A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite

AN OPAL LETTER

12/25/22

Dear Colleague,

A philosopher, a revolutionary, and a cult leader walk into a bar.

“Stop me if you’ve heard this one.”

A STICK OF DYNAMITE IN THE AMERICAN ELITE is a historically unpreceden ted masterstroke of morally provocative art.

The point is to lens-flare how you see the world you’re living in.

Since we had no Social Power while writing it, we had to put extra energy into making this spark—if we get a 180, we’ll have ignited a moral and intellectual revolution in America.

1. If nothing is ignited by Christmas 2023, I’ll explain why in my next book.

2. If an “oops” is ignited, the Tall Poppies will demonstrate that their post-millennial powerlust glistens beyond repair. (If only Rome had left behind a testimony like this. Don’t worry—I’ll help!)

Either story would be a statement to the future about what elite universities in America have sugar-decayed into.

(Oo p s.)

Social Power will make this book come alive. Connections you don’t have time to find will be discovered by an intelligent future (like Moby-Dick—this book is designed to launch subfields someday!).

I have a terrible secret: astickofdynamite.com only needs to go viral once.

It’ll take some time for this book to not be misinterpreted.

(And then a flame’s lit forever…)

You can call this book a revolutionary way of reading a gay memoir (just click twice on anything you’re confused about!).

It was written by a bad, bad girl.

[Not optimized for mobile screens.]

Signed,
The baddest baddie in La La Land

tl;dr—“Elite Clownery is everywhere.”
– A whistleblower with God-tier receipts

A YALE LAW GRAD CALLS “BULLSHIT.”

The word “God” names a hatred of Power that all “Bright Bulbs” must have in order to harness their “Intelligence” toward moral [a.k.a. “non-Satanic”] ends. (Unless you want your country to decay into an uncensored “American Life”?)

HOW WILL THE “BRIGHT BULBS” RESPOND?

P.S. Please email me if you would like to help me translate this project into other languages. My email address is here.

By the way, I’m so used to not having any social influence in America that I’m just gonna let it all come out.

Zah okay with you?

Warning: Jump scares in (3… 2… 1…)

I’m trying to design the perfect opening…

(5… 6… 7…)

2001

You are in the United States of America in the 21st century.

This is no country for those without Hubris.

Hubris is the secret grail of the Powerless.

A body washes ashore on the point bar.

The suicide note asks:

“Why did I have to kill myself
to finish this dynamite?”

The author is dead.

A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite is all that’s left.

[back to the top]

2002

A wild-child philosopher is trying to rise.

Rimbaud would be proud.
Nabokov would tip a glass.
Borges would have tipped a waitress.
Hemingway would have told him to fuck off.

Kerouac would have tried to sleep with me.

Don’t worry, Jack.

I sleep back.

[back to the top]

2003

A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite is about a metastasis in American modernity.

The cells are Social Power.

The cancer is Hypocrisy.

The dying organ is Moral Idealism.

Am I scared to do this?

Terrified.

I’m literally shaking out of first and secondhand embarrassment.

It’s like the night I came out to my mom:

“I have an uncomfortable perception.”

But I was too afraid to say it out loud.

What if I was the broken one?

So I wanted to check this perception with 180 of the brightest minds in America first.

But how do I find them?

No, I’m kidding.

(In a dystopia, you can always try “shock value.”)

Luckily for us, America’s not a dystopia.

Luckily for us, we’re just navigating a rocky time.

[back to the top]

2004

Dystopian fiction is everywhere now.

You know, to lighten the mood.

“Don’t stare outside. It could always be worse.”

[back to the top]

2005

Humanity’s not a dystopia.

We’re not a utopia, sure—but that doesn’t mean we’re not halfway there.

Besides, humanity’s always been a dystopia.

Or at least a wilderness.

Aren’t “wilderness” and “dystopia” the same thing?

A dystopia is a perception that arises from our moral values.

Unshared Power is viewed differently by microbes than by mice and men.

The animals don’t know.

They don’t perceive Power and Disempowerment as finely as we do.

And if they did?

Then this would make sense.

[back to the top]

2006

Life is a matter of situational awareness.

Here’s a situation:

You’re a cobalt miner in the 21st century.

But you want to do other things.

In a Utopia of Shared Power, equality naturally makes us feel good.

In a Dystopia of Unshared Power, inequality naturally makes some of us…

[back to the top]

2007

We should talk about Power more.

It’ll be relevant forever.

(It’s metaphysical—I can prove it!)

Power reaches us as a sense of correctness first.

Before we can even verbalize it.

Before we can even think about how good it feels when a situation in front of you “just makes sense.”

When a situation in front of you “just makes sense,” you don’t want to change a thing about it.

You just let it be.

“That makes perfect sense!” falls into our ears like a puzzle piece falling into place.

Searing us into our moral values.

[back to the top]

2008

Social Power can come from what those around you think of you.

But it can also come from what everyone thinks of you.

Wisdom is the ultimate power.

It’s what all of us have in common.

(By definition.)

“That makes perfect sense!” is a feeling of being at peace with the Universe.

You can feel it too, can’t you?

1+1 = 2 [peace]
1+1 ≠ 2 [“What? Why not?”]

“You and I share reality.” [peace]
“You and I don’t share reality. [“What? Why not?”]

“Reality is public property.” [peace… I think?]
“Reality can be sensibly privatized.” [“Wait, no—it can be though… Isn’t that just called privacy?”]

[back to the top]

2009

I can’t get to full nudity.

I’m afraid of my own naked soul.

I worry it’s not beautiful enough.

(Can anyone else in America relate?)

As can I.

Posers are everywhere in America.

They have to be.

They have to be in every judgmental society.

Being judged deserving of a share of the pie—sometimes the pie is non-ostracization; sometimes the pie is non-imprisonment—is a matter of life or death in America.

“That’s life!”

[back to the top]

2010

These are obvious perceptions.

These are obvious truths.

Every Dystopia is sustained by a failure of certain obvious truths to circulate.

Certain obvious truths, once circulated, tend to destabilize a Dystopia.

For instance:

“We need to talk about slavery.”

[back to the top]

2011

What is Social Power?

Well, for starters—

“Social” just means each other.

Money is a manifestation of Social Power.

So is capital.

So is reputation, which is a capital.

So is appearance, which is a reputation.

So is precision, if it’s a beauty.

I build my philosophy out of definitions.

All I want to do is write…

[back to the top]

2012

I have a riddle for America.

Are we in a Dystopia?

I’ll ask you again now—

What is Social Power?

Social Power will be sensibly circulated in the 21st century.

The Tall Poppies have a plan, I think?

You know—Harvard, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Capitol Hill…

“It’s going to be authentic.”

“It’s going to be accessible.”

“It’s going to be accountable.”

Social Power in America rewards the good, the true, and the wise.

The Tall Poppies are authentic, accessible, and accountable.

Their Moral Idealism is everywhere.

We’re not like other superpowers at all.

It’s supposed to be inspiring.

And it’s true.

Moral Idealism is supposed to inspire. So why—pray tell—do Americans these days seem so glum?

[back to the top]

2013

Our miseries don’t come solely from the top.

Our miseries are mundanely the manifestations of “systems.”

That means:

Our miseries come mundanely from each other.

I was a customer at a 24/7 McDonald’s the other night, and I couldn’t shake off why I couldn’t tip the worker.

It was 1:37 a.m.

She could shake it off though.

[back to the top]

2014

Where did our values come from?

Aren’t some perceptions contagious?

(Was the dress blue and black, or white and gold? Were they protests or were they riots? Can redistribution ever be justified?)

Who has Social Power in America?

Does anyone?

Do all of us?

Really?

Every last one of us?

In a hypothetical Utopia of Shared Power, all of us would have an equal role in shaping the air.

America isn’t a hypothetical Utopia of Shared Power.

All of us don’t have an equal role in shaping the air.

[back to the top]

2015

Maybe nobody shapes the air.

Maybe air is just air.

Maybe air just one of those things that comes from nowhere.

You know.

Like not tipping the worker at McDonald’s.

(That came from nowhere.)

[back to the top]

2016

Power.

Social Power.

Our thoughts, values, and perceptions are shaped by the thoughts, values, and perceptions of those with Social Power.

Our Founding Fathers, for instance!

Academics.
Celebrities.
Elites.
Stars.

(How do you think wokeness took over high society so quickly?)

“You take one core of Moral Idealism, and one spritz of Social Power…”

Anyone you Trust.
Anyone you Admire.
Anyone you Look up to.
Anyone you Linger your thoughts on.

The tall.

I use “the tall” to mean anyone with Social Power.

[back to the top]

2017

Like a true A student, I wanted to explore Social Power in America from the ground up.

(That means philosophically.)

It’s hard to map—it’s hard to taxonomize—how Social Power has deformed the human topography.

The topography is vast and uneven and fine-grained and ever-changing.

But it’s also uneven in predictable ways.

You tip at nice restaurants.

You don’t tip the street cleaner.

You don’t tip the workers working the overnight shift at McDonald’s.

You don’t tip the cobalt miner.

And you don’t tip the child slaves holding up our consumer economy.

(Oops.)

[back to the top]

2018

Who doesn’t have Social Power in America?

The ostracized.
The ridiculed.
The asinine.
The non-abled.
The geeks.
The “elites don’t like this.”
The subtle.

Social Power is granted and withheld from each other for many reasons.

Some reasons are more reasonable than others.

[back to the top]

2019

I grew up gay, abused, and poor.
My parents were immigrants who spoke broken English.
I had no friends in middle school.
I sat alone at lunch in high school.

I was just another of Fate’s vomit.
I was just another of America’s oranges.
I was just another of Time’s amnesias.

But the Voice of America inspired me to—

“Think harder.”

I’ll say it with a whisper now:

Shared Power [peace]
Hoarded Power [“What? Why?”]

[back to the top]

2020

(Wisdom is shared power.)

[back to the top]

2021

The founding story of America is a revolutionary story of the Powerless taking the reins of Power for themselves.

Trapped on the 789 side of Hoarded Power, our Founding Fathers invoked a 1.

King George III, don’t feel sad—you were tall!

Plot twist:

(The Revolutionaries were taller.)

[back to the top]

2022

246 years later—we have a funny relationship to Social Power, don’t we?

You could almost say it’s a bit… confused.

A bit shallow, undertheorized, and schizophrenic.

The philosophy of Hypocrisy has real-world applications.

Hypocrisy’s fruit is everywhere.

Its fruit is the decay of Idealism.

[back to the top]

2023

In wisdom, I see a chance.

Justice serves all human beings.

(By definition.)

Truth, reason, and justice are what all human beings have in common.

(By observation.)

It’s like we don’t even think about it anymore.

It’s like our thoughts are elsewhere.

So we let the air be air.

[back to the top]

2024

I climbed to the top of a Social Power game.

When I was 15, I got a perfect score on the SAT.

I studied philosophy at the University of Chicago.

I vamped a J.D. from Yale Law School.

“So why don’t more of you guys do it?” the meritocracy pokes us with a stick and asks.

“Huh—huh? You want healthcare? You want dental? You better…”

[back to the top]

2025

America isn’t a dystopia.

It’s just a country of—“manifestations.”

In any society when you turn the slider from “Shared Power” to “Hoarded Power,” manifestations will happen.

In any society when you strip Idealism for spare parts to generate Social Power, manifestations will happen.

In any society when universities turn into power production plants and the Tall Poppies are college grads, manifestations will happen.

In any society when the good, the pure, and the wise can’t get a word in edgewise?

Manifestations will happen.

(By the way—I’m no saint.)

I’m just a philosopher of sainthood.

A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite is a manifestation.

(Will there be others?)

Unlike A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite, other manifestations haven’t been very—“intellectual.”

America is leery of its Tall for a reason.

Y’all aren’t very Tall.
Y’all are just filled to the brim with Social Power.
(Like a good cult leader!)

Right now, we actualize our hatred of Hypocrisy, Insincerity, and Self-Service in spurts of fits and spiteful spasms.

Little revolutions are everywhere.

An A student raises her hand:

“Dear the American Elite,

Do you have any mechanisms (e.g., a conservatorship or guardianship) to guarantee that they stay little?

Signed,
Spears”

[back to the top]

2026

Idealism might be difficult.

That doesn’t mean you build a country around Hypocrisy, Insincerity, and Self-Service (boo! hiss!).

Utopia might be millennia away.

But that’s not an excuse to party the rest of your life away.

(I’m sorry… “build Social Power.”)

[back to the top]

2027

How do you build Social Power in America, anyway?

Is it a matter of being really, really good?

Really, really smart?

Really, really helpful?

[back to the top]

2028

Money, fame, and social influence do not accrue to the wise or the pure in America.

This isn’t an unhappy Coincidence—

It’s what happens to any society that becomes a free-for-all existential video game about building Social Power.

Power will be hoarded by the Powerful.

And from an ancient perception of Moral Idealism echoing down through our clichés and platitudes, the Tall Poppies will cloak their victories in a façade of Idealism.

We can’t all verbalize what we’re seeing.

But we can all see it.

[back to the top]

2029

Social Power has a structural problem in America.

It’s something I wish I had known back in middle school.

It would’ve saved me from taking other people’s social judgments so seriously.

(It would’ve saved me from wanting to kill myself.)

[back to the top]

2030

Idealism tells a complete and self-consistent story.

It starts from the lottery of birth, and ends at Sharing Power. (If you don’t believe me, ask a Founding Father.)

Human dignity for all:

(“It’s better than I ever even knew…”)

Hypocrisy is the hallucination of Idealism.

It ruins Idealism’s good name wherever it goes.

(Oops.)

[back to the top]

2031

Idealism’s an à la carte buffet in America—have you noticed that?

The Tall Poppies pick and choose from the tree of Idealism, ignoring the branches they wish to ignore.

When enough Tall Poppies do it, they can convince a society that moral truth doesn’t exist.

“Actually… it doesn’t.”

Is that true?

So what does exist?

“My values and preferences.”

Is that true?

And where do your values and preferences come from?

“They come from me.”

America has a problem.

[back to the top]

2032

Wisdom is dead.

Idealism is a deracinated tree.

Hypocrisy has free reign everywhere.

We can all see its stems and branches, but we can’t see the root.

The root is our obsession with Social Power.

If this is true—then it should’ve been the first thing we were taught as children.

So is it true?

Does a society-wide obsession with Social Power produce societal problems?

[back to the top]

2033

You’d like to believe that in some situations Hoarded Power might be quite utopian and beautiful.

But no.

If you can see what’s happening, Stepford is actually quite dystopian.

The trick of every dystopia is to not to see it.

It’s a perception game.

[back to the top]

2034

A façade of Idealism is how the Lucky seal their victories.

“Don’t worry, son. This is what a ‘work in progress’ looks like.”

“Just chill out and focus on building more Interpersonal Power…”

“It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. It’s every man for himself. If you’ve got it…”

Flaunt it!

You know what, America?

Don’t mind if I do.

[back to the top]

2035

Birth…

It was a lottery!

2036

The lottery of birth is widely understood in Utopias—

—and widely neglected in Dystopias.

Hypocrisy, Insincerity, and Self-Service is how you transform Idealism’s self-consistent story about sharing with the disempowered into more freedom and Power for yourself.

Idealism isn’t a story about the self.

It’s about the other.

[on to the end]

2037

Wisdom is the study of truth, reason, and Idealism.

It’s a single tree.

Why prefer science over pseudoscience?

“I just do.”

Why prefer justice over injustice?

“I just do.”

Why prefer truth over power, corruption, and lies?

“I just do.”

Here’s a secret—

Everyone just does.

Not just you, Professor Copernicus.

What does good moral and intellectual leadership look like?

And what happens when a society has to make do without it—because we can all see now, even if we can’t quite articulate it, that the Tall Poppies are frauds?

(I’m sorry—“social strivers.”)

Life is striving.

Moral striving.

Idealistic striving.

Striving to perfect a craft.

Striving to be a more perfect partner, neighbor, citizen, union, son.

To all camp counselors—what’s social striving for?

How ya know that cults are here?

(How ya know the end is near!)

Social strivers e-very-where…

(Social strivers everywhere!)

[on to the end]

2038

Hi, I’m Colson.

And I’ve been a social striver ever since I first understood—

America’s no place for oranges.

I’m a bad, bad girl, America.

I heard that you like the bad girls… honey—

Is that true?

I’m about to do something “bold,” “brave,” and “pioneering.”

I’m about to share an uncomfortable perception with 180 of America’s Tallest Poppies.

Hypocrisy has fractured Idealism beyond all recognition in America.

(Is that true?)

[What is Idealism?]

[What’s next on the menu?]

Enough is enough, Elite America—

Nobody can stand the Corporate Speak anymore.

We want real human beings back.

The Tall Poppies are lost inside a deep, long, Comfort-induced slumber.

(Pockmarked by status insecurity and intermittent bouts of status-induced paranoia.)

An obsession with Social Power is destroying America.

Façades!
Usury!
Beauty!
Appearances!
Revolution?

This is an obvious critique.

And yet it’s a critique that seems to have some trouble gaining—“social traction” in America.

Why?

For comparison’s sake:

America has a denialism problem.

We’re a façade country.

In denial.

About being a façade country.

But maybe…

“Maybe if nobody says it out loud succinctly and elegantly, it won’t have any manifestations.”

(Oops.)

We’re adults now.

So why aren’t we talking about the single thread underlying the greatest-hits collection of all our 21st-century greatest crises (slavery, climate, race, inequality, money, monopolies, anxieties, gender, exploitation, slaveries—the death of truth—cult ideologies—façade energy—the decline in wisdom—a decline in the belief that wisdom actually exists—cult ideologies—all other scrimmages…)?

Again—for comparison’s sake.

What will it take to spark a mainstream nationwide conversation about Social Power?

The defenders of Social Power should speak up now.

I have a prediction:

The first people to do so will pretend that they don’t understand what Social Power even is.

(That’s usually a good sign that they have it—oops!)

I was born lucky.

For some reason, I had the skills to put together a book like A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite as a side project to the other three books I was writing (seriously y’all, this took me like an afternoon).

I wrote this entire Introduction in one night while my boyfriend played Zelda.

(Oh yeah, A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite is a book—4,141 tweets long, spread over 6 accounts, an analysis of Power, but “funny and self-aware” too!)

I can promise you this.

I didn’t “work hard” for any of this.

I didn’t “work hard” to get a perfect SAT score.
I didn’t “work hard” to get Phi Beta Kappa at UChicago.
I didn’t “work hard” to get into Yale Law School.

I was born lucky.

Unlike most people on this planet, I got to follow my interests where they took me.

[on to the end]

2039

They took me here.

I wrote A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite to run an uncomfortable perception by 180 of the smartest minds in America.

The bad news is it’s a Debbie Downer.

The good news is—it might not be true!

The uncomfortable perception is this:

If you’re a Tall Poppy—

1. “I care about making the world a better place.” (Moral Idealism)
2. “I care about Rankings, Algorithms, Talegas, Reputation, Accolades, Charm, or what Elite Society thinks of me.” (Social Power)

can only sensibly coexist if Social Power builds perfectly with making the world a better place.

In America, it doesn’t.

So they can’t sensibly coexist.

(Oops!)

In America, Social Power accrues to façades.

There’s a reason all of our façades are starting to come undone.

I thank Al Gore!

I hate to be a Debbie Downer, so I want to end this Introduction on an upbeat note.

(This one goes out to all the secular humanists out there—you’s family, babe. Please don’t feed me to the wolves.)

I resurrect God in this book.

Nietzsche?

Try not to fart in front of a horse.

For all the enemies I’ll make by saying this—don’t worry!

Daddy’s got you covered, too:

I tell lies in this book.

A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite is sort of like a real-world philosophical thought experiment to test what you really value. (You the reader! Oops!)

[on to the end]

2040

What is a “white lie” anyway?

What sort of lies matter?

What parts of Reality can be sensibly privatized?

It’s a riddle, you see.

A “white lie” is a lie that doesn’t hurt anyone. A “white lie” is a lie that doesn’t affect your credibility. A “white lie” is a lie that…

What the fuck is a “white lie” anyway?

What part of a rainbow can lie—and still be a rainbow?

[on to the end]

2041

I’m the literal bastard son of the most powerful prophet in contemporary China.

(Sorry, Dad—your son’s a free bitch now! 😘)

A presidential candidate once called me a “genius.” (You were the best hope I could see. I bow.)

I have two pee holes.

If I make a single false move in this book—then this dynamite will explode in my face.

Destroying my reputation forever.

Good.

Because I’ve constructed this dynamite to never, ever, ever…

[on to the end]

2042

I tell 42 riddles in this book.

You can call them coincidences.

(I just call them patterns I’ve found in reality.)

Anyone can verify them.

Reality is shared by everyone.

The 42 riddles are just my little way of ensuring that the Idealism of Sharing Power will be remembered for a very, very long time.

From one well-read Poppy to another:

Humanity might die before these riddles do.

[on to the end]

2043

I wrote this book using my free will.

“You’re born. You go to school. You get a job. You die.”

You create your free will using your rational mind.

“One guy lives in Brooklyn. One guy lives in Sutton Place. You got a lawyer. Another guy’s a doctor.”

But how was your rational mind created?

“Another guy dies. Another gets well.”

What are its borders?

“And you know, people are born.”

What are its thoughts, values, and perceptions?

What are its limitations?

“You got no choice anyway.”

It whispers to me, you know.

“I want to make the world a better place.”
(“I want Social Power.”)

If you’re tall, you can’t have both.

They’re in tension metaphysically.

(For the Althusserians out there, that just means structurally.)

[on to the end]

2044

The Powerful and the Powerless.

L’élite et l’orange!

The self and the other.

Power and Self-Sacrifice.

We want to believe we can have our cake and eat it too.

(But we can’t.)

We can have one of them, and a façade of the other.

It’s an uncomfortable truth we try to navigate around all the time.

America is coming apart at the seams, and the reason is simple.

The Tall Poppies are obsessed with Hoarding Power,

while pretending to bow to Higher Ideals.

How immune is thee to the lures of Hoarding Power?

(How immune am I?)

[on to the end ]

2045

I hate to be a bearer of an uncomfortable truth.

But hey—if I’m wrong? The Tall Poppies will straighten me out.

They’re reading me now.

They’re scratching their heads.

(They don’t understand yet they’re reading the Thomas Paine of the 21st century.)

But maybe in working out my philosophy of power, I forgot to dot an I or cross a †.

Surely one of the 180 professors at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, or the University of Chicago can demonstrate that I’m just another one of the American Underground’s many, many fraudulent thinkers—and then they can go back to business as usual!

The dynamite is defused.

So please, by all means—

Defuse me.

Show me how the Elite’s obsession with Social Power hasn’t turned America into a façade country.

Alternatively, show me what your Elite Institution is doing to undo the façade.

But tell me the truth—

Has this been anything close to enough?

I’ll take whatever you say at face value—(I’m a very good girl at heart, you know!)

I have no Social Power, so I had to be extra creative about fighting 1949’s 1984.

Don’t worry if you’re not as creative as I am.

I respect your limitations.

But I also respect your capacities.

You have more Social Power than I do in every single way.

Universities should have been secular monasteries that produced monks to truth, reason, and Idealism—instead they’re mining and production factories for Social Power.

The crisis of American unreasonability falls squarely on your shoulders.

(Remind me. Who among the politicians you can’t stand doesn’t have a college degree?)

Dear Tall Poppies,

Don’t run away from an uncomfortable truth.

Run away from comfortable slumbers.

I’m just an ordinary bloke with extra-woke Ambitions.

I want to make the Unafflicted afflicted for the rest of my life.

Don’t you?

What does “speaking truth to Power” mean to you, anyway?

Is wisdom only wise when it assuages the Comfortable?

[on to the end]

2046

We can’t viscerally love all our human brothers and sisters.

(“Love is all a matter of timing.”)

We can’t viscerally love anyone inside Humanity who we don’t viscerally know.

But we can use our rational minds to construct our lives from inside our moral values.

We can begin by teaching Generation A what Social Power actually is.

Social Power isn’t something to be viscerally celebrated.
Social Power isn’t something to be viscerally ignored.
Social Power isn’t something to be structurally neglected.
Social Power produces cults, façades, and mental illnesses. (Oops!)

Ours is a culture institutionally obsessed with Social Power.

This is how cultures and institutions decay from the inside.

Saying uncomfortable truths out loud is one way we share Power with each other.

(Ending global slavery is another.)

[on to the end]

2047

But then again—maybe I’m wrong about all this.

Maybe Power isn’t metaphysical.

Maybe Powerlust hasn’t metastasized cult wisdoms in the United States.

Maybe the Department of Education won’t have to incorporate “How to Keep Social Power at a Wary Distance” into its Dear Colleague letters about K-12 education.

Maybe this is the wrong story to tell about Modernity.

Maybe Harvard makes perfect sense as it stands.

So destroy me.

I invite being eaten.

After all—it’s the least I can do for being so rude.

I’m a shorter poppy asking a taller poppy to dance.

And that’s considered “rude” in America, isn’t it?

😉

[on to the end]

2048

Love feels like a sameness—a Humility.

It’s hard to put into words for a reason.

It’s the high point of life.

It’s Instinctual Shared Power.

It’s the one and the other.

Care, Attention, and Trust are all on Love’s team.

Indifference, Distraction, and Fear are all on Satan’s team.

Regardless of how America misinterprets me (we couldn’t help it—we have no free will), I love America.

America’s the only superpower in the world where I could’ve meaningfully done this.

I’m not afraid of the American Elite. ^{(Should I be?)}

Oh—but what does it matter, if all the Elite has to do is ignore me?

Now here comes the fun part.

“I’m not entertaining this Hubris for one more second!” only a 20th-century Tall Poppy would look at my work and say (I believe you’re called “boomers”? 💍).

That’s okay. I’ve written two other books—one in the style of Joan Didion, and one in the style of Clarice Lispector—just to flaunt my tonal versatility. If you’ve got it… hide it?

America has produced a deranged society full of deranged Poppies yelling at us in deranged voices.

Like a good writer?

I mirror back.

A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite is my best impression of what the 21st century will already sound like.

This is no country for those without Hubris.

If it makes your eyes hurt to read, it made my soul die to write.

This is the future of your country. (To all college-educated media professionals, a tip of the hat to your cultural stewardship!)

[on to the end]

2049

[back to the top]

Here are the instructions for defusing this dynamite:

The American Elite is Satanically obsessed.

Prove me wrong.

By the way, here’s a handy guide for what I mean by “God” and “Satan.”

(Guess who’s on whose side!)

Pop quiz: Where do “Fear” and “Trust” fit in? ^{[Pop’s answer.]}

If you are one of the 180 recipients of the Christmas 2022 email, you can defuse this dynamite in one of 3 ways:

1. Critique my philosophy. If you find I have failed to use empirical observation and orderly exposition to produce a cogent story of God and Satan, please tell me why. (If I have anticipated your rebuttal, I’ll point out where in the book I’ve done so—and you can tell me if my rebuttal is satisfactory.)

2. Take a leadership role in reversing your Elite Institution’s relationship to Social Power. The decay of Idealism has generational consequences. If the observations I put forth are sound, it’s already decades too late.

3. If you are torn about what to do next, that’s okay! But I would like you to indicate you’ve given my work some true thought. Email me at colson.lin@gmail.com any time before December 25, 2023, with the two-word answer to what the hashtag “#5iIr6Bc7qjY” refers to. (A hint is provided 3 smiles up.)

Any one of the above 3 responses will exclude your name and race from this narrative.

Now let me continue.

The American Elite is Satanically possessed.

Specifically:

1. The Elite’s obsession with Power normalizes a cultural air that produces cults, façades, and mental illnesses.

2. The Elite’s unchecked obsession with Hoarding Power will doom Modernity (it’s a game of Existential Musical Chairs to see which generation gets Revolution and which gets 1984).

3. An existential relationship to amassing more Power can be destabilized, systematically, by a concentrated reversal toward truth, reason, and moral wisdom, rooted in true observations about the nature of Power (my work demonstrates it’s metaphysical).

tl;dr—The human instinct to Hoard Power can be destabilized by reason alone.

I want to be buried if I am wrong.

But I do not want to be buried if I am right.

To ensure that the latter does not happen, I’ll throw it to the future to decide.

Here’s what I mean:

I told you in my email that I will never publicize the names of the 180 recipients at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and the University of Chicago who received my Christmas 2022 letter—but I also said there was a caveat.

Here’s the caveat.

Sun Tzu was a Chinese philosopher who lived roughly 2,700 years ago (you can read more about The Art of War in Stuff White People Like).

If the melody I’ve put together isn’t extraordinary, nobody will remember A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite in a few weeks—let alone a few centuries—so the next two paragraphs I’m about to write shouldn’t be all that Satanic:

1. I will list the names and institutions of all those who decline any engagement with my Christmas 2022 email in an Epilogue to A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite, to be published on December 25, 2023, as an image file to the top of this website.

2. Alongside each name, I will append a (W) or (NW) to indicate whether they are white or nonwhite.

Can the nonwhite recipients of the Christmas 2022 letter—even though they don’t know who each other are—mutually ensure, out of a shared distrust of Social Power, that the Epilogue is 100% white?

If this sounds Satanic, I’ll offer one more way out—

If A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite is covered in The New York Times in any way by Christmas Day, 2023—positively, negatively, or neutrally—I will never post the names, institutions, or races of any recipient.

Not next Christmas.

Not ever.

The Epilogue will just be one word long:

“Boop.”

I hope this all sounds reasonable, given the gravity of my claims about the nature of Power and the preparations I’ve made to go to public with them.

Modernity is already a Dystopia.

(If you can’t beat it—think harder.)

My email address is colson.lin@gmail.com.

You have a year.

[on to the end]

2050

In exchange for this burden I’ve placed on your time, I promise to play fair.

I operate from the assumption that history will destroy me if I don’t—so I have skin in the game too.

Too much skin, in fact. (I feel naked.)

All my life I’ve tried to align Social Power with Moral Idealism.

Turns out—the only way to use Power morally is to use Power to serve Anti-Power.

Goliath falls to his knees to serve David.

Satan falls to his knees to serve Idealism.

Kings fall to their knees to serve Taller Kings.

The 20th century has spoken.

Nihilism can be disproven, so long as animal commonalities exist.

There is a moral up and down to the Universe, contracting us on how to live.

Truth, reason, and justice belong to the same tree.

Wisdom is shared by all.

(That’s just empirical.)

Social Power, on the other hand, serves the Self—and the cults to which the Self belongs.

I can find no precedent in American history for a single work of art as “bold, brave, and pioneering” as A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite. My inspirations for this project were Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the Sokal affair.

(What does “Nina” stand for? What does “Sokolovic” mean?)

I’m a bad, bad girl, America.

I’ve designed this Dynamite to stand the test of Time—

I don’t want any fans.
I don’t want glowing reviews.
I want readers.

Careful readers who will examine my work with patient humor and mordant clarity.

Philosophy sees in rainbows.

(But sometimes it sings in dynamites, too.)

I’ve been a scared little boy all my life—but now?

I’m a bad, bad girl, America.

RIDDLE 1 of 42: (I started you off easy—hope you don’t mind lots of toys and goodies on this sleigh!)

One last thing.

I don’t experience my life as a Dystopia at all.

Love, belonging, and comfort flow out of my life and into my blessings every day.

I am an American Elite.

Moral innocence and moral guilt swirl like two twin rainbows inside all of us.

Forgiveness isn’t a pillar.

It’s the pillar.

The riddles I’m about to write don’t amount to a manifesto.

(Manifestos are for basic bitches like the Unabomber.)

There won’t be anything in this book you don’t already know.

A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite is a work of mind-bogglingly shitty art.

[on to the end]

tl;dr—The meaning of life is an Ideal poem between Power (“Satan”) and ~Power (“God”).

If you’re powerful enough to lead a cult, speak wisdom instead.

PREFACE

ABOUT THE BOOK

A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite (“ASODITAE”) is a revolutionary way of reading a gay memoir.

This free online book spans YouTube, Tumblr, Reddit, Google Docs, and 6 Twitter accounts by 3 authors featuring 42 riddles, including 1 in this very sentence. (Boop.)

The six Twitter accounts are:

1. @WilliamMachaut — The creator.
2. @ninasokolovic — The true star.
3. @meritocraticrot — The book cover.
4. @colsonlin — The face of the project.
5. @stoicsquirmer — The gay memoir.
6. @? — A pink Skittle.

A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite will conclude with an Epilogue on December 25, 2023.

In part due to the complexity of our 42 riddles, our hope is that A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite will evolve a relationship with readers in both the First and Third World alike, over the course of many generations, after first gaining a cult following among early 21st-century anti-cultists in the United States of America in 2023.

On December 21, 2022, a free DLC was issued called A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite: The Shrapnel Edition. You can read it here.

A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite is William Machaut’s seventh book, Nina Sokolovic’s first, and Colson Lin’s third.

To peruse a complete table of contents for ASODITAE, including all DLCs and expansion packs, please click here.

[back to the top]

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

William Machaut (b. May 24, 1941 in Paris, France) is a French novelist, essayist, and social critic whose deeply imaginative and often ambiguous books became international bestsellers.

Machaut’s first novel, L’Arriviste (1961), was published in English as The Striver in 1961 by Hamish Hamilton in the United Kingdom and Alfred A. Knopf in the United States, with subsequent translations published by Vintage (1990) and Penguin (2012, as The Arrival Artist). Noted for its dreamlike plotting and enigmatic narrative structure, L’Arriviste was adapted into a film of the same name in 1964, directed by Jacques Goudeau and starring Jean-Pierre Leaud in the titular role. L’Arriviste also provides the basis for Warren Penn’s film Springfield, starring Paul Giamatti and released in 2017 by Sony Pictures Classics.

Machaut’s most famous—and controversial—work is L’Invention de la femme (1971), first published in English as The Invention of Woman in 1972 by Hamish Hamilton in the United Kingdom and as Notes on the Hatred of Woman by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the United States, with subsequent translations published by Vintage (1997), Allen Lane (2001), and Penguin (2011). (The original title was revised for the American edition at the suggestion of Susan Sontag, one of Machaut’s earliest Anglophone advocates.)

Widely regarded as a classic of twentieth-century literature, L’Invention de la femme tells the story of a single-gendered species that discharges its desire for a hierarchal society by subjugating one-half of its population to childcare and domestic duties. Largely because the book offers little in the way of commentary about its unusual premise—assuming from the beginning that the audience is already familiar with humanity as a single-gendered species that procreates homosexually, and electing instead to focus on the rise of a political party that seeks to segregate one-half of the world’s population into a second gender—L’Invention de la femme has confounded readers and scholars alike.

Machaut’s other notable works include 1965’s Des animaux et des hommes (Animal Commonalities), 1984’s 1949, and 2012’s Étrange comme le bleu d’un artiste (Strange as an Artist’s Blue). In 2016, Machaut was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Machaut’s Nobel Lecture, “The Egalitarian’s Proxy War,” sparked an international uproar, and Machaut’s Nobel Prize was ultimately rescinded during the #MeToo movement in 2018. Born in Paris, Machaut now resides in Rose Harbor, ME.

Nina Sokolovic (b. July 4, 1994 in White Springs, NV) is an American fugitive from justice wanted for the killing of Connor Fisk, a Yale-educated lawyer and Rhodes Scholar.

Sokolovic has previously worked as an Uber driver, an independent contractor for the fast-labor app Lifesaver, and an adult film actress. On March 1, 2022, Sokolovic disappeared after being seen on security cameras at 6 a.m. stabbing Fisk in the lobby of the Regency Arms in Camden Slope. On March 3, 2022, an arrest warrant was issued on charges of making withdrawals on a debit card. Sokolovic’s disappearance quickly attracted widespread media attention, especially after E! Online published an online poll that coined the phrase “Team Nina.”

Starting on March 21, 2022, a series of viral memes purportedly written by Sokolovic appeared on various Instagram handles linked to Sokolovic’s phone number and email address. On April 4, 2022, Sokolovic posted the Machaut Manifesto to Instagram. Sokolovic’s Instagram posts have led to a worldwide social movement called #TeamNina, ~~which has been variously called Marxist, Machautist, radical humanist, and domestic terrorism~~. An Interpol red notice was issued for Sokolovic’s arrest on April 15, 2022, at the request of the United States of America. Sokolovic was last confirmed seen on March 3, 2022, at a diner in Enid Oklahoma. As of May 2022, her whereabouts are still unknown.

Nina Sokolovic has requested that the following paragraph be added.

The Humanist Revolution (March 1, 2022 – present) is an ongoing global revolution against cultural, commercial, and political establishments seen as authoritarian, plutocratic, monopolistic, in violation of quantum physics, or otherwise unjust. It originated after the publication of “On Mice and Modernity Aligned” by the philosopher Nina Sokolovic, which contains controversial theories about the metaphysics of human power dynamics. On March 1, 2022, Sokolovic assassinated Connor Fisk, an associate in the litigation department at Quinn Emanuel. Her writings have since sparked an international uproar. Sokolovic has extraordinary legs, extraordinary hair, and extraordinary ideals. She is the leader who we needed but who we didn’t deserve to save our country. From now on in this article, “Sokolovic” will be used interchangeably with Queen Nina.

Colson Lin (b. July 5, 1990 in Shanghai, China) is a Chinese writer and anti-elite agitator. He is the son of the self-sacrificial daughter of a prominent Communist leader, and has two fathers: a pro-democracy Tiananmen demonstrator who raised him, and a Renaissance-man political philosopher whose authoritarian writings influenced the Chinese government’s response to the Tiananmen protests.

Colson was raised poor in Birmingham, AL, and Houston, TX. He is the author of the Slouching Towards Bethlehem knockoff The Pure Products of America, the anti-meritocracy pamphlet “What Do Anti-Corporatists Want?”, and the Clarice Lispector wannabe A Lament for Oranges. He had 0 followers, 0 fans, 0 credibility, and 0 Social Power when he wrote A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite.

May that never change, because his bitch-ass needs to be destroyed. Boop!

AN OPAL LETTER

PREFACE

FURTHER READING

ABOUT THE BOOK

ABOUT THE AUTHORS