I miss the days when I could read about the Holocaust and truly believe “never again,” back when I couldn’t imagine how the Nazi Party could ever happen here. Not here. Never. Now, I look around and wonder which of my family, friends, and neighbors are the sympathizers and which are the Schutzstaffel, and how far they’ll go to please their Furor..

This is not a rally, it’s a rage room with one intent: to incite violence, an exponentially larger January 6th in every MAGA-filled swing state on election day and beyond.

Who are we? How did we become this way? I’m not religious, but I went to Church as a kid and there ain’t no version of Jesus in the Bible that would be okay with this horror.

What a glorious escape from a wounded world in the worst of times.

We’ve been complicit in the building of this world, this “freemium” “gig” economy where everything is a commodity and nothing is worth anything. Cheap entertainment, more more more more. There’s no turning back, but we still can determine how far we take it. How far we let it drag us down to our ultimate demise. The only product is me, you, and everyone you know.

The distance between my childhood and the present day is never more clear than during an election year, when my home state becomes the center of attention.

Ohio didn’t change, I did.

Point is, it’s okay to get fired sometimes. Sometimes we’re fired because we’re young, immature, in the wrong job, growing up, stuck in a rut, going through something, questioning our purpose or a company’s intentions. Whatever the reason, it’s a part of life, a part of a career, a learning experience. Power begets power, like money makes money, and the ones most in need of firing are the ones most often in the roles of doing the firing.

To live, truly live, is to forget more things than most people ever knew, to accumulate enough stories to revisit much later when such adventures are far less likely. That always came easy to me.

Art is, and always has been, our best platform for political protest, activism, and empathy building. Storytelling is how we personalize another’s pain, make relatable highly politicized concepts, and ignite others to contemplate the “what ifs” of life.

Lenderman’s a master of stoner garage-influenced rock, a less meandering and arguably less interesting Kurt Vile. There’s still a humor to his songwriting, and he certainly knows his way with the guitar. A one-off song here or there doesn’t completely alienate me, but the thought of listening to his album in one sitting is about as likely as me revisiting a Black Keys album. Ain’t gonna happen, folks.

But as with everything, there’s two sides to that problem. And that leads to my second point: JD Vance is far scarier than Donald Trump. With his cult leader eyes, debate-club eloquence, and Midwestern ‘aw-shucks pal’ lingo, Vance can almost make you forget that he’s about to strip away your most precious rights.

That’s how transitions work sometimes. It’s one thing, then a lot all at once, and then another thing. Stasis, conflict, stasis. Versus, chorus, verse.

Isn’t that exactly what she does as an artist? Faces her fate. Too disinterested in being a pop star, too talented to be ignored.

Robert Smith’s voice is the only thing time hasn’t darkened.

The 1999 version of For Sure is a measly 3 ½ minutes, a perfectly buttoned up melancholic whine about the what if and what might still be within a relationship, but also perhaps about everything, this whole fucked up world and everything that gets in our way and how different it could be and what if this and what if that. I love it, and I don’t care what anyone says.

Tuesday was a very good night. Kamala’s debate performance was as strong as I’ve ever seen while Trump was so very fucking Trump-y. Taylor’s endorsement was well-timed and punchy — a perfectly curated PR moment that ensured an already dazed Trump fell into a social media rage.

You know that person. We all do. They’re the ones who always post, in parentheses or underneath their hateful verbal vomit, “Not going to argue with anyone,” or, “This isn’t a fight, so any negative comments will be deleted.”

It took a few decades to gentrify, tech-ify, suburban-ify our cities’ most storied neighborhoods, the blocks where art and culture and diversity collided to shape culture — the same culture those same middle of America families embrace years later, a beat too late.

And that’s exactly why we need to celebrate all those still diving into the bleakness: the high school garage bands and street photographers, backyard filmmakers and late night playwrights, barstool poets and everyone else who takes the time to make things–regardless of whether an audience awaits on the other end. Art and storytelling is humanity’s fuel, and artists will always find a way — even if we’re barely surviving, scraping by, or “selling out.”

It’s easy to imagine our most notorious cult leaders atop a modern day tech company: Charles Manson as Facebook CEO, Jim Jones securing another round of funding at WeWork, David Koresh the face of a hostile Twitter takeover.