Monthly Archives: November 2025

Trump’s Great Gatsby Redux is a Portent

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To say we live in an age of absurdity would be an understatement. But absurdity often accompanies sadism. Case in point: Trump throwing a “Great Gatsby” themed gala on the eve of 40+ million Americans losing their access to food. This is “Let them eat cake” on steroids.

To be sure, Trump has likely never read a book through cover to cover, with the possible exception of Mein Kampf translated into English and his own “The Art of the Deal.” So, the irony of holding a Great Gatsby themed party while millions of his citizens struggle or languish in near intolerable conditions will always be lost on him.

Gatsby, the main character, was a conman who was obsessed with the aristocracy. His nouveau riche credentials didn’t get him the status he craved in their circles, but he threw lavish parties in a mansion he built to display his ostentatious wealth to anyone he could dazzle.

That Trump cannot see such glaring irony is staggering, but not surprising. While he is a narcissist, he is also a proud illiterate and affirmed ignoramus. His dearth of curiosity is legendary. He is only attracted to glitter, gold and gilded mirrors. And he delights in the praise of the vapid courtiers who surround him.

As the nation teeters on economic ruin, Trump has ensconced himself in the illusion of prestige. He lacks the capacity for insight and grows ever more delusional by the day. This does not make him any less dangerous. On the contrary, as he grows even more unhinged by the day he becomes more erratic and paranoid. This is the real reason for the golden ballroom and the renovated bunker that will be rebuilt below.

Narcissism is a poison to its bearer. It promises satisfaction, but only guarantees loneliness and longing. It creates hungry ghosts, never able to sate the empty void within. Trump has cultivated his own narcissism for a lifetime. But no one can avoid the humbling veil of mortality.

Gatsby’s ignominious fate was met while he was floating in his pool. Trump appears to be aimlessly floating for disaster as well. The only problem is that he is taking the entire nation with him.

Kenn Orfanos, November 2025

The American Empire was Built on Racism and Class Exploitation

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The photographs here are but one example of the current cesspit of racism that is churning in the United States. Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy posted a seemingly innocuous photo of him with his children on Halloween. The comments that followed from self-described Maga-Republicans were nothing less than vile.

Ramaswamy isn’t the only Republican to face this kind of raw hatred. Kash Patel also received a flood of racist vitriol after wishing his followers a “Happy Diwali.” And the list goes on and on and on.

In a large sense, vice president JD Vance has also played his own game of Christian nationalism. He admitted publicly that he hopes that his wife Usha converts from Hinduism to Christianity. Given his obvious affection for the widow of the late racist blowhard, Charlie Kirk, the ramifications are significant. From the top down, the rot runs deep.

Recently, Republican slop-posters created a series of AI-generated videos depicting Black women complaining about cuts to the US food assistance program SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). The fake videos used disgusting racial stereotypes of Black women as being lazy and sexually promiscuous, a recurring theme among racists. But none of this gave pause to the conservative news outlet, Fox News, who ran with the story as if it were true.

Since the start of the government shutdown, the Trump regime has refused to fund the essential program that assists over 40 million people, half of whom are children and most of whom are white. In the miasma that is social media, there has been a flood of racist memes and posts from the far right. Some go so far as influencers using blackface to get their racist point across to their feckless fans.

And it isn’t entirely partisan. One look at the NYC mayoral race exposes the rancid racism at the heart of Andrew Cuomo’s campaign aimed at Zohran Mamdani. Cuomo has used almost every racist trope in the book in an attempt to defame Mamdani and deflect from his own sexual misconduct charges and elderly killing policies. Most of these attempts have backfired spectacularly.

But the point here is not whether one ruling political party or the other is more racist or not. Obviously, one is far more overt about it and is becoming more and more openly fascist. The bigger picture demands a look at American society itself.

Racism has always been woven into the fabric of American life. The nation that was stolen from the Indigenous population through ethnic cleansing and genocide and built by enslaved people from Africa, has never truly grappled with any of it.

The Civil Rights Movement held promise thanks to the endless work of Black and Indigenous communities. But it is now being eroded by an enormous segment of the white population that has never truly accepted it. And far right white politicians continue to use it as a distraction from egregious economic policies that favour billionaires over their constituents.

But while the Republican Party seeks to whitewash American history of its copious crimes and suppress any discussion of the history and legacy of institutionalized racism, the Democratic Party elite continue to hold on to a romanticized version of it. To many, the election of Obama was enough to live in a fantasy of a post-racial society. After all, why should there be talk of reparations if we can all go to the silly and revisionist musical ‘Hamilton’ together in an unsegregated theatre?

The stark reality is that the American Empire was built on racism and class exploitation. And it is now in steep decline. Its economy is on the brink of collapse thanks to a regime that cares far more about padding the pockets of useless billionaires and enacting business-killing tariffs than addressing the dire needs of its population. Its soft power abroad is waning due to a long history of belligerent foreign policy and blatant hypocrisy and its most recent support and aid of an obvious genocide in Gaza.

The Trump regime is simply the logical result of this vicious bipartisan legacy. Its use of racism to divide people isn’t anything new. It simply has no other tools in its belt than to distract and scapegoat vulnerable and marginalized communities. So, as the American imperial project enters its closing chapters, we should expect even more racist rhetoric and worse.

Given all of this, one would think that racialized people like Ramasamy would wake up from their hypnotic slumber. That they would see Maga and the American project for what it is. But the illusion of inclusion can be a powerful and intoxicating drug. And most of them have overdosed on it.

Kenn Orfanos, November 2025

The Tyranny of Screens

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Whether we like it or not, screens, social media and AI are facets of modern life. Our society has become so integrated with these mediums and processes that it simply cannot exist without them. We depend upon them for everything from casual communications to communiqués, shopping transactions to banking, powering our appliances to the entire energy infrastructure grid.

In many ways, these mediums have enhanced our lives and helped us to stay informed or in touch with people from our past or whom we may have never known. It has helped artists, musicians, writers and content creators launch careers outside of the traditional legacy formats. It has also been an integral part of raising awareness and generating support and solidarity with important social causes or movements, whether it be Black Lives Matter or the genocide in Gaza.

But the dark side of this phenomenon has been the erosion of our critical thinking capacity and the skillsets required for civic engagement. The result is often a dangerous disconnect from reality. And this has been by design. Our brains can only process so much. They have evolved to tackle problems one at a time. To focus on one thing. But we have been conditioned to accept a kind of manic engagement with life.

Tech companies understand this all too well. They have meticulously curated the dopamine reward system to keep us coming back. The use of the colour red, for instance, is no mistake. It creates stress in our brains. A stress that must be relieved by “clicking” on an icon to see what is being “missed.” It is essentially a means of social control via the manipulation of neurochemicals and reward pathways.

And it may have very serious ramifications for our mental health. In fact, there is a new term that is being used: AI Psychosis. Tech companies have been aggressively marketing their AI chatbot services. But by making so many individuals dependent upon a pseudo-assistant/companion, the danger of psychological and cognitive disconnect from reality increases exponentially. For many who struggle with their mental health, the AI “therapist” may seem like a lifeline. But going to a chatbot, one devoid of human empathy, morality or ethics, can lead to disaster.

In addition to this, there is ample evidence of tech companies cooperating, working in tandem with, and even developing technology that increases the surveillance of civilians and independent organizations. That these companies already censor so much online content from those who confront the institutions of capitalism or the continuing colonial and imperialistic projects is troubling enough. But when they work hand in hand with authoritarian governments or despotic regimes to suppress any and all dissent, we are at risk of losing any semblance of democratic norms that we have left to us.

What is even more concerning is how screens have altered the current generation. Children are being taught to be bored with life absent constant stimulation from the screens they carry around in their pockets. Don’t believe me? Ask most teachers these days who have been sounding the alarm for several years now. They cannot get through a lesson plan or assignment without encountering huge amounts of indifference or outright hostility.

And what’s worse, is that the ubiquitous and insidious nature of screens is steadily siphoning off the moral imagination and empathy that are required for healthy human development, social relationships and societal cohesion. How will these children develop healthy relationship patterns and interactions with other children and adults? How will they be able to cope with a world that is nearing the collapse of climate stability? How will they be able to problem solve and address the coming shortages and scarcity? How will they be able to confront despotic political figures and groups who use such crises to scapegoat or enact authoritarian policies?

There is also a huge component of this phenomenon that isn’t being adequately addressed. The tech companies responsible for the denuding of the public mind are also raping the natural world. AI requires extraordinary amounts of resources. Every day, individual data centres consume millions of gallons of water for cooling. Just one data centre has the capacity to use as much water as a small town. Despite efforts to conceal their ecologically catastrophic practices, Amazon dwarfs its competitors, Google and Microsoft, in its consumption of water. In 2021 alone, Amazon used as much water as the city of San Francisco to operate its heat generating AI farms.

Without going so far as advocating for Luddism, there are compelling reasons to reflect on the grave impact of AI in an era of rising fascist authoritarianism, extraordinary economic inequity, and a biosphere that is imperiled by the predations of late capitalist exploitation. Tech billionaires and their corporate behemoths do not believe in democracy or even in humanity or the preservation of the biosphere. This can be seen clearly by delving into the unhinged far-right apocalyptic and conspiratorial thoughts of figures like Peter Theil. Mark Zuckerberg would prefer you jettison your human friends for AI simulations. Jeff Bezos would like you to shop for endless items on your phone without regard for worker’s labour rights or the impact on the planet.

But there are limits to these trends that neither billionaires or their corporate shareholders can control. Despite enormous efforts to control the narrative surrounding Israel’s genocide in Gaza, most see through the lies. Despite the constant flow of pixelated slop, AI generated reels and tone-deaf ads on our newsfeeds, many are starting to connect the dots of their own alienation and atomization to the reality of living in a capitalist dystopia that is growing ever more tedious and out of touch with most lived realities.

There is also evidence that many people are simply letting the whole idea of “casual posting” go. After all, looking at a photo of someone’s meal next to the image of a starving child in Gaza has contributed to the moral outrage and growing dissatisfaction with banality and indifference to the very dire and urgent ethical questions of our age. Seeing celebrities fly off in private jets or sport expensive clothing while most people are struggling in this economy just doesn’t have the same impact it once did.

Screens dominate our lives. This is a truth of living in the early decades of the 21st century. And it should not surprise us that in this stage of brutal and ruthless late capitalism, the wealthy and powerful are continually trying to harness them for profit and social control. But understanding this dynamic is the first step at breaking the spell of the screen and unraveling its digital noose around the neck of humanity.

Kenn Orfanos, November 2025