Update and scripts

Hi, patrons! I hope everyone is enjoying (or at least getting used to) the new intro and new direction of the series. My hope is to essentially "go harder" than before and to provide prescriptive advice instead of only description. There will be a new video before the end of the month. 

For now, here are some scripts. Getting close to catching up...

BATMAN

After over a decade of writing video essays about the relationship between art and reality, specifically pop culture and reality, I worry that we are locked in a cycle of call-and-response better suited for Sunday mass than discussions about art. I'm not above this, or beneath this, and I am far from innocent. It's simply tired of this – not because I think I'm the one with the “correct take” but because I am so lost in these takes. I'm lost in a forest of takes, and maybe it's because I don't know the way, but maybe it's because all the trees have started to look the same.

Here is a common argument and common counter-argument about Batman as a fictional hero. The argument, in the form of a question is, “Why doesn't Batman use his wealth to solve poverty instead of punching criminals?” The most common counter-argument is “Batman has the Wayne Foundation. Don't you read the comic books?” The statement in this counter-argument is technically true – the fictional narrative of Batman in the comic books and sometimes other media references the Caped Crusader's charitable donations – but this counter is for an argument someone is hopefully not making. The question “Why doesn't Batman use his wealth to solve poverty instead of punching criminals?” is not a condemnation of Batman as if he were real. It's not righteous indignation about some guy who doesn't exist. It's only a question about our values in the real world.

Maybe it's worth bringing up that one of our most recognizable fictional heroes is a billionaire. It tells us something about what we value, and that is, at least, worth thinking about. Another thing worth thinking about is why we are so quick to dismiss this concern because the fictional billionaire gives some of his fictional money to his fictional city. The concern about this has nothing to do with the well-being of fictional people. The concern is what this says about us, the real people, in the real Earth. It's an observation about what we value. And how quickly we are willing to hand-wave when the criticism is about a thing that we like. The wealthy in the real world give some of their money to charity, but they still remain incredibly wealthy at the expense of others. These charitable donations tend to be brought up whenever a defense is needed for an individual rich person or rich people in general. Their wealth doesn't exist in some vacuum that somehow does not affect others, and the fact that they don't keep all their money is not necessarily relevant to the question about their other actions and continued existence.

The conception of the benevolent billionaire in our capitalist society is maintained by propaganda, and by the things that billionaires own: news media and politicians. This exposure reacts acceptance of this propaganda that is further normalized through our own glorification. We enter into our viewing of The Batman with a cultural bias about our relationship with wealth and the wealthy. A presupposition that helps hold up the narrative, a presupposition that could be deconstructed. Batman is our “Good Billionaire” but how do audiences process this good billionaire? Do they see Batman as an example of how billionaires should behave and recognize that real world billionaires are not heroes? If they do, are they nonetheless acknowledging that billionaires should still be able to exist? Or do they see Batman's charitable donations the same way they see other billionaires' real world charitable donations, and deflect criticism of billionaires much in the same way?

I don't know! I don't think there is a fixed answer to this, at least not one that I find completely convincing. Isn't this fun? Talking about art, seeing how art relates to reality, trying not getting too defensive about it. I enjoy this, or at least, I used to.

In this incarnation of The Batman, Bruce Wayne does not care all that much about money or Wayne Enterprises, the mega-corporation that he inherited from his parents. Batman claims that he only cares about his mission to avenge his parents – honoring them by pounding common criminals into the pavement because they resemble the common criminal who murdered them. Batman does not use those exact words, but that is the not-so-subtle implication. Alfred Pennyworth reminds Batman that taking care of Wayne Enterprises would also honor his parents. The Waynes are intrinsically linked with Gotham City. The Waynes areGotham City. Batman trying to save Gotham City is Batman trying to save his parents because he was unable to save them in Crime Alley.

None of this is remarkable, and neither is my observation. For all the talk of this Batman film being the next stage in the Bat mythos, the conflict between the two methods in which Batman could honor his parents – justice or vengeance – is basically Batman 101. The film obviously sides with “justice” in the end, showing where the path of vengeance might lead Batman and where the path of vengeance might lead Gotham City. Batman cannot exercise vengeance to honor his parents, because the path of vengeance is harmful to Gotham City, and his parents are Gotham City. Again, Batman 101.

Nevertheless, some of the reviews, think-pieces, and social media reactions are about how The Batman deconstructs the very mythos of Batman. What are you talking about?

Structuralism is both a general culture theory, an intellectual project, and methodology of analysis. Structuralism posits that language is not simply nomenclature but a system of signs: the signifier and the signified. The signifier is the material form and the signified is the concept. In this, we create meaning between the two. Structuralism was developed to be universal – as a theory of language that could be utilized in all human sciences and human endeavors.

Post-structuralism posits that this reasoning is flawed because in order to create meaning between the signifier and the signified, we must presuppose that they both have fixed meanings to begin with. Post-structuralism seeks to discover the contradictions and unsolvable problems in our binary interpretations and binary language, and to find a greater spectrum of language and interpretation as a solution to these contradictions. Post-structuralism is not called anti-structuralism because post-structuralism builds upon the intellectual project of structuralism and seeks to expand upon it rather than reject everything about the project outright. Both structuralism and post-structuralism are methodologies commonly used in any number of human sciences and human endeavors, but the particular focus here will be on these approaches in film criticism.

A structuralist approach to film criticism puts more emphasis on the fixed nature of language, conventions and code to convey particular information. A structuralist analysis relies on the premise that communication has a specific goal or meaning and that finding that meaning through signifiers and the signified is the essence of analysis. A structuralist analysis of The Batman would emphasize how Batman's character arc fits into the pre-existing conventions of film, how well it adheres to it and how much it subverts it. A structuralist analysis of The Batman might also emphasize what the visual language is explicitly attempting to communicate and how well it delivers that explicit communication. A structuralist analysis might also compare what is communicated in The Batman to what is communicated in previous Batman films, older superhero films, and contemporaneous superhero films. From a structuralist perspective, language is how we communicate, and we must recognize this unshakable fact and work within the parameters of communication we have set, parameters that have been presupposed as correct.

A post-structuralist approach to film criticism recognizes that the words and images we choose to convey information are imperfect, and that this communication contains contradictions. A post-structuralist approach to film criticism emphasizes the pre-existing cultural biases of the creators of film as well as their presumption of those cultural biases of the audience. A post-structuralist analysis of The Batman might emphasize the film's relationship with race and class. The Batman addresses race and class but spends more time ignoring grievances related to race and class than it does acknowledging these grievances. A structural analysis may similarly ignore this, but a post-structural analysis might contend that the film ignoring this is, in and of itself, worth examining.

Mere absence is not immediately meaningful, but absence as contrast might be. For example, the absence of a floating pink elephant in The Batman might not be meaningful to a post-structuralist because there is no opposite of this, no signifier of its contrast, but the absence of significant commentary on criminogenic conditions in a film that frequently references crime and comes to its own conclusion about how to resolve crime might be meaningful to a post-structuralist. In making this observation, the post-structuralist analysis is not necessarily judging the film on moral grounds for the lack of inclusion but is still remarking upon its lack of inclusion nonetheless – perhaps as commentary on what our culture values, what our culture believes.

At the risk of being reductive, a structuralist analysis of a film places greater emphasis on the author, signifiers and signified as the primary subjects of inquiry whereas post-structural analysis of a film places greater emphasis on the viewer and the existence of the viewer and the viewer's world between the signifiers and signified.

A structuralist approach to film criticism can be extremely helpful in understanding the film, and searching for the author's intention can be rewarding in opening up a new avenue of thought about the film. A post-structuralist approach to film criticism expands the work beyond its supposed intended boundaries to discover more about the text, more about the culture that created the text, and more about the audience for the text. Structuralist and post-structuralist interpretations might seem in conflict with one another, and indeed some structuralist critics dislike post-structuralism and vice versa, but one could also argue that they might complement one another instead of replacing one over the other.

Post-structuralists often use “deconstruction” as an approach to film criticism. Deconstruction emphasizes that the relationship between the text and meaning is fluid instead of fixed. A deconstructionist approach to film criticism picks apart the contradictions and presuppositions of the film. A presupposition in this context is a bias or assumption that the audience is meant to have that leads them to experience the film through those very biases. A deconstructionist approach takes apart the elements of the film instead of viewing the film as a whole, and in these elements, we will not find one fixed “meaning” to the film as if it were simply a puzzle to put together with a fixed image upon completion. Instead, we determine the inherent contradictions and presuppositions, unravel the choices that went into its creation, and provide a different kind of “meaning” – we discover the cultural biases and presuppositions that make up the film. We discover something of the world that wanted to make this film, of the people meant to watch it, of our subjective experience watching it, and that's just really for starters. This is not a complete definition of post-structuralism deconstructionism or a lesson. Also, in reducing deconstructionism this way, I run the risk of inaccuracy, but this is also, you know, a YouTube video.

Here is a structuralist approach to explaining The Batman. In the beginning of the film, Batman's inner monologue mythologizes crime in Gotham City. We experience it as a force of nature, or an inevitable byproduct of human nature, something in the air, or something in our blood. Batman is skeptical of our humanity and believes more should be done to fight crime. Batman is visually represented as shadow, as the darkness of night. His first targets are thrill-seeker criminals performing unambiguously vindictive acts on complete strangers – randomized violence with no goal except the act itself and perpetrated by a stylized evil visage that is completely dehumanized.

When his voiceover monologue is complete, his first spoken words are “I'm vengeance.” At the climax of the film, Batman recognizes that vengeance is not the same as justice. Batman leads his people out of darkness and toward the light, visually represented by his torch, and finally by the dawn that shines on them on this new day. A structuralist approach might conclude that justice outweighing vengeance is the authorial point of the film or the “message” of the film or “meaning” of the film because it is laid bare at the climax where it's supposed to be, and because it is foreshadowed many times, and that this is the progression of the protagonist's character arc. It was dark, but now there is dawn. Justice has been served, Batman is a hero, a psuedo-Biblical figure that leads his people from bondage and sends them towards the Heavens. Whatever else this is, rest assured, that this is justice. This is what the movie is [sighs] trying to say?

A deconstructionist approach might say that at the end of film, Batman uses different words to describe Gotham City and his mission, and he is visually represented differently, but he still mythologizes crime as a force of nature, or human nature.

In the midst of the film, there are multiple explicit references to income inequality and a passing reference to a co-morbidity of racial inequality and income equality, but these are practically suppressed by what Batman tells the audience both before and after his character arc is complete. The audience for The Batman is expected to have a cultural bias about criminogenic conditions – the circumstances that produce crime. The Batman ritualistically moralizes crime and speaks in platitudes that are originally dark, eventually uplifting, but always vague, and most importantly, apolitical. The passing references to the conditions that create crime are covered under the banner of an apolitical unity that tends to ignore disparate racial and economic power dynamics.

In the film, the company called the Gotham Renewal Corporation, originally intended to assist Gotham City, has been corrupted by a series of criminals. In the end, these criminals are exposed or pushed out, and the day is saved. This relies on the presupposition that our systems are good and are only corrupted by bad apples. They're the Bad Billionaires, but Batman is the Good Billionaire.

What is “vengeance” in The Batman anyway? Is Batman saying he simply needs to exercise a lighter touch? Because it feels like what Batman is instead pushing back against is corruption and radicalism – even radicalism born from genuine grievance and radicalism that intends to fight injustice. Radicals are portrayed as only seeking “vengeance” instead of “justice” and the audience's presuppositions about our systems and about radicalism are what makes this ring true to them in the end. Batman also operates outside the system, but in the end, he is part of the system, an ally of the system with all that that implies. Corruption and radicalism are both outside of the system in equal measure, and in the center, apolitical unity that ignores the actual causes of crime and, indeed, the causes of injustice.

Is this a good take? Is this a bad take? I don't know. As always, that is entirely for Twitter to decide, but this take is not a search for “the secret meaning” of The Batman, or “the secret politics” in The Batman. This deconstruction simply notes contradictions, consistencies, and I find this meaningful, maybe you do too. Maybe we learn a little about ourselves and the world around us through film beyond the structuralist approach.

It's not only film criticism that can deconstruct our presuppositions. A film itselfcan do that. However, deconstructing Batman is particularly challenging because of the multitude of incarnations. Which Batman are we deconstructing? How can we possibly have a true deconstruction of Batman within an artistic medium that relies on presuppositions about Batman to make at least double its budget back at the box office?

When people say they have criticisms about the Batman character, they are not treating him as if he were real, criticizing his behavior as one would criticize a real person. When people say they have criticisms about the Batman character, they mean that Batman is portrayed as heroic, and that framing might tell us some truths about what people value. Remarking “I just think Batman is cool.” is totally fine, but that inevitably leads to the follow-up question “Why?” What is it about Batman that you think is cool? It's not only the aesthetic of Batman in isolation, because Batman would not have become such a popular character if the suit remained the same but Batman didn't do anything significant with it. The aesthetic accentuates the actions, but the actions are probably more meaningful in isolation than the aesthetic. What about Batman's actions are “cool”?

None of this is a personal judgment. I really like the Harley Quinn series, and Batman is featured in that. Why do I think that series is “cool”? Well, I love the dynamics of the characters, but there is also a part of me that probably enjoys seeing those who we commonly consider “the bad guys” having richer inner lives than we expected. Is that a “good thing”? A “bad thing”? I don't know, but I certainly acknowledge it.

The danger of asking questions like these outside of an academic setting is that people defensively believe that this more cultural analysis is a personal judgment. “Oh, if I think Batman is cool, you think I believe this would be acceptable in the real world?” No. I am absolutely not saying that, and I hope that people don't really think that, at least not in such absolutist terms. First of all, from a more practical perspective, there are so many incarnations of Batman that someone enjoying Batman or the Batman mythos is not even remotely convincing that this hypothetical individual enjoys the incarnation of Batman the critic is even criticizing. Second, it would be pretty hypocritical considering my own tastes. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, deconstructionism sees meaning as so fluid that such a fixed judgment, especially of someone else's subjective experience with art, might be a bit much.

This is just film criticism, or if not that, this is just talkin' about movies, but whenever I talk about things like this, I hear “Oh, so you're pro-censorship?” What does that even mean? I'm not claiming that the state should censor movies, and I'm not advocating the reinstatement of the Hayes Code either. I'm not demanding some solution to this or intervention. Even if I did prefer a movie to just not exist anymore, I still would not advocate institutionalized enforcement. Criticism is not a bomb that goes off that destroys the object that is being criticized.

For the record, I don't consider myself a strict post-structuralist or structuralist critic, but that is partly because I never really think of myself as a film critic, and neither should you. I have an English degree, and I used to teach literature, so I'm familiar with all this critical analysis stuff, but I don't have a film degree. I'm just some stranger who reads a lot of books and understands, let's say, most of them. I just love movies, or at least, I used to.

So, why don't I talk about movies on my channel that much anymore? Part of the reason is that I find discussing politics more urgent right now. We still need art, and we still need art criticism, but other things have captured my interest and my sense of urgency. Pretty sure there are other people with better, hotter pop culture takes than myself anyway. The other part of the reason is that making videos about popular media, no matter how innocuous the opinion, results in such enormous, defensive meltdowns from the chud-space of pop culture YouTube. My political videos also get reactions from people of opposing politics, but those meltdown reactions at least feel relative to the incendiary nature of the subject matter. Pop culture meltdowns from the chud-space are sad in a way that feels different, more pathetic.

You might say “Well, you're letting them win!” Look, that's easy to say from the perspective of someone who just sees the occasional superhero meltdown on Facebook, but this is my job, and this job requires interacting with the space I occupy many times daily and receiving hundreds of comments and messages with slurs and death threats on a regular basis. If you think that's no big deal, try it some time. It's exhausting. I freely recognize that I sit upon a fair amount of privilege here. Many other people get it much worse than myself.

A few years ago, I made a short video essay about the film Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri. The film features a racist police officer and a few references to his racist exploits, but racism is used more as a prop for the film to make only loosely-related observations about anger, revenge and reconciliation. From the perspective of post-structuralism, I contended that using racism as a prop in this way while simultaneously ignoring racism and making various insensitive remarks was noteworthy. It tells us something about how people, often in the racial majority like the director of the film, discuss racism as merely an individual failing. It tells us that, whether the director meant to “redeem” the racist police officer or not, we are certainly more sympathetic to him at the end, and the audience might acknowledge this as redemptive nonetheless.

Three Billboards is far more the journey of the white characters, and racism is used as a backdrop, an atmosphere, a window dressing, and that simultaneous reference and exclusion is noteworthy. A film that uses racism only as a prop and emphasizes the anger, revenge and reconciliation of white people is worth exploring on those grounds.

I find this perspective pretty reasonable, but a lot of people responded to this analysis by saying “This movie isn't about race! It's about anger! That's what the director is communicating. And the cop is not redeemed!” And it's like, yeah, I get that. A structuralist analysis of the film might lead to that conclusion, but I'm not doing structural analysis. I'm not trying to determine what the director hoped to communicate. I'm trying to explain that other things are communicated by the choices made in the writing and filming of Three Billboards.

Now, allow me to note a potential contradiction. I want people to recognize what I am and am not saying in my work, but a post-structuralist approach to my own work would reveal that there might be more to what I'm saying than what I'm purposefully trying to communicate. However, I must also note that, generally speaking, when people call into question what I say in videos essays about film, their argument is not from a post-structuralist perspective but from a structuralist perspective because their argument is usually something like “Movies don't mean all of those things!” or “Movies aren't that political!” or “You're ignoring the meaning of the film, and that meaning is that justice is good!” Their arguments are not post-structuralist because they are rejecting post-structuralism in favor of dedicated submission to structuralism even without knowing what structuralism is. In an amusing twist, this imperfect communication is good evidence for the validity of post-structural analysis.

A problem exists in writing post-structuralist video essays about film on the internet. The video is surrounded by sensationlized videos that claim to have the “the secret meaning” of a movie or “the hidden meaning” of a movie. This language communicates to people that a movie can be analyzed deeply but there still exists a fixed, final meaning to the film. As sensationalized as some of these videos are, they are still usually performing structural analysis or at least communicating to the audience that they are performing structural analysis because of the emphasis on the discovery of the true, hidden, secret meaning of the film. To clarify, I am not above this, and I am guilty of this, too. That may not have been my intention, but it has been communicated nonetheless. Thus, when I do some basic post-structural analysis, the audience believes I am trying to communicate the true, secret, hidden meaning of the film – the fixed, final meaning – instead of simply trying my hand at post-structural analysis.

People who say that popular media has nothing to do with reality are lying to themselves and lying to you. It's a comforting lie because it allows for the beautiful and wholesome pastime of not thinking about anythingwhen enjoying popular media. The people most entrenched in this pastime – the people most opposed to popular media as a reflection of reality – are those who are paradoxically most obsessed with popular media. Shelves upon shelves of collectibles, posters, memorabilia and copies of physical media – all in service of treating art like a toy that need not be examined any more than a child would examine it.

Let's be clear here. There is nothing wrong with any of these collections. I have my ownknick-knacks. A baseball with the Star Trek symbol on it, a number of books, and so forth. I'm not condemning this, and that's not my point. My point is that it's just fascinating to me that someone can collect movies as well as movie keepsakes and souvenirs, and at the same time be so deeply resistant to the idea that art might mean something to people outside of its most structuralist approach, that art might influence our perspectives, that art might be influenced byour perspectives, that art both can and should be analyzed if not through a truly deconstructionist approach then at least under the foundational idea that art is more than the bare basics of the information its author wished to convey.

If you notice a pattern in movies that reinforce harmful stereotypes, they shout “It's just a movie!” under the covers of their Star Wars bed sheets. If you reference how helpful it is that there are more LGBT characters in popular children's media, they exclaim “Get woke, go broke!” as the television series gets renewed for its fifth season or the movie makes triple its budget back. They say this under the guise of neutrality to better hide what they are actually communicating. They say that popular media should not be political, but what they don't say is that popular media is always political due to its choices. A straight white man as the hero of the movie, to them, is not political. A woman, especially one who is not white or straight, as the hero of the movie is political to them.

Why is this? The decision for the straight white man to be the hero feels “natural” to them, but it feels natural to them because of the choice to make the straight white man the default hero. The choice to make the straight white man the default hero is a codified discriminatory business decision springing from pre-existing hierarchical social systems that establish dominant culture through numerical majority or social majority – meaning who has the power.  We have been exposed to dominant, hierarchical social systems on a daily basis throughout our lives. All of us, not just “chuds” who make dozens of anti-Captain Marvel rant videos.

These hierarchical social systems establish dominance and a “norm” – and these norms become so invisible that their inclusion in popular media is uncontested. Only their exclusion becomes contested because it is outside that norm, outside the dominant culture. The exclusion of people and ideas outside the norm, outside the dominant culture, is not labeled political because it feels neutral and natural due its dominance and our exposure to this dominance. The exclusion of people and ideas within the norm is labeled political because it feels oppositional to this false neutrality and therefore unnatural. A false neutrality has been created through exposure to social systems, allowing the straight white man as the hero to feel neutral and the non-straight non-white non-man as the hero to feel oppositional because greater effort and bucking the system appears required due to the mere existence of these dominant, hierarchical social systems that exclude that hero.

What even is “political” in this context? Something is “political” if it relates to the ideas, values and strategies of a ideology or party. The decision to maintain the status quo is just as political and the decision to oppose the status quo. The idea that maintaining is apolitical and opposing is political does not follow. If Congress votes on raising the minimum wage, whether the Representative votes Yay or Nay, that vote is political. Yay does not equal “political” and Nay does not equal “apolitical.” Even voting “Present” and avoiding Yay or Nay is still political.

This is not to say that those who react this way are out-and-proud white supremacists or virulently anti-gay, or anything else. This is only to say that we all are conditioned by our environment through paths of least resistance and exposure to the point that aspects of our culture become invisible. This invisibility makes those voting “Nay” on popular media mistakenly believe they are not voting at all. We have been conditioned to believe that “Nay” is neutral, even more neutral than voting Present.

What conditions this belief? If the norm is the culture, then something outside of the norm is outside the culture and appears dangerous. A threat to the established norm. A threat to the culture. At some point, exposure to the established norm becomes such an ingrained part of the culture that reinforcing the norm feels morally correct simply by virtue of it being the norm. Reinforcing the norm and excluding those outside the norm feels morally correct, and opposing the norm and including those outside of the norm feelsmorally incorrect. Basically, it's “right” because it's “normal.”

This is all pretty basic stuff and only requires a beginner's understanding of sociology, but if you bring this up, you are “overthinking” it, because acceptance of the norm requires no further thought beyond what has been exposed to us. Uncritical acceptance of the norm requires no additional thinking, and that makes it highly appealing. It also makes any additional thinking about the predicaments of our society seem like “overthinking” to those who do not want to think about it at all. It is “overthinking” but only because it has surpassed a lack of thinking.

If you endorse outside-the-norm popular media or an outside-the-norm interpretation of popular media, you have an “agenda.” We all have an agenda whether we recognize it or not, but when people say you have an “agenda” in this case, they mean that their norm is without agenda by inherent virtue of it being the norm. Exposure has lead them to believe that the norm is codified, reinforced and defended without anyone really trying, or by accident, or by natural meritocracy. If the norm really were held in place strictly through meritocracy, those opposed to the norm would not be seen as a threat, because meritocracy would take over and make opposition impossible. To those who accept the cultural norms, the norm is codified, reinforced and defended by something we need not even examine. Don't even think about it. Probably nothing.

These norms and the hierarchical social systems that reinforce these norms obviously exist outside of the realm of superhero action movies. When you notice these systems in art, you notice these systems in reality as well, because the decisions that made this art were not made inside the fiction of the art. The fiction is not self-propelled or self-created, and the fictional characters do not have agency. A fictional narrative is not real, but the decisions to create that narrative were made by real people in the real world. Because of this, when you analyze fiction, you end up analyzing reality as well. Analyzing art is in service of understanding the relationship between art and reality, to find contradictions not only in the text but in what we value, and that is not in service of those who wish to maintain the norm of what we value. It doesn't take much analysis to notice the agenda in a false neutrality. That is why the people who strongly believe in hierarchical systems and the people who believe we should not analyze film outside of the child's toy model tend to be the exact same people. And that is a judgment, but not because they like Batman.

MAR-A-LAGO

Palm Beach, Florida is an affluent city on the southeastern tip of the state. The average home in Palm Beach costs approximately $1,700,000. The average household income ranks in the top 10% of the nation. Of the thousands of cities and towns in the nation, Palm Beach is consistently among the top 20 richest. More than 30 billionaires live there. It's not simply home to successful people. It's home to decadentpeople. People who live a life that is a caricature of the upper class. The kind of people for whom the patrons of Cheers would commonly find themselves at odds. The kind of people who buy massive car collections – not out of any love for classic automobiles but to simply have a room in their mansion to house a car collection to make visitors taking a tour of the mansion see their car collection at the end, and say “Ooh, do you ever drive any of these cars?” and the answer to that, obviously, is no. Less than 10,000 people live there, but that does not give it a “small town” feel. More of an exclusive country club vibe.

Why does Palm Beach have so many millionaires and billionaires? They move there for the climate, the scenic vistas, no income tax whatsoever in Florida, property taxes below the national average in Palm Beach specifically, and a history of the idle rich making this their community for over a century. You know how big cities always have ethnic enclaves? In major metropolitan areas, there are usually a few neighborhoods that were originally populated by first generation immigrants who congregated together to feel welcome and familiar, and generations later, these neighborhoods are still populated by that ethnicity to avoid housing discrimination by white landlords. Decadent cities like Palm Beach are like that but for assholes. They want to be around their own kind to perform their own cultural norms like clay pigeon shooting, polo and blood rituals. I'm sorry to belabor the point, but I'm not just saying the “rich” live there. I'm saying these people will be first against [fast forward]. ...with a total land area of 7.8 square smiles.

The crown jewel of Palm Beach is arguably Mar-a-Lago – a seventeen acre eyesore for the fabulously wealthy. A standing monument to needless excess and the obscenities of our society. There may be some who are not rich who see this level of excess as aspirational, but they, like all who are not rich, pay the price for this income inequality every day. Income inequality is not simply a buzz phrase by those who are “envious” of the wealthy. The mere existence of income inequality negatively impacts wages, health, debt, housing, rates of crime and rates of extreme poverty. Income inequality does not simply mean that there are only so many dollars to go around. The consequence of income inequality is that the more wealth is concentrated among the few, the more power they have. The power to donate to politicians who shape the laws to benefit the wealthy, which in turn makes them wealthier, which allows them greater power to donate to more politicians, ad infinitum.

The more wealth concentrated among the few, the less recourse everyone else has to provide for themselves, to protect themselves, to protect the environment, to earn a living wage. Anything resembling a reasonable distribution of power and freedom among the people is impossible within this degree of income inequality. Capitalism simply does not allow for a true democracy. We should not find Mar-a-Lago aspirational. “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” is propaganda for the ruling class. In a just society, Mar-a-Lago would not be allowed to exist and neither would billionaires in general.

Mar-a-Lago is both a residence and resort. It's home to the Mar-a-Lago Club, an elite members-only micro-society that costs $100,000 to join, plus $14,000 per year membership dues. For this price, club members have access to a spa, fine dining, and more famously, a golf course. Spas consume a tremendous amount of heat and energy, and waste a lot of clean water. Space heating and water heating account for the vast majority of energy usage in the home. Fine dining has a massive carbon footprint due to the air miles required to import exotic ingredients from across the world, not to mention the land and water required for additional agriculture.

And golf? [sighs] Golf is, well, an insult. Land that could be used for affordable housing, community farms, community parks, wildlife preserves or anything, you know, useful to our world and to our communities is instead used for the only game you can watch in a coma. The size of a hockey rink is about 200 feet long by 85 feet wide. That is less than half an acre of land. The average 18-hole golf course covers approximately wastes 150 acres of land but might cover as much as 190 acres. The distance between you and the hole is not that much, but golf courses use up so much extra space besides there is so much more than the fairway, including the rough, practice greens, driving range, and of course, the club house. Because it's not just a sport. It's a club. Golf takes a lot of skill, and I'm not knocking Tiger Woods. OK, maybe I am knocking Tiger Woods but for other reasons. Mar-a-Lago doesn't just have golf, it has branded golf – Trump Golf. I imagine this is the same as regular golf but with more cheating. Seriously, Trump has been caught cheating at golf over and over again. He opens a golf course, plays the first round alone, and declares himself the champion. He's not even good at the game for people like him.

Trump played golf over 300 times as President, spending 22% of his days as president at a golf course or golf club at least part of that day. It cost taxpayers, by some estimates, over $144,000,000. This was widely speculated to be a combination of his preference for leisure over work and a method to advertise his own golf courses. His defenders love to claim that Barack Obama played the same amount or more than Trump as president, and someone is probably furiously typing that as I speak, but before you finish, two things about that. First, Obama played about 300 times over the course of eight years whereas Trump played about 300 times over the course of four years. Trump wasted his time and our money playing golf approximately twice as much as the previous president. That is not insignificant. Second, I'm not a Democrat or a liberal, and I don't care about Barack Obama. I don't like any president. It's only a matter of degrees.

So, where did Mar-a-Lago even come from? The property was commissioned to be built by Marjorie Merriweather Post, the breakfast cereal heiress, and designed by two famous architects of her time: Marion Sims Wyeth and Joseph Urban. In 1924, it cost approximately seven million dollars, which in today's money is well over one hundred million dollars – a real life Xanadu of Citizen Kane fame – paid for by the profits from Grape Nuts. As Post grew older, her time running short, she decided to give away three of her enormous properties. She gave her home in Washington DC, Hillwood, to the Smithsonian Institute. The Smithsonian has since given it back, citing maintenance costs. She gave away Camp Topridge to be used as a forest preserve, but the state of New York kept only a little and sold the rest. And what of Mar-a-Lago? Post wanted it to be used for scholarly pursuits, but that never occurred because of, you guessed it, the cost of upkeep. These properties were lavish and built for extravagant 1920's flapper parties. Why, it's almost as if these ridiculous monstrosities are completely impractical, a massive waste of resources, and only exist as status symbols. Who knew?

With no other recourse, in 1973, Post bequeathed Mar-a-Lago to the National Park Service in hopes of creating a new legacy: a Winter White House. A government-controlled second home for the President of the United States. Presidents often have “getaway” locations outside of Washington, DC. Harry Truman took sixteen trips to the so-called Little White House at a Navy Station in Florida. George W. Bush infamously took seventy-seven trips to his ranch in Texas. Why not a permanent second White House?

The government went for it, at least at first. Mar-a-Lago is a massive property that was not originally designed to be a government installation, and federal agents need security to be tight and manageable. I mean, you can't have a president and a bunch of sensitive government stuff completely unsecured at Mar-a-Lago, right? [heh] In addition to this, the “Winter White House” idea came at the worst possible time because the president, Richard Nixon, already owned property in Florida, and he generally used that property when he wanted to get away from Washington. Why would he go to the unsecured breakfast cereal mansion when he could just, you know, go home?

In 1981, the federal government recognized that simply keeping up maintenance on this monstrosity was more trouble than it was worth and returned it to the Post Foundation. Enter: Donald Trump. The property itself could turn a profit under different circumstances, but the idea of owning a piece of presidential history – even failed presidential history – probably appealed to his vanity. This was, after all, a man obsessed with imprinting his name on as many buildings as possible in the 1980's. Trump made a low-bid offer to the Post Foundation, and they turned him down, perhaps because they believed Trump was too gaudy even for Mar-a-Lago. In retaliation, Trump had a different property built that blocked the ocean view of Mar-a-Lago, and once its property value fell, he was able to buy it for a reduced cost. Trump has owned Mar-a-Lago since 1985.

When he became president, he spent a lot of time there, sometimes with dignitaries, sometimes with criminals, and sometimes both! In late 2019, perhaps expecting to be out of the White House soon and knowing he wouldn't be welcome in New York, Trump established Mar-a-Lago as his permanent residence. Following his presidency, he began living there full-time. It's such a fitting home for him. A fake White House for a man who pretends to still be president. A gaudy, overpriced, difficult-to-maintain stretch of land, originally built through an inherited fortune and captured through dishonest means – expensive, tasteless and obscene. Trump living at Mar-a-Lago is a failed ex-president living in the most spectacular piece of failed presidential history.

Anyway, Trump stole a bunch of top secret documents, refused to give them all back, obstructed justice, lied about their whereabouts, and stalled for almost two years until the FBI had to execute to search warrant on his home / golf course.