Gaslight Society

In the United States of America, one thing is always true. The TRUTH WILL BE BRUTALIZED. The elephant in the room will be ignored. A society built on not acknowledging the obvious, even to the most absurd and ridiculous extremes, makes for a very surreal and uncomfortable environment. When discussing issues of race, cultural philosophy, and class this disorienting reality is unavoidable.

“The Leader of the Free World” is faltering these days. And the most obvious reason why is tied to its bleak, hideous past. Racism and bigotry were the root facilitators of legalized slavery in the Antebellum South, the American Civil War, and the establishment of Jim Crow America. With the rise of white nationalism during this second Trump Administration, the elephant in the room is expanding and occupying ever more space.

As a man of African descent, born in the largest former Confederate state, the great state of Texas, I know all too well the everyday denial. The tightness that I felt in my stomach as a young boy, in direct response to being stared at by whites in the neighborhood I grew up in as I walked from my parent’s house in Houston, Texas to Dan’s Smoothie House where I loved woofing down my favorite smoothies in the Houston area, is unforgettable. The awkward silence, the weird vibes, the unspoken word. On this planet, one’s blackness follows them wherever they go.

In today’s era of social media, more than during any previous period, humanity’s obsession is concentrated on the most popular thing. It is about both racking up followers and following the “coolest” or “most attractive” people out there. The degree of shallow fakeness within the society that we currently live in is unprecedented and sickening to the extreme.

There was a time before smart phones, social media, XBOX gaming systems, and even the World Wide Web. A time that felt far more real than what we are usually accustomed to experiencing during our current everyday lives. One that younger generations largely have not and will not ever experience as we move forward in time towards an increasingly digitalized existence dominated by Artificial Intelligence.

During these past eras that pre-dated the popularization of the internet, the authentic way was the only respectable way quite frankly. The Civil Rights and counter-cultural movements of the 1950s and 1960s, the punk and hip-hop movements of the late 1970s and 1980s, and the grunge movement that blasted into mainstream consciousness during the early 1990s all rested on a solid foundation of true authenticity and brutally honest creativity.

The Baby Boomer and X generations were collectively spoiled by arguably the most memorable and influential cultural renaissance in human history. A cultural renaissance led by the likes of famous icons including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali, Huey Newton, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Elvis Presley, Sidney Poitier, Michael Jackson, Prince, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Oprah Winfrey, Spike Lee, Tupac, Freddie Mercury, David Bowie, and countless others. However, the rapid sophistication of human technology during the second half of the twentieth century played a significant part in facilitating their reach into millions upon millions of living rooms across the globe.

The growing popularization of television, which emerged during the decades immediately following the end of the Second World War, altered the course of human history forever. During the years prior to and after the emergence of cable networking, television broadcasting allowed for the iconic individuals mentioned above to reach large segments of the human population, leaving an undeniable impact on communities and societies across the globe for seemingly endless generations to come. But despite many of the positives that might have accompanied this development, negatives must be acknowledged as well.

The undeniable success of television heading into the final decade of the twentieth century could be felt throughout human society, and the United States was the epicenter. America was ground zero for the cultural explosion during the 1980s that was MTV. The new cable network defined the childhood and early adulthood of Generation X. But the 1990s would be a very unique decade that built upon the Tech boom of the 1980s.

The rise of the internet in the mid to late 1990s, along with the rapid evolution of video gaming in cultures throughout human society, pushed younger generations more towards life indoors. Increasingly, younger people began to allow themselves to become consumed by toxic cultures and subcultures that discouraged individuality and healthy philosophies towards life. By the end of the decade the rise of gun violence in schools, as most popularly epitomized by the Columbine shooting massacre in 1999, had many blaming the increasing violence noticed in video games from that era. Ultimately, by the time that social media arrived at the beginning of the 2010s, the days of authentic thought and creativity in mainstream culture seemed to be far behind us. Those decades of the late twentieth century that were so influential culturally can today feel like largely forgotten relics of the past.

In 2025, it is like living in an entirely different universe from that of the 1980s or even the 1990s, especially from a cultural standpoint. It is all about clicks. It is about shallow, superficial phenomena, and not of things that are characterized by any degree of substance or depth for the most part. And that is where I have naturally found myself to be a complete outcast. As a young black man in America, who does not like most contemporary rap music and who can only seem to identify with dead icons from dead cultures, I do recognize my obsession with the past. And this obsession most certainly expresses itself within my passion for history as represented through the advanced degree that I earned in History and the professional work that I have done thus far in my young career.

I do hang my hat on being real. On not only staring at the enlarging elephant in the room, but yelling out loud about the presence of the elephant at the top of my lungs. I have realized that many, if not most, people in today’s American society will call me crazy or act as though they cannot hear my voice at all. However, their decision to gaslight me or to ignore my existence all together will never overshadow the ever expanding shadow casts by an enlarging elephant that embodies our current American culture of dysfunction, racism, and sheep mentality. A culture built entirely on fear. On the fear of being judged. Once our young people, in this nation and across the globe, truly recognize that freedom from the everyday anxieties of external judgement lies within internal courage and Nirvana, they will acquire the self-confidence and inner harmony that they have always longed for.