The Arc Bends Toward Madness or Whatever is Trending

Dispatches from a Civilisation That Mistook the Asylum for a Utopia

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ACT I - The Church of Word Salad

Part the curtains, if you would, on our new civic theatre: a place where the ushers carry bullhorns, the critics fear adjectives, and the scenery is repainted between acts to match the volume of the applause. The program notes are written by committee and proofed by a therapist; the lead is whichever chorus member screams longest; the hero’s journey is outsourced to TikTok—and the villain, as ever, is objective reality, which insists on existing without a PR department.

We begin with the catechism of the style desk. If the New York Tim…