhic victory … They have to get into the trenches and convince people that their interpretations of reality are correct.” It sounds like a slog, but for now, grab a sweet treat or a glass of wine. There is always next year.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/30/culture-2024-year-we-gave-up-charli-xcx?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Over the past couple weeks, the thought of President Biden pardoning his son entered my head a few times. I tossed it around: good or bad idea? I could see it both ways. I still can. But I am fine with his decision. I’m glad he did it. Biden learned the right lesson: no one gives a fuck about norms. It’s unquestionably true that Hunter Biden wouldn’t be in this position if not for his dad. That’s basically the justification Biden gave. And he’s right. It may sound angry or cynical to say “no one gives a fuck.” But I mean it both in a general way and in this particular way: the reason for Biden not to do this was to allow his son to remain collateral damage of the GOP war against his presidency and to leave him in the hands of the Trump DOJ for at least the next four years all to make a point of principle about being better, different, more righteous, more norm-honoring than Donald Trump.

Truly. No one gives a fuck. If anything, that logic I just laid out sounds like one of those fastidious, hyper-process-oriented and baroque bits of reasoning that have of late left Democrats mesmerized while the real world is passing them by.

Either you know the difference or you don’t. This doesn’t shift the balance in anyone’s head.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-pardon

She leaped into office six years ago as a 29-year-old outsider intent on upending the Democratic establishment, and has used her platform to challenge party leaders at nearly every turn. But in the waning weeks of the 2024 election, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has thrown herself fully behind Vice President Kamala Harris, stepping onto the presidential campaign trail for the first time as an emissary to skeptical young progressives.

The congresswoman has turned out boisterous crowds in Wisconsin, Texas and Pennsylvania, warning college students about the costs of letting older voters decide the outcome. She has taken aim at Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee who Democrats fear could win over disillusioned voters, blasting her as “not serious” and “predatory” in videos on social media, where Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has millions of followers. And she rallied thousands of volunteers in swing states trying to mobilize Latino and union voters.

…In an interview, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said she was motivated by several factors: the urgent threat that she believes former President Donald J. Trump poses to American democracy, the challenge of standing up a presidential campaign in just a few months and “a certain understanding” she had developed with Ms. Harris, a fellow woman of color. She recalled that Ms. Harris, then a California senator, had been among the first people to call her after a Republican congressman called Ms. Ocasio-Cortez “disgusting” and cursed at her on the Capitol steps in 2020. (The congresswoman declined to detail her more recent conversations with the vice president, but acknowledged that “there are certain things I don’t love” about her campaign’s positions, including an embrace of cryptocurrency.) She also pointed to something simpler: Unlike other Democrats, Ms. Harris had asked for help.

…For Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, embracing her party’s nominee has alienated some of her earliest supporters on the left. The national leadership of the Democratic Socialists of America pulled its endorsement this summer. An organizer for the group in New York City wrote an essay in The Nation calling the congresswoman’s speech at the Democratic National Convention, in which she said Ms. Harris was working “tirelessly to secure a cease-fire in Gaza,” a “betrayal” of their movement. Yet her new role has allowed Ms. Ocasio-Cortez to take her vision of politics to places that previously shut her out, and has given Democrats like Ms. Harris a messenger who can reach corners of the electorate that others cannot.

…The congresswoman’s appeal is “a commodity that she has, and she’s learning how to use it and exploit it,” said Joseph Crowley, the high-ranking Democrat whose primary loss to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez in 2018 shook the political world. “That’s how you make friends, by being willing to expend some of that capital,” he said. “It’s not so much a game. It’s real life, and I think she gets that.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/25/nyregion/aoc-kamala-harris.html?unlocked_article_code=1.VE4.lZNh.VMXCl0wAFhOp&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

“Working class people in this country have the right to be angry. They have that right. But what we don’t have the right to do is to take that anger, which is legitimate, and place it on people who are even worse off than we are.

“If you are angry, have the guts to take on the people who made the decisions that impacted your life. It’s always easier, and demagogues always do it, to beat up on the people down below who are powerless. To demonize them. It’s not so easy to take on ruling class people and the big money interests.”