The writing is excellent. I enjoyed examining all the mundane things in the world to read descriptions that always seemed to start from a novel perspective.
Here's the description of a Wide Brimmed Hat; "The crown is crushed by wear into a hundred papery creases, and the brim is stained in the fractal signatures of sweat and salt."
The first think is crossed out because you're not supposed to think. You're supposed to feel... feel bad about using your phone. It's like it's designed to turn any opinion against any other opinion.
Problem: Seems like the point of this game is victory. The absence of defeat on all fronts. Victory in business ventures and creative undertakings. Victory in love and over other people. Political victory. Ideological victory. Hell, even sexual victory. Definitely a lot of object-based victories, too - having things and not losing them. One problem, though: not a lot of victors in sight. Everyone’s mostly losing. Why is that? And how do you not lose?
Solution: How not to lose? It is impossible not to. The world is balanced on the edge of a knife. It’s a game of frayed nerves. You’re pushed on by numbers and punitive measures: pain, rejection, and unpaid bills. You can either play or you can crawl under a boat and waste away - turn into salt or a flock of seagulls. Your enemies would love that. Or you can fight. The only way to load the dice is to keep on fighting.
This is fine. Projects that require specialized skills can require that you get heavily invested before you discover the implications, scope and yeah your own lasting interest.
This rhetoric seems similar to that used by Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economics. They applied 'economic therapy' to left-leaning economies in the late 1900s which involved rapid privatization of nationally owned industries. Negatively affected many otherwise healthy countries including England, Russia and Chilie.
The Shock Doctrine does a round robin of these events; highly recommended.
Project 2025 is about privatizing branches of government while citizens are too busy dealing with the fallout of economic collapse.
That's a monster