I really don't intend to use this space for political commentary. Lord knows there is enough of that not only on Substack but everywhere. With a few notable exceptions, most of it is redundant and reductive.

For the moment, though, I am going to ignore my own Prime Directive and offer some observations that I have the nerve to think might be slightly original.

The legacy media and their digital spinoffs tell us ad-nauseam that we are a nation divided over immigration, identity, inflation, or whatever is the issue du jour (and Lord knows, for the past three weeks we've woken up to a new one every jour).

But I think there is another factor rumbling beneath the surface of the cultural landscape which is common to all facets of the political divide:

In the Year of Our Digital Overlords 2025 we have to do nearly everything… by ourselves… online.

This is not new. I have been preaching this gospel since the early months of 2016. Just a few months after Trump came down the escalator and a few months before he clinched his first Republican nomination, I posted a thing on Medium under the title: Democalypse 2016 — It’s (Still) The Internet, Stupid.

Here we are midway into another decade and.... well, dammit, it's still the Internet – and all the gizmos that deliver it. You see…

It's Marshall McLuhan's world...

... and we are just the frogs in the slowly boiling toxic stew who get to live in it.

That 2016 essay opened with the definition of Marshall McLuhan's oft-repeated axiom, "The medium is the message:"

“Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication.”

The expression "The medium is the message" first appeared in Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man, published in 1964. McLuhan's prose in that seminal text is thick, opaque, and filled with convoluted metaphors and aphorisms. But it is is often cited as the cornerstone of modern communications / cultural theory.1

Just as I listened to The Beatles in their first incarnation (1964-70)2, I started reading Marshall McLuhan when he was first published. Some people from my era might cite To Kill A Mockingbird or The Diary of Malcom X or The Feminine Mystique as a book that influenced their outlook on life. For me, it was Understanding Media - even if I barely understood what I was reading.^⁠3

Consequently, I tend to I see the world – culture, politics, economics, human relations and above all technology – through the simplified prism of McLuhan's most in/famous aphorism.

Whenever I read some seemingly well-informed dissertation on today's dystopian landscape, I always wonder: what's really going on here? What's the real message that we can only learn by stepping back from the content and taking a closer look at the medium that delivers it?

We’re Still In the Early Stages!

Here’s another quotation from that 2016 essay:

“We are still in the early stages of a long-term reconfiguration of human society that is the primary influence of the Internet, a continuation of the democratization and globalization of Medieval hierarchies that began with Gutenberg.”
— Donald Schneier, PhD

That's why things are so fucked up.

I don’t mean to minimize the horrifying drift of current affairs. But I think that our unrest is not divided: it is universal, and derives from overlooked, subliminal forces that Marshall McLuhan came closer to explaining than the cacophony that floods our daily infotainment firehose.

From my perspective, the 'issues' are the low-hanging fruit that the commentariat tell us we should focus on. They have long, easily identifiable histories that have been repeated so often they have taken on a life of their own that precludes examination from a fresh angle.

My own experience – and, I suspect, that of countless millions (billions?) of others – tells me that at least some of the anxiety we encounter every day stems from the operational reality of 21^st century:

DIYO: Do It Yourself Online

<rant>

In the second decade of the 21^st century, we have to do everything... by ourselves... online.

Before we can do anything by ourselves online, we have to figure out how to do it. By ourselves. Online.

And once we have finally figured out how to do it, by ourselves, online... half the time.. it doesn't fucking work!

</rant>

DIYO is pervasive, and it's not just filling out forms or paying bills or buying tickets online. You can't even park your car without scanning a QR code.

Another case in point: I just got off the phone with my sister

But that sort of thing happens all the time, because the tech giants that govern all this stuff have raised the bar on Internet security so high that we can no longer see the concept of ‘user friendliness’ from that altitude.

Echoes From the Wilderness

Occasionally I detect some oblique validation for this thesis. For example, the cover story in this month's Atlantic Monthly is…

The article itself is behind a pay-wall,5 but you can get its essence from this recent episode of NPRs Fresh Air.

My DIYO thesis is reflected in this exchange between Derek Thompson and Fresh Air host Tonya Mosley:

Thompson opines:

...we find ourself in this uncanny space where we ... are so exhausted by all that alone time that we're pulling back from opportunities to be truly social.

...to which host Mosley responds that even...

...the interaction between the store clerks ... is a little bit of a dopamine hit. When you have a fun interaction or a really nice conversation with the store clerk as she or he is scanning your groceries, those small interactions, from what I'm getting from you, are also really important things in our lives.

Ah, Tonya. We all long for the good old days before the only interaction we had with the 'store clerk' is when the 'self checkout' doesn't work and you have to call for an actual human attendant.

In his Atlantic article, Thompson articulates the mirror image of my argument:

All of this time alone, at home, on the phone, is not just affecting us as individuals. It’s making society weaker, meaner, and more delusional. ... Social disconnection helps explain progressives’ stubborn inability to understand Donald Trump’s appeal.

I rest my case.

If You Don’t Believe Me…

Maybe you’ll believe Bill Maher? After all, he has a whole TeeVee show and all I’ve got is this Substack.

While this Post was sitting in the 'nearly done' box over the weekend, Maher went off on this theme for nearly ten with his final "New Rule" from Friday's episode of Real Time:

Bill stops short of drawing the conclusion I'm drawing here – perhaps because, while he clearly identifies the cause of our unrest, he doesn't apply the 'McLuhan Prism' that I see everything through.

Bill is pissed, but doesn't draw the obvious conclusion: everybody is pissed6 – in ways that are very real but largely unreported from behind the curtain of historical ‘issues.’

Lacking an adequate understanding of the source of our angst, we've installed a regime that is going to dismantle the Federal government – because we can’t remember our passwords.

The Silent Earthquake

It's hard to draw a direct correlation between the shifting media landscape and the emergence of a strong-arm fascist clown. I certainly cannot countenance, nor am I really qualified to meaningfully protest what I am reading and hearing about every day since January 20th. There are too many others vying for your attention – and a lot of them actually get paid to say pretty much the same things over and over again.

I am not commenting on what Trump has done/is doing. I am trying to get a better idea how so many people could line up against their own self interest to actually vote for the man.

I’m not suggesting here – as I do when I bring this up in casual conversation – that the imperative to ‘DIYO’ is the primary source of our unrest. But I do believe it’s a powerful, unrecognized factor, and, really, nobody is doing a goddammed thing about it!

Every day we have to download a new app, or the app we've already downloaded has updated itself unbidden and changed something that we have to figure out all over again – by ourselves, in the dim glow of our gizmos.

Or you enter your User ID and Password and the screen says “Either the User ID or the Password is wrong.” C’mon! You’re the fucking machine with all the data, can you not even tell me which one is wrong!?!?

And when you do finally manage track down a human for help, too often the help consists of “let me send you a link to some instructions…” so that, once again, we are left to figure it all out by ourselves.

For better or worse, this digital environment is the ground we stand on. And for all of the 21^st century, we have been living in the midst a silent earthquake that just. will. not. fucking. stop.

Yes, there is some very scary shit going on right now.

Every day we wake up to some new Fresh Hell7 - but never quite grasp that it's the gizmos that deliver that hell that is making us nutz, not the hell they're telling us about.

OK, I finally got all that off my chest.

Now back to photos of my demon cat, medieval ruins and whatever else suits my incorrigible fancy

Oh. And.

Refill my Lexapro prescription.

By myself.

Online.

… and until I start asking for paid subs, maybe you’ll…

Help Pay For My Meds