The Labyrinth: critical theory, culture, and politics

This is an expanded episode of an essay i’ve recently written about how we need to radically rethink our idea of a centrist…one that needs to meet a completely new criteria…the center needs to hold the positions that a majority of Americans support. Radical idea I know. And currently, what is considered…“the center” does not meet this simple criteria. The current ideas of the “center” are radical brain rotted freaks. They are not serious people and should be treated as such.Our current center believes profit is the ultimate ego ideal to strive for…they wish to strip your humanity from every purchase you make.The irrational centrist holds profit as their first principle…in both the economic sense and the moral sense. We see this in the “not really political” influencers who define success through preselected goals: more cars, more crypto rug pulls, and a narcissistic drive to be seen “winning”. This is the “self-optimized narcissist” in action, a figure obsessed with an unachievable ego ideal.As Todd McGowan notes, the foundation of the capitalist structure is the promise of the future. We buy commodities to discover satisfaction, accumulate capital to “one day” have enough, and speed up distribution for future profit. This manufactured hope is sold back to us as progress, yet it is built on the false premise that satisfaction is always just one purchase away. Does it currently feel like the better tomorrow is coming?Our modern governance has transitioned from democratic deliberation to technocratic management. Digital platforms have eaten away at our minds, leaving behind conceptual ghosts and transactions. Our smartphones are no longer tools…they shape how we think and what we desire. We have entered a stage of "manufactured narcissism," where our public and private selves become indistinguishable as we perform roles scripted by the machine of fame and profit.Your average normie influencer does ad reads for another dog water company and we don’t even blink an eye. If they want to be influencers, we should be holding their feet directly in the fire when they are lazy profit hungry fools. Why do they get a pass? The current center facilitates a narcissistic fantasy where we no longer view ourselves as distinct from the objects we consume… instead, we are pushed into a capitalistic based fragmentation where our own consumption becomes a rotted form of self-reification. This creates a smokescreen that prevents us from understanding what we truly desire or what a healthy politics looks like. The current “Enlightened Centrist” (EC) is often just someone who is mentally tired and lazy (CC Lex Fridman as the perfrect example of sounding lazy and thinking lazy). They are tired of ideological purity tests, so they adopt “centrism” as a brand to mask their complicity. They preach a “pathological optimism” that masks the smell of a decaying status quo.A true centrist position must be an ideological inversion based on material reality. Consider the data:* Bipartisan Support: 67% of Americans support a Billionaire income tax, and over 60% support a wealth tax.* Healthcare Priority: 72% of voters support “radical” measures to lower healthcare costs and reduce the role of insurance middlemen.* Red State Realism: In 2024, deep-red states like Missouri and Alaska voted to raise the minimum wage and mandate paid sick leave.These voters aren’t “radical extremists”…they are working people who recognize that the status quo is irrational. Their “mistrust” is not a “doomer” mindset—it is a rational observation of a system where working full-time no longer guarantees stable housing or family milestones.The average American is grounded in reality. The elites? Are radical brain rotted fools that should be treated as such. And the irrational center tells us that universal healthcare and living wages are expensive fantasies. Meanwhile, “techno-utopians” like Sam Altman sell a delusional vision of an AI-driven future of abundance to obscure the current material rot of energy depletion and rising costs.They are promising you a better tomorrow while stealing everything from you today. How do we treat frauds? Do we give them another bail out? Or should we be operating more rationally? I think we should be prosecuting them for their lack of competence and fraudulent lies. It’s that simple. The true center must step back into the “grey zone” of reality. It refuses to lie to itself about what the system is. It recognizes that “hope” has become a consumer product designed to distract us from the harsh truth of our material predicament.We must stop allowing media influencers to act as highly paid PR firms for power. A rational middle ground should operate with principles of moderation and compromise, but it must reject the binary of left and right, which serves as a controlled opposition designed to simulate choice without threatening power.The path forward is grounded in an awareness of our collective experience. By focusing on the expressed material needs of the vast majority, we can transition from objects of the "celebrity machine" to subjects who influence our own reality. This is the grounded, rational, and true hope for the future. One that the center MUST hold. Stay curious. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendenslabyrinth.substack.com/subscribe

In his recent interview with Piers Morgan, Nick Fuentes admitted to being a “27-year-old virgin,” doubled down on his praise for Hitler, and called for the end of women’s voting rights. But is this just trolling, or something more calculated? anyway i try to deconstruct this one. understand what has brought us to a guy like Nick Fuentes having cultural influence. so yeah...trying to see if i want to do a more developed take on this topic.... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendenslabyrinth.substack.com/subscribe

theory based analysis of the new Epstein documents and his connection with Trump. Deeper dives on the story: Secular TalkDrop Site News This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendenslabyrinth.substack.com/subscribe

We’re living in a time when politics has become pornographic…pure stimulus, pure confirmation bias, pure ideology. The postmodern conservative doesn’t seek truth; they seek arousal through outrage. Their politics perform themselves before they think themselves, cycling through prepackaged narratives that gratify resentment the way pornography gratifies fantasy or narrative…mechanically, repetitively, without reflection. The Charlie Kirk incident made this visible…the narrative was already written before the facts even emerged. The algorithmic priests of the right sermonized their version of reality…identity reaffirmed, outrage consumed, truth irrelevant. What defines postmodern conservatism? It isn’t coherence but performance…it’s fragmented pastiche identities held together by resentment and disavowal. They know it’s false but act as if it’s true. Their victimhood is the last refuge of meaning in a world hollowed out by capitalism and digital simulation. When truth becomes unbearable, narrative becomes narcotic. Postmodern conservatism is that addiction…the refusal to wake up from the simulated narrative they’ve been fed with algorithms. Stay curious. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendenslabyrinth.substack.com/subscribe

I wrote an essay recently on this…but i realized there’s more to say. Anyway…i try to go deeper in connecting this idea of desire machines, status quo propaganda, and forms of radicalization. And Twitter happens to be a great case study. Stay curious. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendenslabyrinth.substack.com/subscribe

I listened to his Turning Point speech…and I have some thoughts. So…talking about Tucker Carlson and President Trump. I think Tucker is going to be the follow up guy to Trump. To put it simply. Also…Tucker is better at playing politics…Anway…in this one I talk about how they both weaponize aesthetics and catharsis in order to replace real potential political solutions (I’m speaking into the void on this one). They don’t want to solve systemic problems…their politics run on spectacle, not substance.All i’m saying…think about what really gets the “elites” scared? It’s always someone who represents real change. Who often represents real change? Someone that is backed by the average voter AND has proposed solutions for systemic change. Stay curious. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendenslabyrinth.substack.com/subscribe

I’ve been doing a long term project that has Peter Thiel in my view. I saw that he did an interview. He said…Douthat: It seems very clear to me that a number of people deeply involved in artificial intelligence see it as a mechanism for transhumanism…for transcendence of our mortal flesh…and either some kind of creation of a successor species or some kind of merger of mind and machine.Do you think that’s all irrelevant fantasy? Or do you think it’s just hype? Do you think people are raising money by pretending that we’re going to build a machine god? Is it hype? Is it delusion? Is it something you worry about?Thiel: Um, yeah.Douthat: I think you would prefer the human race to endure, right?Thiel: Uhhhhh…(followed by an uncomfortable silence).Douthat: You’re hesitating.Thiel: Well, I don’t know. I would—I would…Douthat: This is a long hesitation!Thiel: There’s so many questions implicit in this.Douthat: Should the human race survive?Thiel: Yes.Douthat: OK.Thiel: But I also would like us to radically solve these problems.Which problems Peter boy? Huamnity itself? Do you see humanity itself as a problem? Anyway here are some snippets from this episode…And here’s what I want you to sit with in this episode: how often, in our current moment…in the way our institutions behave, the way Silicon Valley corporations talk, the way billionaires posture and position themselves, there’s this underlying assumption that their vision of the future is not just likely, but right. It's inevitable. It's correct. That it’s supposed to happen. That the world is naturally bending toward their plans, their desires, their aesthetic, their software.It's all naturalllllllllll. (We are told)But look closer…that “inevitability” they preach—it’s not a prediction. It’s a claim. A flex. A power move disguised as foresight. They speak as if the future were already written, when what they’re really saying is: "we should be the ones who get to write the future. I can't have you normies realize it because you'll mess it all up. But shusssssshhhhhhh let me cosplay my insecurities in the form of me being your daddy overlord."Thiel is the example of my new category…the bishop. The one who hides behind the scenes, mostly, not always, hence he did an interview and look everyone thinks he's a psycho, so he's not being a very good bishop. But he's a bishop. It's the guy that guides a bunch of priest to say and do all sorts of really dumb things. That’s the mindset. That’s Peter Thiel.Watch his interviews, read his essays, and it’s there—not even hidden. This quiet but constant esoteric entitlement. He thinks he's God. As if he is participating in some divine order. As if his role is not to serve the world, or even influence it, but to shape it in his image. And I find that deeply concerning—not just ideologically, but spiritually, and…you know…societally. Also, i find it concerning for everything involved in space and time. Super low stakes. **Because this isn’t about innovation. This isn’t about progress. Thiel is not here to tweak the code of liberal capitalism…he is here to run the final update. His vision is theological in scale and totalitarian in ambition. He doesn’t want to improve the system. He wants to end it…to replace history with a willed narrative, and to replace us with what he thinks should come after us.He calls it perfection. I call it a billionaire tantrum after a psychotic break that had a touch of schizophrenic paranoia. It’s not conservatism. It’s not libertarianism. It’s not even transhumanism in the sci-fi sense. It’s the quiet, deliberate engineering of a post-political, post-human, algorithmic future.Stay curious. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendenslabyrinth.substack.com/subscribe

Trump’s ICE raids and National Guard deployment in California expose the real machinery of power—distraction, narrative control, and the manufactured image...it's a spectacle. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendenslabyrinth.substack.com/subscribe

So this started with a Substack note that semi-blew up, and it pushed me to expand on something I’ve been thinking about for a while: rebellion, aesthetics, and how edginess functions as a kind of political currency (or all of those combined do). I talk about Red Scare. But this isn’t just about them. It’s about the death of irony, the collapse of aesthetics into ideology, and what happens when leftist politics forget how to maintain an edge in favor of an oversimplified and marginalizing ethic. I talk jouissance (Lacan and stuff), performative rebellion, reactionary grifting, and the slow shift of “edgy” from leftist cultural critique to right-wing nihilism. I touch on why moral posturing turned the liberal left into the new status quo—and why Dasha and Anna’s (Red Scare ladies) vibe shift might be the most revealing political litmus test for our current cultural and political moment. This episode is about how rebellion gets hollowed out, how irony can curdle into belief, and how our politics are increasingly built not from principles, but from vibes.Are you ruled by reason…or by desire, rage, and the need for transgression? Is that really a base for a moral framework? Anyway…i’ll have more stuff around this idea. I need to further develop how nihilism is at the heart of the rot….Stay curious. Article that I referenced in the episode: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendenslabyrinth.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit brendenslabyrinth.substack.comThe jumping off point for this episode:Society, at its core, thrives on a delicate balance between conformity and controlled deviation. The deviation is the accepted level of neurosis where society will not call you psychotic. It requires people to give themselves to authority at some level to function—to accept its norms, rules, and boundaries, even as…