December 2025
Merriam-Webster’s word of the year was; slop. They define the word as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” The word slop serves as an apt word of the year in many more ways than that of descriptor for the endless stream of thirty second long artificially generated videos of whatever you could imagine. Seen from a bird’s eye, the entirety of the digital world is slop. Attempting to relay what the internet in the year 2025 is like in any rational way is not an easy task. It’s an attempt to rationally explaining the irrational.
It’s not simply that everyone has something to sell, or is something to be sold. It’s not simply that people expect others to engage in complex debates exchanged through less than 300 characters. It’s not simply that we’ve transferred entire relationships to a screen, or that we’re all intrinsically connected to an artificial world. It is all of those and more, but to me, underlying all of it is the fact that this is altering the very nature of humanity at a pace that would make Darwin weep.
There has always been malice, disillusionment, and deception. War, poverty, and all of the -isms have persisted since antiquity. The manifestations of these that we see in our modern world is nothing new, and their continuation won’t be either. The difference I see present now that these are occurring with the cover of a digital landscape is the response people are having. People do not care, in a way that I am not sure they have ever ‘not cared’ before.
On the eighteenth of the month there was a ‘listening session’ held at the Peterborough Library. Representative Wendy Thomas of Merrimack, prompted by the calls of people who were tired of their elected Democrats not having enough energy, organized a listening session in her community. This sparked a series of listening sessions across the State, and Peterborough was her fiftieth event. The panel included Representatives Thomas, Peter Leishman, Nicholas Germana, and Molly Howard. Both Nick and Molly are colleagues of mine on the House Environment and Agriculture committee. All the panelists were from the minority party.
Towards the end of the event there was a woman who wanted to make a statement. She thanked us for holding the event and for the back and forth on the goings on at the State House, but she went on to add that the room was without anyone under the age of 45. Adding that she speaks to younger people and knows that they are intelligent, and aware - so she wondered why they aren’t engaged. Boiled down, her speculation was that young people have watched a Democratic party that screwed over their candidate in Bernie Sanders, dismiss their pleas for world peace, all while claiming to be too weak to fight for a sane healthcare system; and they aren’t interested in engaging anymore. I thought her speculation was spot on, and as I said in response; this isn’t just how young people feel.
The people who work to get by. Who struggle to get up everyday knowing they’re waking up to another groundhog day stuck on a hamster wheel from which there is no escape. A hamster wheel that costs money to ride nonetheless. The people who wince at the idea of opening the mail knowing that all they’re going to get is another stack of bills that are way too expensive, for services that are outdated or rundown. They are also the ones who have entirely given up any semblance of faith they once had in the political system to bring any justice, or address any grievance of anyone who isn’t well connected. They don’t care about the process of the State House, or who their Congressperson is - not because they are unintelligent, but because it has never mattered to their life. It has never mattered who gets voted in to them because their everyday monotony has only gotten worse. As much as an ‘expert’ could attempt to explain to them the macroeconomic changes of an economy worth trillions of dollars, all they would hear is the Charlie Brown murmur.
People in that situation tune into politics through the social media feed, or the occasional YouTube video, but by and large the little extra time they have is used on that which they enjoy doing. Watching politics be corrupt is enjoyable only for the insane. The little they see is of the reality television aspect of it, and I mean reality television. The faux vitriol between politicians who act entirely cordial in person, the orchestration by staff, there is at this point eerily small differences between an MTV television show and the goings on of the United States Federal and State governments.
When that everyday person thinks of the Democratic Party they see a snooty group coastal liberals who have lost their sensibility on a host of social issues, and are trying to enforce belief of those social issues onto the populace. They think of a party that says they want to go after the rich, but in reality wants to tax everyone to the hilt. They don’t think about social security, medicaid, and medicare. They don’t think about stopping pollution from ruining the environment. They don’t think about the peace movements of the past, or the civil rights movement; they think of the liberal caricatures that we all have an image of.
When that everyday person thinks of the Republican Party they see a rich group of warhawks who want to let business run free and get rid of all taxes. They think of a party that has religious social issues that it holds sacrosanct in public while doing the opposite behind closed doors. They think of a party who’d sell the cure for cancer for profit. They don’t think of the party of Lincoln. They don’t think about the Eisenhower interstate system or the Environmental Protection Agency. They think of the conservative caricatures that we all have an image of.
They think both parties serve corporate masters that have interests opposite from the people. They think both parties would rather enrich themselves than actually do the job they were elected to do.
They think the entire system is corrupt. A September 2025 gallup poll had seventy-five percent of the American public saying they see widespread corruption in the United States government.
Those were obviously crude reductions of both of the vast and complex political parties of this country of three hundred and thirty million people. It is spot on only because the crude reduction is exactly what happens in the mind of the average citizen. Putting aside the roughly forty percent of eligible voters who simply don’t vote for a moment, the majority of rest aren’t spending their every waking hour paying attention to politics. Frankly, we cannot expect them too.
The danger for the Democratic Party is beyond the fact that people don’t pay attention. That’s not a danger, its a given. The danger for the democratic party is that they are seemingly unable to adapt to this bizarro world. The national committee of the party has incredible amounts of money spent on consultants to consult the consultants and yet they can’t seem to build a cogent cultural narrative at all.
The internet is currently oversaturated by right-wing debate. Most of the very known ‘influencers’, streamers, and other content creators online are operating within the right wing Overton window. I don’t mean that the Overton window in general is to the right, although it is, I mean they are operating in specifically the right wing section of the window. The in-person conferences and rallies are all being held on the right. The panel debates and discussions as well. The national discussion is being held by the right wing of the country, with the left by and large leaving them to do it while they default to panic mode.
New ideas, new leaders, and new movements are spawned not from posting on social media and getting the most likes. They spawn from the spontaneity that comes with being in-person. The Democratic Party has left the spontaneity entirely to the Republicans since 2019. The Presidential primary season of that year was the last time there were vigorous and spontaneous in-person debates happening. Since then, everyone has isolated themselves to only that which they agree with. Ending all sense of debate amongst the left. This isn’t to say there haven’t been rallies, but the rallies alone don’t bring debate. In fact they can discourage debate if not done properly.
There are many people in the party who feel the same way. The candidates running against the established incumbents in this upcoming cycle are but one bit of proof of that. I know that candidates such as Karisma Mazur and Jared Sullivan will demand debates for their Senate primary. I know many others running in the congressional elections will as well. People are unafraid anymore.
The curtain has dropped, and the Wizard of Oz has been seen. Once people realize that these so-called powerful establishment forces are only powerful because we the people give them the social credit to be so, their game is up. Once we the people demand the debates, discussions, and in-person events that will again build a sensible Democratic Party that wins - then we will win. People ask why I’m still a Democrat even though I’ve voted against the majority of the party on a couple issues, and I always hesitate not to chuckle. Politics at it’s best encourages splitting away when it is the right thing to do.
The average people sick of politics yearn for a system where people elected think independent of the party machine. They yearn to care again. It takes elected officials who realize that it wasn’t the party that got you elected - it was the people.
Only God knows what the next year brings, but we can infer from the pressure built up on the system that somethings going to give. The flood gates are leaking something fierce. If people were told people in the aughts that the House Oversight committee, and now the Federal Department of Justice has released photographic and documentary evidence, that at the very least heavily infers a high-level network of extreme pedophilia and other abuse of children. Not to mention the further financial and political criminal implications therefrom; they’d demand justice in some fashion. Today, we get memes which make Epstein out to be the worlds most interesting man.
We’re in a world where an artificially generated Jeffrey Epstein is now the Dos Equis mascot.
Now that isn’t true, but it sounds it, and that’s all that you need today.
Only 3.5 gigabytes of data was released by the Department of Justice. That is out of what they say is over 300 gigabytes, which was said prior to their announcement they found another whole million individual files containing more information. The bill proposed by Representatives Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna was fast tracked through the Senate with no amendments, and signed into law by the President. There will be more releases of information and I have a feeling many of the inferences made from what we’ve known about Epstein and Ghislane for years - will become much more than.
There is a lot of darkness in this world. More than meets the eye, and right now the eye is catching a lot. I don’t know what will spark the sense of righteous justice amongst the public needed to truly effect change, but I know that it is coming.
Something is about to lift the curtain of slop. The endless stream of social, political, and economic treachery against mankind - will come to an end in one way or the other. In the meantime let us be grateful there is still a world here for us to live in. There is still food on the shelves, gas in the lines, and heat in the homes. Think of the people you pass on the street who don’t have a place to go on these frigid winter nights. If they had the comfort from which we wallow in the terror of the world, I imagine they would be grateful beyond belief. I worked with a woman who grew up in a home with no running water or electricity. She has almost nothing, and survives on social security; but she is a more jovial and upbeat person than most others these days.
The sadness on the eye is visible in the face of most, the weight on the soul can be seen on the back of all.
If the kids in Gaza can make it than so can you. If the children forced to mine cobalt in the Congo can make it than so can you. If your ancestors could do it - then you can do it. It’s time to reject the slop. I sympathize with the struggle but its time to stop the whining, and put our creative energy into building the world for the people that we’d like to see one brick at a time.
Nobody is saving the world - but we can save the ones we love.
And everyone in the world is loved by someone.
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