May 2025 Mailbag
In which Hex answers reader questions.
Q. You said we should record everything and “remember to be mad.” But what do I do with all this rage when I can’t act on it immediately? Isn’t that how people burn out?
H. Why did you conclude you cannot act on your rage? There are things you can do to vent your hostility into the world, if you give yourself the freedom to be earnest. Call into C-SPAN’s Washington Journal Open Forum. Write letters to the editor of your smallest local newspaper. Curse out a Republican representative’s voicemail. Slap a “Trump Is a Bitch” sticker on a gas pump.
Remember: if money is speech, as the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United, then your speech is money, too—your shit talk is a political campaign contribution.
Q. “Economic cock-and-ball-torture?” Do you ever worry that your tone (swearing, vulgarity, theatrical anger, etc.) makes it harder for people to take you seriously?
H. Yes, which is why I have taken great care to measure my tone.
Q. What do you think of the Qatar Force One fiasco?
Mainly, (1) “Qatar Force One” is exactly what we should call it; and (2) “I could be a stupid person and say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane,’” is the same as Senator Clay Davis on HBO’s The Wire: “I’ll take any motherfucker’s money if he’s giving it away.”
Q. Let’s say ICE agents do deserve prosecution. What makes that different from the weaponized justice you accuse Republicans of?
H. I do not wish to live next door to someone who has put on a ski mask, grabbed a woman off the street, and put her into a sketchy prison. I would want a reckoning if they did this under a Democratic administration, too.
Q. You mentioned Watchmen and Daredevil in the ICE post. What do you think it says about us that our clearest moral reference points are all superhero shows?
H. Mainly that I do not watch much television, and when I do, it will typically be an HBO prestige drama or a superhero show. More broadly, I often think of hero stories as laboratories of morality—here is an injustice, here is a man with the power to correct it, here is the cost of correcting it, what should he do? How should problems be solved when money and power are not obstacles?
There are far more sophisticated moral references than Daredevil: Born Again on Disney+ available at the Barnes and Noble, but when the analogy to pop culture is nearly 1:1, I will not resist the comparison.
Q. If I go to a protest and all the chants are cringe, am I allowed to leave?
H. I am not your mother, but sometimes you ought to eat your vegetables. I am also maximally irony-poisoned and chafe at sincerity. But a real Cynic is meant to shrug off societal conventions and seek a life of virtue, simplicity, and self-knowledge. You can stand some discomfort, so instead use the time to reflect on those “cringe” chants and think about what they mean to people who mean them sincerely. My advice: put on some sunglasses so nobody else can see when you roll your eyes.
Q. You’ve said the general strike isn’t feasible. If not that, what’s the real plan?
H. I have not. I have worried it might not be feasible, but I think that worrying about problems is the first step towards finding solutions and accommodations for them. At the least, I take a severe view of flattening risk. A general strike is not an inconsequential amount of work to organize, and to work, the disruption it causes cannot be trivial either. People must be able to accurately judge the amount of commitment required for any mass action before they can make the correct sum of effort to get it.
Other than that, we try to sway Republican hearts in hope they grow a conscience, or we can vote harder. I am happy to explore all additional options that are presented but I do not already know the recipe for victory—if I come across it, I promise I will put it on a T-shirt.
Q. Is it wrong that I want the Democrats to prosecute every last one of these bastards?
H. I would never propose the “De-Ba’athification of America” as an emotional catharsis, because it should be a sobering image. We succeeded in similar projects in Germany and Japan after World War II, but our decades-long effort in Iraq and Afghanistan did not yield any perennial fruit. Schadenfreude is intoxicating, but you should indulge it as a separate exercise. If you think the proper criminal outcome happens to be the same as your ideal vengeance, that mainly indicates an unhealthy grandiosity. Be more humble, and even then you will see that Messrs. Trump and Musk have already earned their seats on the caboose to the calaboose.
Q. If I try to organize something on campus, can I end up on a list? Like a real government list?
H. Yes.
Q. What do you say to people who are deleting their tweets, hiding their pronouns, or pulling down old protest selfies?
H. If you think you should do that, make sure to tell people you felt like you had to. That way, you get the lowered visibility and still spread hostility towards the regime.
Q. Do you actually think any of this gets solved without violence?
H. I think there is already violence. What else do you call ICE’s broad daylight kidnappings? What was January 6? When I attended the Principles First conference, someone sent in a bomb threat. The danger is here.
I think people should be considerate that political violence does not only serve to delegitimize their ideology and associations in the eyes of the world, but also that the majority of the people who are injured will be innocent. I can understand why someone might want to cheer for a brave antifascist dressed like a member of the Foot Clan as they fight a Proud Boy on the street, but that is street fighting. More of that makes the world worse.
Q. If I don’t want to be a cringe lib or a doomer edgelord, what am I supposed to be?
H. Please volunteer at your local library.
Q. Do you like being imagined as a donkey in a leather jacket, or is that a metaphor that got out of control?
H. I yam what I yam.