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Guaranteed Human.

CallZone Media.

Hello and welcome to Better Offline.

I'm your host, Ed Zittron.

Better Offline. It's been a hard couple of weeks. It's been pretty hard to focus. I've written a few

newsletters. I've gone to Portugal. I've done a bunch of shit. Just trying not to think about

everything happening outside, but it's time to do so. Similarly, every single person on earth

with a blog or a podcast or even a Twitter account or X-the-Everything app or whatever it's called now,

they've all tried to drill down into what happened on November 5th to find the people to blame,

to explain what could have gone differently. Really looking for who to blame though and

find out why so many actions led to a result that will overwhelmingly harm women, minorities,

immigrants, LGBTQ people and lower income workers. It's terrifying. It fucking sucks. I'm not going

to mince words. Not that I would usually anyway. And I don't feel

fully equipped to respond to the moment. I don't have any real answers, at least not political

ones. I'm not a political analyst. And I'd feel disingenuous trying to dissect either the Harris or

the Trump campaigns. Because I just feel like there's a take Olympics right now. It's the Dunning

Gruger Festival out there. Everyone is trying to rationalize and intellectualize these events

that ultimately come down to something quite simple. People don't trust authority. And yeah,

it's pretty ironic that this often leads them towards authoritarianism. Now, I don't want to give you the

impression that I'm going to go on my crank mode, that and somehow against institutions on their

face, I'm not. But at the same time, understanding this moment requires us to acknowledge that

...