The Gutenberg Bible Election Moment of 2024

How Longform Is Moving Us From The Dark Ages Into a New Enlightenment

This post is too long for email. Or maybe it’s not. But long is good.

“The light shines on in the darkness, and the darkness did not understand it or overpower it or appropriate it or absorb it [and is unreceptive to it].” - John 1:5

The election of Donald Trump to President of the United States and the subsequent weeks have been the most honest and authentic cultural moments of my lifetime - and probably yours too. It’s now over two weeks since the election, and I’m still shaking my head in wonder and awe.

I wouldn’t consider myself a cynical person. I’m a realist. Generally cautiously optimistic about all things in life. It takes a lot to impress me and make me hopeful, but that’s mostly because I manage my expectations really well. I understand humans and our nature at a pretty advanced level, if I do say so myself.

In the last 8 years (culminating with the height of Covid), along with you, I have watched western culture evolve into something nearly unrecognizable and unimaginable. The march towards - and then straight into - dystopia has been horrifying and disheartening, to put it mildly. At some fundamental level, I had (maybe still do) resigned myself to the fact that I was going to end up in some gulag or ministry subbasement next to Winston from 1984 sooner rather than later because I’m unwilling to bend the knee to totalitarianism and insanity. I’m a free man and I’ll die a free man, even if I’m in chains.

It’s been a modern day Dark Ages, and still we appeared to be heading into the darkest part of the night.

But something truly miraculous happened.

You all met me in the middle.

Photo by Mario Verduzco on Unsplash

I’d hoped you would. Prayed you would. Encouraged you to as much as I could awhile back. Fantasized and imagined and believed.

And then you did it. You actually did it. And as I continue to reflect and marvel at this moment, I think I know why. There’s a lot of reasons, but I believe that first and foremost, at your core, you believe that there are fundamental truths that guide humanity.

These truths that are worth fighting for. Searching for. Groping in the darkness for. These are truths that can’t be compromised and lines that can’t be crossed. Too many lines have been crossed lately, and we had allowed a great shadow to fall over those truths. And that shadow was thick and black and seemingly inevitable to swallow up the last remaining light of truth. But you said “no.” “Too far.” Like that old nursery rhyme, This Little Light Of Mine, you let your light shine. That’s what you’ve done, and that’s why we’re here.

We’re here because when Truth penetrates the darkness, the darkness cannot remain. Like Agent Smith at the end of the Matrix being shattered by the overwhelming power of light and truth, so to did the power of the light and truth we carry shatter the veil of deception.

It started small, here and there. Little pinpricks. Small flickers. But then we found each other. We saw each other. And then in one swift and decisive moment, we unleashed this light.

My next question I asked myself was HOW did we do this? How did we bring the Goliath that is pop culture, corporate media, the reigning establishments (political, educational, corporate, even religious) to the mat? If you’re like me and you looked out into our cultural landscape for about 5 minutes, it seemed like the overwhelming majority was determined to run headfirst off the cliff of total insanity and chaos and bring the rest of us with them.

Boy, how different perception turned out to be from reality.

My conclusion is that the power of longform conversations won. Imagine that. The strongest ideas, debated hotly out in the open for all to see and wrestle intelligently with, won the day. Transparency, honesty, vulnerability, and a relentless willingness to truly discuss hard subjects as a society won.

Something Joe Rogan said, I believe shortly after his Trump interview when discussing why Kamala Harris didn’t come on the show, was that in the 3 hour podcast format that he’s pioneered, there’s no room to hide. The truth gets revealed. And for a person of little or no substance with zero authentic ideas, that’s terrifying.

For nearly a thousand years, the Catholic church held a death grip on truth and perception. The common man and woman lived in a crafted world of illusion, manipulation and fear. While the Church acquired magnificent wealth and power, the normal person struggled to simply feed their families and survive to live another day.

Then someone found a way to get ancient wisdom and long-forgotten truths into the hands of the common man. And the common man was ravenous for that truth.

And so we found ourselves in a very similar situation. Us “little guys, commoners” had become subjects to a political/corporate/media/military state.

State run entertainment like SNL and Hollywood and ESPN paraded celebrities and personalities on us to tell us what’s acceptable and cool and righteous today.

The politicians and bureaucrats served up soundbites on MSNBC and CNN from “experts” and “authorities” who told us to trust them and their science and opinions because they are so much more educated and smart and understanding of the real world than we are.

“Everything’s fine, citizens! We’ve got it all under control. Don’t worry about your food, gas, or energy bills! It totally not that bad! Afghan people falling out of airplanes? Ukraine? No, seriously, we know EXACTLY what we’re doing. EVERYTHING’S FINE!”

(This video’s for you, Guttermouth, if you’re still out there.)

Our social media feeds from the tech companies firmly in bed with the governments censored and curated what we were allowed to see and discuss.

And the corporations relentlessly jammed their poison pills and toxic foods down our throats by any means necessary.

I talked in a previous post from years ago about my “clear ringing of the bell” moment. From that moment on, every light on my dashboard began flashing bright, angry red. I don’t know what your moment was (you can chime in on that old post), but I venture to say you had your own. Once you did, you couldn’t go back. You saw something you’d never seen before, and you couldn’t unsee it.

You began to feel the cattle prods. Gently at first. Then more firmly. The whispers became shouts became shrieking.

It was everywhere all at once. The world went in the tank, and it got very, very dark for regular, somewhat sane people who just wanted to be left alone.

One by one, you and I began to make some decisions we never thought we’d have to make.

• We began to say “no” a whole lot more, even if it made us sad or highly uncomfortable.

• We DID engage in that important conversation rather than keep our mouths shut - again.

• We armed ourselves - with real ammo, yes, but also with intellectual and factual ammunition.

• We went to a school board meeting or a local town hall for the first time in our lives.

• We started a business or a podcast or…a Substack.

Like soldiers in the fox hole, we began to collectively poke our heads over the threshold. It was terrifying and foreign to many of us. And something amazing happened when we did.

We realized that so much of that shelling we were enduring couldn’t actually hurt us. It wasn’t real. It was fabricated and overblown. It was empty of its power. And when we began to push back, we realized that our enemies were actually much more afraid of this battle than we were.

Listen to this commentary by Matt Walsh. It’s everything else I wanted to say in this post, and he NAILS it.

This clip has everything in it.

• The scorn from the establishment. They really do believe you’re just so dumb.

• The absolute inability to comprehend the reality of their predicament about how irrelevant and out of touch they are.

• The bewilderment at how they change or what’s next for them.

• Matt’s commentary that follows.

We have put the corporate media to bed. Let’s not even give them the dignity of calling them Mainstream Media anymore.

They - the media, the politicians, the grifters, the unelected bureaucrats, the celebrities, the corporate shills and the deep state - they will continue to gaslight and lie and manipulate because that’s all they know how to do. They’ll continue to call you names and insult you and “other” you. It doesn’t matter.

This is real time footage of us and our relationship with them:

WE THE PEOPLE.

Just as the Enlightenment dawned across Europe, the Americas, and the world when regular people were able to comprehend and discuss the Truth, so too are we at the dawn of a new kind of enlightenment. We must stay vigilant. We must get up again and take this sword in our hands and remember who we are.

We must banish every trace of these wormtounges at every turn. We can’t sit back down now and believe that what we’ve just accomplished is the end. It’s only the beginning.

But what a beginning it is!

So go. Digest all the podcasts as the free thinking, intelligent human beings who can be told complex things and make your own decisions.

Build your own companies free of DEI guilt and totalitarianism.

Publish your stacks and X’s and talk about your ideas like an adult.

Tell your college professors they might not be the smartest person in the room.

Remind your elected officials of their place in this equation.

Speak. Listen. Debate. Love. Wrestle. Be bold. Be brave.

It’s the age longform enlightenment. It’s the new Gutenberg Bible. Let’s get out there.