The Human Layer
The Human Layer is a podcast for those who refuse to be optimized, for the builders and breakers at the intersection of emergent technology, political resistance, and the fight for a positive-sum future.
The Human Layer
Zombie Democracy
In this conversation, Crystal and Taylor unpack the unsettling reality that American democracy isn’t dying— it’s already hollowed out and undead. Institutions still stand, rituals still occur, votes are still cast, but the animating spirit— the civic soul— is a shell of its former self. What remains is a zombie democracy: movement without meaning, structure without integrity.
Together we explore:
- Hypernormalization: how people keep living as if everything is fine, even as the democratic body decays from within.
- Weaponized algorithms and AI: how these tools accelerate disinformation, numb citizens, and enable modern authoritarianism without needing tanks or coups.
- The inversion of power: institutions like courts, agencies, and regulators no longer serve the public—they now orbit billionaires, hyperscalers, and AI infrastructure no one voted for.
- Civic apathy and desensitization: how people have stopped engaging with news, politics, and public life, making the soil fertile for authoritarian drift.
- Surveillance creep: from hidden license-plate scanners to travel pattern analysis, they trace how freedom of movement and privacy are silently eroding.
- New forms of resistance: from mass protests and whistle campaigns to community organizers running ICE out of cities, they highlight the emergent sparks of collective action.
- The importance of community: the antidote to the zombie state isn’t reform from above—it’s connection from below: organizing, mutual aid, shared vigilance, and local resilience.
If this resonated, follow and share, leave a review, and pass the episode to someone who needs a reminder to tune to the true signal. Your thoughts and stories shape the myths that come next.
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Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of The Human Layer. It's just myself and Taylor today and Cisco. And we are going to talk about zombie democracy. So I'm going to kick it to you, Taylor. Um, because you put this on my radar. So yeah.
Taylor:Sure. Uh, so yeah, certainly seemed like a timely and resonant theme, if nothing else, which is kind of how these usually go. It's either us landing on an idea or another literal human layer surfacing and pulling them in. But this was uh, yeah, I I am an avid listener and watcher and and supporter of uh Making Sense and Sam Harris and a lot of his work. And he had uh uh Becker on who had written in The Atlantic an article. We'll we'll make sure to link it up so folks can can read it in its entirety. But uh yeah, he had written an article in The Atlantic that then they talked about uh and it felt right in the timing of it was yeah, just uh kind of spot on as I I think we're all navigating like what is the state of the world, but also yeah, uh the transition of the US um and what what feels to be increasingly this uh corpse of a country that is like uh you know yeah, seeing a lot of problems all in real time. And so anyway, you can maybe frame up. I know you did some work on what the yeah, how to how to make sense of this as a theme, but that's sort of how it surfaced. Um then yeah, I think we're just gonna go organic and dive in and see where we land.
Crystal:Yeah, we're gonna riff on this one because this um this definitely tapped into my political science background just academic-wise. And I can't help but think when I look at something like this, a different type of lens to look at authoritarianism. And then when I think of what I learned in school, and with some of the top professors in the world for political science, like none of this was ever talked about. We talked about theory and you know, ways to understand what's going on in society from a broad perspective, but then you can always put it into a container of a theory. So then you can begin to understand where it's coming from, what's happening, why it's happening, and then try to address it. Whereas I think when I look around now, like before I stumbled into zombie democracy, I can't put any of it into a container. It it's there's parts of this, what's going on in this country right now, um, that I just can't put my finger on. And so you have to look outside of the political science spectrum to try and understand it. And I'm just gonna read, I don't even know who this is from. This is me poor citation right here. Um I just found this when I Googled zombie democracy. Um, so I'm just gonna read this off really quick because I think it does really express part of what's happening. Then we can get into some of the other quotes. Um, so what is zombie democracy? Zombie democracy is a political condition in which the formal structures of democracy continue to function, but the intellectual and moral life that should animate them has died. It's a system that walks but no longer lives. Elections still happen, institutions still operate, speeches are still given, but beneath the surface is a fundamental shift that has occurred. Citizens express opinions but do not reflect. Parties offer choices without real alternatives, debates revolve around feelings, not principles. Democracy survives as a procedure, but not as a practice of shared reasoning. And I feel like that is really where I think political scientists just didn't, and when I studied this, this was before social media. Um, actually in that class is where I saw all of the students getting into Facebook, right? When Facebook launched at UNC. Um But I think what's you know, what's really an anomaly that's hard to see, but we're seeing it more clearly now is the citizens' participation or lack thereof and the inability to have civic engagement based on critical thinking. And I think that is, among all the other things, that and weaponized algorithms that are separating communities and individuals from their families, from their friends, based on political ideology. So I just need a lot of words.
Taylor:Yeah, it's it's it's more nuanced. Like it's easy enough to look back and you've sort of lived and been closer to this and use something like authoritarianism and say, no, we know exactly what that is. It's got this specific shape, and we can point to exactly what it was historically. And it's what that article did, at least for me, was paint a little bit more of a like, yeah, modern, it isn't just that. There's a lot of interesting new shapes and edges of this that are not the same. One of the that teed up one of the uh a couple of the quotes that I pulled out of that article that I think map pretty well. Um one, uh institutions still have their shape, their marble pillars, their familiar rituals, but inside they're hollowed out. So it's like we see this facade of democracy. I'm in in air quotes, um, but there's this lack of like energy and and spirit and soul from within it that are the that are the people that like that's how it works. Um, and then the other one uh that fits well is authoritarianism in the 21st century rarely arrives with tanks, it arrives with normalization. And I would say hypernormalization. This is like Adam Curtis, and a lot of folks I think saw some of this coming, you know, decades ago, but it's a different shape of authoritarianism that comes with like, you know, uh, yep, all is well. Like, sure, it's weird, and we've got AI and all these other things that feel you know like they're um just part of this natural flow. Um, but like business as usual. I think a lot of people, certainly in corporate America, that are that you know, it's like, yep, you wake up, you do your job, you're still in this flow of hypernormalization, um, which creates this lack of deeper awareness of yeah, the the zombie exterior, I guess, that truly is here now. This is not hypothetical. I think we've landed in like deal with this shit now because we're here. It's not it's not like something to plan for in the future.
Crystal:Yeah, we're fully in it. And that that would is stunning to me that so many people don't quite, it hasn't clicked yet, which is exactly what you're talking about. That the hypernormalization and also the desensitization that's been going on for a long time. And now we are at the point where like I have lots of dear friends who I love dearly, I'm like, hey, did you hear about XYZ? And they're like, I don't even do the news anymore. And there's a part of me that I totally have empathy for that. I get it. Shit's depressing. But at the same time, one of the reasons we have a zombie democracy.
Taylor:You have the anti-zombie in your lap right now. That's the beautiful thing.
Crystal:It's got so much to say for a dog that doesn't bark, it's got words that need to come out.
Taylor:He's told me more than most humans.
Crystal:Right. Um like I get it, but part of the reason that that we can we've gotten to this point is that people don't engage with the news anymore. And at the same time, like the news is not something that we can easily engage with anymore either. And I feel like that is one of the accelerants towards this whatever this version of fascism is that we're living through in authoritarianism, is because of you know, things like the weaponized algorithm and AI, AI has allowed disinformation to live and grow and consume everything at scale. And that is an accelerant that I don't think we really anticipated. And in the right hands, between the algorithm and the AI, those two pieces of technology are now allowing authoritarian daydreams or fever dreams to become reality so fast, so fast that we can't even vocalize it enough to try and stop it. I think that is definitely the you know, you can just step back and look at what this administration does. But that's where that chaos comes in. That that created chaos, it forces people to desensitize because it's way too hard to think about all the time. And it also allows us to normalize these things. Like, oh, they did that last week, they did it the month before. There were no consequences, they're just gonna keep doing it, so why should I care?
Taylor:Yeah. Yeah, there's this like inversion or something. And it's not, I mean, the the I think journalism and like media is the easy one to point to, and everyone has their version of like, you know, new woke media or like paint your picture of what that has become. Um, but it's doesn't you certainly doesn't stop there, which is what's concerning. It's like, no, this crosses every major institution that has to be in place. My world is education. I'm seeing it there. I think you know, we have versions of this within um, you know, the judicial branch and like how that has sort of been inverted. So it's this they've all lost their autonomy, this like bottom-up version of what those institutions ultimately have represented historically, and now they're all just serving this master at the top as opposed to being the other direction, right? Um, so like the courts, this is something else I had written, courts, the three-letter agencies, most of those, the regulators, the press, um, they don't vanish altogether. They just stop being independent. Their loyalty migrates to, you know, either one, sure, uh a single individual in someone like Trump, or I think now more and more, the the hyperscalers and the cloud providers and the you know, big tech, like that is just as much the master or the the sort of you know deity. So it's all of those institutions, it's all been inverted. That's part of the hollowing out part of the zombie zombie democracy idea.
Crystal:And it was clearly stated in project 2025 and and the creators of that plan and Schedule F. I mean, they tried to put Schedule F in place at the end of the Trump administration last time, and that's where you remove the independent civil servants that are not subservient to um the master. And they tried it a few times right at the very end. I remember watching that. I'm like, oh man, they're not gonna get away with that. And they didn't at that time, but they had enough time to regroup and make the strategy to kick out and remove people who would be whistleblowers or people who would stand up and say, no, I'm a civil servant, I'm not your lackey, and I'm going to uphold the law because I serve the constitution and the legal structure, not the political person that is at the leading these four years. And that I think um, you know, watching that go into place so fast in this go-round has been fascinating. So now, even though every once in a while, there or fairly often, I think, right now, the judicial branch is holding, but there's no enforcement because the three-letter agencies have been removed. Um, and there's so much chaos within those agencies. I mean, just yesterday, the administration was calling for hanging democratic lawmakers. That's not a thing in a democracy, you know. That is that is not a lot of things.
Taylor:The shells are there, and this is the problem with I think where most information is landing on people. They don't see the significant shift. It's like these shells are there, but there's zero like moral integrity within the body of any of it. So it's like easy enough to paint the picture, and so this is the normalization, you know. Uh, go on with your day, all is well. Sure, things feel a little different, but it's like, yeah, it's it's a it's the rotting from the inside out part of which is why, yeah, I think that the idea of zombie democracy landed so heavy for me. It was like, oh, that feels like exactly what's happening.
Crystal:Yeah. They gave me a container to put it in. And then even my own behaviors, like some of the notes that I have written down here, um, which was in that Atlantic article, the library example. There's a library in Ohio that a librarian noticed after a recent assassination. Um, I'm not even gonna say it. I don't want to vocalize it, but we all know what it was. Um, that in the library, which was a pretty noisy place before that, right after that happened, it got quiet and people were whispering again. And that is the same thing that I did. I met um one of my mentors, and we talk politics a lot, um, in the coffee shop. And I kept finding myself whispering when we got into that conversation. Um, that's when I left Twitter. That's when it got very real. And what that does is the chilling effect. I mean, that's what the First Amendment was designed to prevent against. Um, that chilling effect where we begin to quiet our own voices and not speak out at all anymore, even in just casual conversation or, you know, in writing or in journalism or whatever um mechanism we use to vocalize our discontent. Um that chilling effect causes us not to even write the words or say the words that need to be said right now. And that is where we are too with the the dragnet that's been created from these AI broligarchs that is now shutting down um speech all over the place. And yeah.
Taylor:Yeah, it's a it's a it's a you know, you you can call it sort of this uh you know, strategic masterminding of the elite cabal. Uh fair enough, there is some of that and an awareness of what's going on, but it's like uh I don't I think it's much more uh it's a systems level sort of power-driven transition of sovereignty away from the public square, the individual, to infrastructure that nobody voted for. Like that this is the the lack, uh I don't know, this is the hard thing that I think uh even I often don't quite uh recognize is like that's how democracy works. The people ultimately make collective decisions that are best for the the greater and we're now in in this very inverted space where um all of that, the majority of that sort of sovereignty from a uh you know public perspective has been completely passed along to, you know, uh yeah, mostly right now, the AI infrastructure that nobody voted for. That we we didn't decide. And there's so many people that are like, that's fine because that's how capitalism works. There's a lot of technology being built, and this is how it goes. And it's always been that way. It's like, no, I don't think that's that's right.
Crystal:Yeah.
Taylor:The internet itself was obviously, you know, meant meant to be something very different, and here we are.
Crystal:Yeah, exactly. And oh, there's like five points I want to go to downright there. They all kind of plumped in my head at once. Um, self-governance, that's what I had written in my notes. That's that's a huge one. Democracy is not easy by any means, it's an experiment, and it always has been, and that's why so few countries actually get it right, if any really. Um and it does involve, like we were talking about at the beginning of this conversation, it involves it a democracy is only going to work if the electorate is educated and engaged. And those are the two things that have been largely removed. And, you know, part of that goes back to, yeah, when the internet was created, web one was this collaboration between governments and politicians and private money, public money, it hackers, higher ed. Um, you know, it created the internet and basically made it a public good. And then Mark Andreessen put a lot of that into a corporate container with Netscape and showed that that public good could be commoditized if it became enclosed. And that shifted us to Web2, and that allowed the surveillance capitalism to become a thing. And then that eventually allowed, because of the way the technology was structured, it allowed whoever was in control of those networks to become the most powerful person, more powerful than our politicians. And that's where we are now is that the politicians are answering to these oligarchs because that is just the system as it is, and our entire economy is based on an AI bubble right now. The numbers on that are staggering. And how quick that got normalized.
Taylor:That's you know, this comes back to just why everybody should go watch hypernormalization. That Adam Curtis doc to me is just so powerful, and it's exactly where we are. Like, and that just happened so quick.
Crystal:Give us a TLDR on that again.
Taylor:Um, I mean, uh I wouldn't say there's like a uh it's just very for those that have seen Adam Curtis's work, it's it's just um unapologetic. It's very aggressive in the way that it translates the problems that can come with this idea of like normalizing. And he he pulls very it's a you know sort of docky drama. I mean, most of it's real footage historically of having seen this play out. And it's old enough. Again, this is why it does it doesn't map on to I think the modern zombie democracy, which is why this is fun to talk about. I think it's kind of a new version of it. Um but it's just like this in your face, you know, you don't feel good after watching it. It's not meant to, it's meant to wake wake you the hell up.
Speaker 2:And that's the missing piece.
Taylor:That's the missing piece right now, is like the yeah, this the zombie democracy is creating zombies, you know, within it. A lot of humans aren't aren't aren't awake to what's happening.
Crystal:Yeah. And you know, that's also been something that has been long in in the works, is is how complacent we are because of our consumption. I mean, that's how a capitalistic consumption-based society works, is you you know, trap people or or place people into jobs that they can't get out of, and the cost of living gets too astronomical to get out of those jobs. But then also we willingly keep consuming. I mean, I think now we're in a different type of market and economy.
Taylor:Um, but this this holiday season is going to be very fascinating. I mean, this is always the time of year where we kind of learn, you know, for better or worse, where we at.
Crystal:Yeah. And there's no data. There's no data coming from the government. I think recently the administration was trying to make a point about inflation and they used a DoorDash stat. They they you they pulled statistics from DoorDash to try to justify the inflation was going down.
Taylor:That's a direct correlation. GDP is represented by DoorDash. You don't you don't know that?
Crystal:I missed that memo. They didn't teach me that in PolySci.
Taylor:Yeah.
Crystal:Um yeah. So I I feel like you know, our own willingness to be satiated through entertainment and consumption. And I do too. You know, there are plenty of days where I turn on, you know, Silicon Valley or or Mythic Quest at the end of the day to just ignore the world and listen to comedy. Um, but I think that at scale, this is what happens. We end up with a democracy or governance. People are no longer able to self-govern because they don't know what's going on around them because they have gotten so entrenched in consuming in in basically just numbing. And I don't I say that with empathy. I don't, I get it. Like this shit's deep. And it's just it's just when you step back in it, it it's just like no, it's why we started doing this.
Taylor:I you know, it's like we happen to be in a position where you know we have a good enough ground, both like network of people and some oral grounding and a job that we enjoy enough and like all the enough of the pieces to you know hopefully be some signal uh for the few that that are willing to listen and and not listen, but like hear. I think that's the something I've been trying to like distinguish. Comes back to the the apathy, is like it's one thing to say, I'm doing the things I'm you know, I'm I'm checking the boxes on the right diet and getting exercise, whatever that whole. And it's like that doesn't matter if you're listening and not actually hearing and not making any you know significant changes. Um this is another another uh uh quote that I pulled out of that article. Um and it now it feels like these are all sort of in the exact same vein, but it's uh uh a failing democracy breeds apathy before it breeds opposition, which I think is again why it's interesting. This come I was just at the the No Kings protest in Denver, and I really struggled with it because it wasn't it didn't feel like opposition, it felt like you know, this really weird like theatrical meme. It was a meme fest, which is good, like amazing that there is still this willingness for people to you know sort of uh be active and at least you know have some agency to go and be in community to do that, but it yeah, it I think I think people you know um sort of stop fighting before they like start resisting. There's a there's a a numbness that comes first, and we're in this, like, yeah, the the numbness or apathy is certainly here, like, and that's the that leads to despair, and like we're seeing this certainly, you know, all of Jonathan Heidt's stuff or any of the like real hard numbers on like and it's I think more concerning based on the like uh just age ranges and the the teens that are being affected more. Um like that despair is the true agent of the drift towards authoritarianism and whatever the new form of it will be, like which we don't know, but it doesn't. I don't think it's gonna be a like better version of authoritarianism.
Crystal:No. I mean, we might still be able to pretend that we're living in a normal society and still go to the store and and you know participate in some things, but I think people are about to find out really fast what that actually means in their individual lives, too. Um Theater of participation is what I had written in my notes. Uh quiet euthanasia of thought. And I feel like that's what you just touched on too. Like at, you know, it I'm grateful the pro for the protests. Um, as someone who used to document large protests, I think it's amazing. It's it's a role that I've decided not to do this go-round and said do stuff like this and to write. It's my and to do other forms of quiet resistance that are not public, um mostly through education. I think that that's what's more important right now than protests. But I I am grateful that so many people are turning out to say no and the boycotts are working. It's sad that we had to get to this point.
Taylor:Is it is it healthier though, given that it's performative? That's what I actually don't know. I actually am not sure.
Crystal:I I think it is. I think I don't know if it is for people like us who are already just engaged, but I think it is for the masses and and for those who are like I know people that protested for the first time in their lives and they're in their 70s, and they went to these protests just to show up. Um and I think this go-round this year, the people that need to show up are white middle America, the people that voted for this. And that to me is the most interesting part is to see that pushback against what they voted for. And that is a come to Jesus moment that lots, millions, you know, at least a third of the country needs to have so that we can have things like a general strike and have it be effective. Like I think that No Kings was an indicator that protest is going to work. There will, of course, be a line where where civil disobedience is no longer effective, and then you need to talk about direct action. And then we can look at history, open up Howard's Inn and check out the Robert Baron era and what that led into with um labor and the union um resistance and and look at that. And it was very violent. Um, but it was very effective. That's how we got an eight-hour work week.
Taylor:Yeah, I th I think it is still we we can turn towards a uh whatever positive note makes makes sense. I think I like internalized, like looking some at some of the the signs and the work that went on, like impressive in some sense. I'm like, you guys are really like putting thought and time into like this uh propagation of the meme of the day that like you know, which again is not not to discount, like that's putting you in a frame of mind to think about it. But I also am like, all I know all that was within families. I mean, there's a lot of kids that you basically were at home, probably on Instagram and with some AI, like for hours. And I'm like, if that's all the time to get to the point of having this really, you know, uniquely amusing ourselves to death, Postman is another one of my favorites, and I think increasingly a profit of our time to then do all that and then go out just so everyone else can be enamored by the time you put in in this interesting meme that that's where I struggle, where I'm like, I think I think you're right. The the yeah, I can be convinced that that's like still obviously time well spent. And when you're out with people and you can see the power and feel the power of like mobilizing in in numbers, that alone is is good, but it's such a different version of it. Like, could you imagine, you know, sort of uh yeah, that level of mobilization in the past and what folks then would have thought about this version of it. They'd be like, what is this? Yeah, what is with all the frogs? What are we doing? Exactly.
Crystal:Oh my god, I love the frogs. That that actually is brilliant. When I was in um Palestine documenting a protest between the IDF and um just regular protesters, there was a clown troop that was from, I think they were from the Netherlands, and they would go around the world to go to these large protests and to show the banality of it all. And it was weird to be getting gassed and shot at with rubber bullets and then to have clowns right next to you. I'm like, this is fucking strange. But they showed up every Friday and did it. I'm like, that's fascinating. Um, but I think like what we're talking about, what I think is fascinating to try to see, and again, just a consumption nerd when it comes to information, but watching the way community organizers are leveraging movements like No Kings. And then when they're able to then take that momentum when they see the protests at scale and then take that momentum into the street for something specific, like the Broadview um protests in Chicago in front of the ICE detention center, those are very effective. And that is the the that's some wild footage coming out of there. And some of I think one of the most iconic images of this year is gonna come out of there. I don't know if you saw the one of the the priest who was on the ground. I think Reuters got the shot. Um, the Reuters photographer got on the ground with him while he was being arrested, and all you see are um ice agents pressing him onto the ground, and then the minister turns and looks directly at the camera. And it is one of those images that's very hard to make in this day and age, but it was a stopper. I was like, holy shit, that encompasses. And I think the Vatican then got into the conversation again. Um, so that seeing a large protest like No Kings, then empower community organizers on the ground to run ICE agents out. And Chicago mobilized amazingly, like whistles. I carry a whistle in my purse now. Granted, where we live, it's not in our face yet, but it will be. And so watching what organizers are doing on the ground and running ice out, they just they were only in North Carolina. I think they were in Charlotte for less than a week and they protested so much and it was so scattered. The ice was like, Yeah, we're leaving. I think they're going to rural Mississippi now. I'm like, Yeah, that'll be fun.
Taylor:Yeah, I hope I hope it morphs into that the this is I sent you the uh De La Rocha and some of the like early stuff that rage against the Machitas will age us a little bit, but like uh brilliant activist slash mu slash musician. Um I think we're gonna hopefully see that style of there's a there's a couple great uh rage Rocha moments that you know either right at Wall Street or like you know, their music was a response. Um and so yeah, I I I'm hopeful that there's like a transition into that as opposed to it just continuing to you know uh feed the the ghost in the machine as opposed to the machine itself, which's the transition we have to get to. To have it be felt and actually affect the myths and the meaning underneath it and not just be a facade on the front, which is what it is right now. It's like protesting on Instagram is not the way. Sorry.
Crystal:No, it's not.
Taylor:It's just not what we need.
Crystal:And I think people are going to wake up. It might be too late for some of this, but like the article I sent you the other day, I think it was yesterday, um, about the shit, what was it? It was the Border Patrol has been putting in place a dragnet of surveillance on the roads for years now, since 2017, I think is what the article dated back to. But they hide the flocker cameras in construction cones and in these weird places, and then have been able to create a dragnet that will track how people drive. So one of the stories in that article was uh, and I'm gonna botch the the details, but whatever. Um basically, some dude was taking something from South Carolina to Mexico, and it was legal, it was a transport company, and he had gone through a few different roads in southern Texas and it had triggered a pattern recognition through the AI and the surveillance that then notified CBP that was on the ground, and then they went after they pulled the guy over for something random and seized his cash, seized his truck. The owner of the company then had to go to the courts to get his property back. It was this whole thing, and it was just based on how the guy was driving and what roads he was driving on. And for someone who spent most of their 20s wandering the back roads just because it's joyful, like that is that is a stunning loss of human right there. And that goes back to what we were talking earlier, this um the chilling effect. Like, if I know that when I drive cross-country, and this is something that I'm trying to process now, that all of it's gonna end up on Palantir, and that every road that I go down is going to be analyzed by an AI system that will then go to a border agent who's down the road and I'm traveling with my dog, that's not a safe place for a woman or anyone to be in, but especially a woman. And that is a chilling effect. I'm not gonna wander through small town America like I normally would when I'm on the road. And I don't think people understand that this is already in place. And once they begin to lose that freedom of movement, Americans love their cars and we love to drive. And I'm one of those. And once that really kicks in, it might be too late at that point because of the way the surveillance has been put into everything. But I think that will cause some sort of pushback.
Taylor:Well, that's I mean, the the insidious side of that, which again is not a like singular mastermind movement, it's a reality of capitalism and where it's landed and just this country, is it only invites just enough crime and like chaos to then warrant. I mean, Flock, I've I've just started to dig into it, you know, in Denver. It's a wild debate right now because there is like there's legit you know problems and people do experience crime. Um, so like easy enough to tell the story of like, yeah, why wouldn't you want that surveillance there to actually, you know, help help all of us, you know, sleeping Americans that don't actually see why that's a problem, and it's like the it comes back to the normalization. Um so yeah, it's it's a it's a weird invitation for more more unsettled, and and it's only gonna hit like the cities that are you know already struggling.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Taylor:Denver's not a Chicago or a Phil Philadelphia or some of these, you know, cities that that really do understand, I guess, the uh yeah, sort of class disparity that is fueling some of it already.
unknown:Yeah.
Taylor:But anyway, it's only gonna it's hard to see how that door doesn't just, at least within the next few years, doesn't continue to get opened. And then what's the end state to that sort of surveillance system?
Crystal:Yeah. Oof, that's the dark version.
Taylor:Yeah. And well, maybe we should end with the composting. This is the piece we haven't hit on yet, but like this is the way I also love the zombie democracy metaphor, is like, yeah, uh even, you know, even that which rots ends up back in the soil, and there are new things that can come from that new foundation.
Crystal:Yeah. Oh, we're definitely gonna, this is gonna be part two. We're not gonna get to it today, but we're definitely gonna do a whole um here's here's there's here's I wouldn't call them solutions, but here's um conversations to have to address, you know, possible pivots or solutions, or what what would be cool to see once the once everything burns to the ground and we rebuild it. You know, what does that look like? I think what's interesting for us that we you know we work in an emergent tech field that's wildly diverse, but has a ton of issues and integrity, and one of its best use cases is money laundering. And it's being used as a tool for this administration to get political favors from whoever. Um, but I think what's fascinating is that we have a front receipt into how technologists think. And granted, we haven't worked directly with a Musk or a teal, but we work in that system and and not far from it, only only a couple of degrees. Very, very few. And my stint in infrastructure in corporate tech America showed the absolute lack of integrity across the board and how flawed, and granted we're all flawed humans, but how flawed these decision makers are, and that now they are in control of the government. And these are white middle-aged men who didn't deal with their trauma issues and now are just throwing it all over everything, using their power and their technology to enact a vision that is just when you get into technofeudalism, and that's just wild. And all that can do is think about how I've sat in rooms with technologists and been at events with technologists and seen how they function, and then it all makes sense. All of this makes sense when you look at it through the lens of who these people actually are. And I think one good thing that's coming out from a lot of this AI bubble and all of the ridiculous things that Sam Altman says publicly is that we now do have a vision of who these people are. You know, Musk, who he is, his what he just tweaked grok. I don't know, did you see that? How he how he um weighted grok this week so that if anyone asks grok?
Taylor:Yeah, you you had mentioned I I I I'm so uh yeah, I'm so far separate now. I realize how much it's changed. I'm like, I can't even, I actually don't even know how to use it.
Crystal:Okay, but anymore. I can't even log in to confirm this. I'm just seeing people like taking screenshots on Blue Sky. And basically, somebody they they adjusted the weights so that anytime anybody asks about Elon Musk and Grok, it just says that he's the most amazing human ever created. And ridiculous things like the I don't think he needs that affirmation, first of all. But here's a person that thought that that was a good idea, that he should get under the hood of his own AI bot and make himself the champion of all the things. I mean, imagine the ego that that takes and the lack of connection to reality that that type of an action takes. Because it's not just an AI tool that he's building to use with his friends. I mean, this is an AI tool that is being put into our government. Grok is going to run parts of the AI of this government, and it connects directly into Palantir from Teal. And these are two very, very flawed, flawed humans. And uh it just it I can't I'm stunned that we're here, honestly.
unknown:Yeah.
Taylor:Yeah. Well, there is uh yeah. There's still moments of resistance. I don't know what they're gonna look like or what shape they'll take. This is our little our little piece of that to uh yeah, sit and sit and talk. And it's cathartic, certainly. Like that's I think everyone has to need needs some version of that. I've always been an advocate of like, you know, that can that can come in the shape of a community co-op or a garden or a you know, basketball team, whatever that is, you know. I think, yeah, go go do that, at least have that that sort of cathartic release, whether or not it turns into a podcast that feels like it's you know maybe a little more of a solution than just keeping our heads on straight. But yeah, yeah, we all need to get our heads on straight first.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Taylor:Can't help it till you have a supply of oxygen coming to you first.
Crystal:Yeah, when the plane's going down. I mean, community is the solution. You know, we we'll get into this later, but that community organizing has always been the solution. Um yeah. And as things begin to fall apart and more zombies surface, then that connection to community is going to be everything. And I think, you know, Chicago and LA and Charlotte, they're these cities are showing us what that actually looks like. Um community mobilization at scale on the fly. So that requires hanging out and breaking bread together and understanding who's in your community so you can defend them and who needs to be defended. And then what does that role look like? And what is like I love the whistle campaign. I think that's just brilliant. Um, have you heard about this in Chicago?
Taylor:Oh, I was gonna say, uh, I didn't I didn't think it was tied to Chicago. What did I read? Um, but same. I mean, this is uh I think it's broader. I didn't realize that that's where it was.
Crystal:I don't know if it started there or if I was just watching some people in Chicago talking about it. Um they're printing the 3D using 3D printers. Well let me get the the mutt is a conversation, guys. Um I'll have we'll we'll have to put it in the notes somewhere, but you know, printing 3D whistles, 3D printing whistles, passing them out to everybody, and then using short, I think it's short bursts to notify that ice is in the area, and then long, three long bursts to indicate that they are arresting people. And I thought that was just it's it's kind of like when the hashtag emerged in Twitter. Like hashtag became a way for communities to organize, and Occupy Wall Street was one of the first that used it, and then the Arab Spring used it as well. And that showed how something that was just randomly thrown into the tech by somebody was able to be weaponized against you know, centralized forces and a simple whistle. Um, yeah, you know that probably just happened while someone was breaking bread and having a beer. I'm like, how can we protect Bob down the street if if somebody's in the neighborhood looking for Bob? You blow a whistle.
Taylor:Yeah, yeah.
Crystal:So stuff like that.
Taylor:Can be simple, yeah, for sure.
Crystal:Yeah.
Taylor:Cool.
Crystal:Well, stopping point.
Taylor:This this is pretty good. Yeah, I was gonna say there's a there's a manifesto that maybe we can tack on separately that I was thinking about, but yeah.
Crystal:Yes, you leave my notes. I don't think I have anything left on the notes. Um yeah. Go for it.
Taylor:So shall I shall I roll here and we can either chop it or keep it?
Crystal:Yeah. See if see if we can pull them off in one take. If not, then we'll edit.
Taylor:Haven't even read it through, but it it was part of the what seemed to be at least a useful. This is uh probably 80% AI, so you know, this is part of the weird reality we live in where I'm like, what's the yeah, how much is feeding the machine beneficial, but it certainly still seems to play an important role, and it's here regardless.
Crystal:So yeah, that's a pod for the other day right there.
Taylor:Yeah. Uh cool. Okay, well, I'll end with this. We'll see how it goes. Uh I think it's gonna be, yeah, a few minutes, but a few resonant truths that come out of a manifesto that as I packaged up a lot of our thinking. So, the first truth: our democracy is not dying. It is dead on its feet. A marionette stitched together by lobbyists' algorithms and the exhausted dreams of people who forgot they were sacred. We've been living inside a corpse animated by branding. The second truth the infection didn't start in Washington, it began in quiet places, in the homes where we traded wonder for convenience, in institutions where wisdom was downsized, in every moment we said, someone else will handle it. The zombie rose because we stopped showing up as humans who remember. The third truth, power didn't get corrupted, power simply found the shortest path. And the shortest path is no longer through ballots or broadcast networks. It flows through hyperscalers, cloud empires, synthetic minds that metabolize the human story faster than we can articulate it. The people still vote, yes, but only after the machine has sculpted their choices. The fourth truth: this is no cavalry, no hero candidate, no charismatic billionaire, no benevolent AI coming to sweep the rot from the rafters. The era of saviors is over. We are the last available adults in the cosmic room. The exit door is closing rather fast. But here is the fifth truth, the one worth breathing for. Zombies don't vanish, they compost. Decay is not a tragedy, it's an opening. What we are living through is not collapse, it's release. The shell of the old world has cracked enough for us to finally get our hands into the soil. And myth, myth is the tool that turns confusion into coherence, fear into belonging, spectators into active participants. So we craft a new myth, one simple enough for a podcast, but deep enough to mutate a culture. We tell people, so this is the final, the myth of the Living Commons. We tell people the old democracy became a zombie because it forgot the commons, the shared truth, the shared future, shared fate that once tethered us. It sold the commons to corporations, rented it back to us as subscriptions, and told us this was, in quotes, freedom. But beneath the asphalt and ad targeting, the living commons remained, quiet, patient, waiting for rediscovery. The new myth says the next democracy is not built in courts or in Congress. It has grown like a mushroom, like mushrooms after a rain, in neighborhoods, learning circles, worker-owned networks, local governance cells, encryption communities, digital gardens, cooperatives, and federated systems designed for participation, not for extraction. Scale is the liar. Start with 10 people who actually give a shit and make waves. A zombie democracy cannot be revived, but a living society can be grown. Not from ideology, from participation, not from parties, from people, not from silicon messiahs, from each of us becoming uncomfortably, beautifully alive.
Crystal:Ooh, I like that.
Taylor:Yeah.
Crystal:That was a good one. There was a few really good one-liners in there. And I kind of feel like that could also be a theme for a documentary we might have to produce.
Taylor:Uh-oh, see. Yeah. Careful putting manifestos out into the world.
Crystal:I know, right? Oh, that was good. That um that's a lot to mull over.
Taylor:Yeah, well.
Crystal:I like the um shifting from what was it? Shifting from collapse to what was it? Collapse to no regeneration. What was the R word? Restoration.
Taylor:I'd have to look. I had not I had not read that yet, so that was a good one in there.
Crystal:It was a reframe on collapse.
Taylor:Yeah. It's all it's all in there. We can pull pieces that matter. Anyway, cool. Awesome.
Crystal:Well, I don't know if we came up with any solutions for zombie democracy, but that was a fun conversation. So solutions to come with.
Taylor:Yeah. We could get it out and see if maybe we can land it on uh uh Sam or I'll I'll do a little work to see if we can filter it through since it was seated. I always like trying to see if can get some attention by the the originators.
unknown:Nice.
Taylor:That's a good point. He'd be fun, he'd be fun to talk to. That's a I don't know, very I can tell a very thoughtful but concerned. He's got this like, I've been a journalist for so long and I don't know if I can keep doing this.
Crystal:That is a legit thing, for sure.
unknown:Yeah.
Taylor:He wears he wears what he wrote for sure.
unknown:Very cool.
Crystal:Well, we should wrap this one up. So thank you all for joining us. And yeah, we've got some more episodes coming up before the end of the year. Any other highlights we need to some exciting, positive.
Taylor:I have a feeling, yeah, the next one's gonna have a nice uplifting tone. Not that it all comes with truth, but yeah, I'm excited for the next one. Awesome. Uh a brother from Down Under is coming next. Nice, very cool.
Crystal:All right, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and uh, we will see you on the next episode.
Taylor:Cheers.
