The Madness Continues

I turned 40 only five months ago, and one of the strange things about getting older is the realization that your past does in fact shape who you are. Sitting by the East River in Williamsburg and staring out at the water recently, bits of my past bubbled up. Tinkering with memories of my past, I recalled being a kid. When I was 10 I was in an advanced class in elementary school. As a fifth grader I was herded into a cohort of other “talented and gifted” kids of the same age that were plucked out of our normal class of presumably un-talented and un-gifted students, and all put into one or two classes.

Check out the Instagram Reel about this HERE

I was in this program for two years before they kicked me out. I never did any homework. My mother always used to say “They’re taking a bunch of creative kids and expecting them to self-manage,” as a kind of therapeutic excuse for what really was my (and maybe her) failure. I think she was trying to make me feel better. Who knows.

What I do know is that I didn’t do a lick of homework. None. I think I turned in maybe a single assignment my entire fifth grade year. I aced every test, I did no homework. I got straight C average.

The funny thing was that I actually loved fifth grade. I remember starting to notice girls (at 10, wild), I had great friends, and I remember really leaning into being a kid before going into middle school where everything truly, deeply, profoundly, sucked.

But as I sat there revisiting the old thoughts, now 30 years old, in my head, something suddenly snapped together for me in a way that it never had before. At 10 years old I did fail at something and was truly embarrassed in front of all of my friends. Although I never really felt it at the time, when I reflect on it I actually think I was a pretty popular kid. I had a big halloween party that basically the whole class showed up to. I was invited to a popular girl’s birthday party with all the other “cool” kids. I was a nerd (in a program full of nerds), but apparently was still a pretty cool kid. So when I got kicked out of this program it actually was really embarrassing.

I made excuses and told kids that I got kicked out for some BS administrative reason, which everyone presumably saw right through. Doubly embarrassing, I then headed to a different middle school than all of those friends. They went to East, I went to West. I was shuffled back into classes with people who I hadn’t really seen for two years before. The last they heard of me, I was headed to the TAG program. Now I was coming back. Embarrassing.

As I sat there staring across into Manhattan, it hit me that I made a choice then. It was pretty straightforward: the reason I got kicked out and went through this horribly embarrassing ordeal was that I simply hadn’t applied myself. If I had applied myself, I wouldn’t have been kicked out. What I didn’t realize at the time was that that choice came with a dangerous implication. In order to preserve my sense of superiority, the sense that I could’ve if I’d tried, I had to avoid ever trying at anything, lest I tried and failed and then disproved that I could’ve done it.

This choice, borne out of trying to preserve a sense of self, has been with me for 30 years. Three decades of never being fully committed. Three decades of not giving everything to something. Three decades of holding back so I could preserve a sense of superiority.

Yo, please subscribe my guy, daddy puts out articles, essays, and artistic pieces every week and he need your eyeballs 👀

The strange thing about getting older is that you can see how small habits accrued every day end up becoming something wholly different with the weight of time. A small bit of distance to avoid a painful emotion over 30 years has become a massive wall. Someone once said that the amazing part of midlife, if you’re lucky enough to reach it, is discovering that the armor you produced to protect you now prevents you from moving the way you need to.

Once at some point in the early 90s I was at a barber shop with my dad, and his hairdresser asked him what age he’d like to be again. He was in his 30s, and younger than I am now. I heard him say something that stuck with me for all these years. Before he answered he said “With what I know now?” For years I never really knew what that meant… but I think I finally do.

We are the sum of all the stories we tell ourselves. We’re a product of all the time we spent choosing all these things. In a way, you are who your past self created you to be… and isn’t that funny? Because they’ve never met you, and although you know them, you’ve never and will never meet them.

So, with love for that little kid trying to make the best choices he could to respect himself, his future self, me, is going to look into his own past and decide to play it differently. I, now, am going to re-engineer my own story to be something more empowering, expansive, emboldening, and confidence-delivering for Brendon in 2026. Because all the choices that Brendons of the past made were meant to serve them, then. I’m now in service to me now and in the future. In light of this, I’m going to go back over a bunch of events and choices I made and rework them, re-edit them, and come up with a better story. Maybe it won’t be true, but I’m not entirely sure the way I’ve been remembering things for all these years is entirely true either. There were perhaps many interpretations of whatever was happening at the time, and however I decided to take things that happened when I was a kid or an adolescent were arbitrary anyway.

Somewhere there must be a bunch of writing about how re-imagining your past and re-telling your own story differently is either a sign of empowerment or insanity, probably based on whether the intended target of that writing is either a man or a woman. Who knows? Anyway, a bit like George Constanza, I’m going to go through my major elements piece by piece and then re-tell them to myself.

To start, I’m 40 years old and was born in Detroit, Michigan. I guess that’s mostly the same. All through childhood and adolescence, I was a gifted kid who got shunted into classes for bright kids. This is all true. The thing I’m going to tell myself now though, was that actually, I did work my butt off. I came from a humble family and was told that hard work was the reward. Instead of internalizing a sense of superiority in middle school, and trying to be better than my classmates, I ended up deciding that I was made of the same dirt as everyone else. My shit stunk, I bled red blood, and I realized at 11 that I actually did fuck up – what was the point of having this prodigious intellect without apply it? It was stupid, and I ate my crow and humbled myself; feeling the whole feelings and crying in my room. At 11, I looked in the mirror and apologized to myself about letting myself down. It was a pretty intense and amazing moment for an 11 year old, actually. Strangely, writing this fiction down now actually feels healing.

Because of this, I value hard work and am humble enough to realize that if I don’t focus on results and hard work, nothing comes. Being smart and doing nothing is worse than being stupid and doing something.

When I was 17 I was supposed to go on tour for standup comedy with Brandon T Jackson. He was from Detroit and we connected at Ridley’s Comedy Castle. This kid was hilarious. He’s since gone on to act in a bunch of movies, most notably Tropic Thunder. I did a bunch of comedy, and focused. I thought ahead, and imagined what I wanted to do. Instead of just taking things as they came, I set time and really though through what I wanted. Imagining the future, what would happen, and how, I projected myself into those circumstances. Instead of teaching myself that my actions didn’t make a difference in my own life, I saw how I could act to change my own circumstances.

This lesson, which is totally integral to all successful people, really took hold at this moment. I did actually make ch…

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendonfreakinglemon.substack.com/subscribe

Is it as unhinged as it looks?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendonfreakinglemon.substack.com/subscribe

There was a time, a darker, less enlightened time, when people believed that revolution happened in the real world. That change required effort. That systems of power were physical things, concrete, steel, bodies in the street, requiring equally physical disruptions.

How foolish we were.

We now know the truth: nothing real happens in reality.

Midwest Existentialism - Brendon Lemon Official is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

History will not remember who showed up. It will remember who posted. It will remember who went viral. It will remember whose infographic got the most shares. Because, let’s be honest, no one has the time to physically organize. No one has the stamina to go outside (ew). And no one has the budget for real-world activism, when the only movement that matters is upward in engagement metrics.

Some people still believe that revolution is a material struggle, that systems of oppression are held up by laws, wealth, and force; and that dismantling them requires tangible resistance. But those people? Those people aren’t thinking like digital strategists. Because the real revolutionaries of our time aren’t storming palaces. They’re replying with memes. They’re harnessing the algorithm. They’re securing brand partnerships. And if you’re not doing the same, then what are you even fighting for?

Take any so-called "revolutionary moment" in history—any uprising, movement, or turning point. Then ask yourself: What was the engagement rate? Did it have sponsorship opportunities? Was it scalable? Because if your revolution isn’t optimized for digital platforms, if it isn’t built for postability, then congratulations, you’ve just wasted your time.

Huey P. Newton wrote in Revolutionary Suicide, “The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man.” But let’s be honest, that kind of bleak, martyr complex thinking is exactly why the Black Panther Party never secured a brand deal. A modern revolutionary must accept that a truly effective movement requires not sacrifice, but scalable monetization.

Even Che Guevara, who spent years hiking through jungles, training guerrilla fighters, and toppling governments, wasted a catastrophic amount of time offline (barf). Had he played it smarter, he would have realized that “A guerrilla fighter needs full knowledge of the terrain on which he moves” applies far more effectively to social media feeds than to any real-world battlefield. Imagine the traction he could’ve gotten with a viral TikTok series titled "POV: You Just Realized Imperialism Is the Enemy." Literally millions of views!

Yet these figures remained trapped in the past, convinced that the world could only be changed through direct action in physical space (stupid), a tragic misunderstanding of where real power actually resides. They spent their time mobilizing people, organizing supply chains, and resisting systemic oppression, when they could have been securing influencer collaborations and boosting their visibility through paid ads.

And that’s the real shame of it. Because if they had simply focused on optimizing their content for maximum reach, they could have built something far more enduring than any revolution.

They could have built a platform.

Of course, some outdated thinkers, men tragically unverified on any platform, still insist that political power is built through physical struggle (so dumb). That change requires people to meet in person (ugh), build movements through direct action (gross), and take steps that are non-digital and thus entirely untrackable by engagement metrics (yuck).

Lenin, for example, made the colossal mistake of writing:

"There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen."

Which is a quaint idea from a pre-viral era, but ultimately deeply inefficient. Lenin wasted weeks trying to organize workers when he could have crafted a high-impact Twitter thread that distilled his entire political project into 280-character knowledge bombs. Imagine how much easier the Russian Revolution would have been if he had simply A/B tested slogans until he found one that performed well organically.

Leon Trotsky, another terminally offline individual, once wrote:

"Revolutions are always verbose."

Wrong. Revolutions today must be optimized for attention spans. The modern revolutionary knows that actual verbosity is a death sentence for engagement rates. If you can’t fit your entire ideology into a single slide on an Instagram carousel, then frankly, your movement isn’t serious about power.

And then, of course, there’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who wrote in Letter from a Birmingham Jail:

"Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God."

Yawn. Imagine how much more engagement this would have gotten as a branded infographic with a clean sans-serif font. What was he doing in jail, writing longhand letters, when he could have been doing a live Q&A on X sponsored by Squarespace? Had he thought ahead, he could have monetized his activism, launched a newsletter on Substack, and secured a Davos invite to have meaningful conversations with JPMorgan executives about racial equity in fintech.

And let’s not forget Che Guevara, a man who tragically understood the importance of aesthetic branding (the t-shirts! the posters!), but never capitalized on platform monetization. He once wrote:

"The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall."

Again, this is why the left keeps losing. Because today, the real revolution isn’t about waiting for apples to fall or even shaking the tree. It’s about owning the tree’s content pipeline, turning that tree into a revenue-generating subscription model, and securing brand deals with organic cider companies to maximize ethical monetization.

And yet, these figures failed to understand what modern movements have finally gotten right:

True revolution doesn’t happen in the streets. It happens on the For You Page.

They spent their time mobilizing people, organizing supply chains, resisting systemic oppression, when they could have been leveraging sponsored partnerships with major financial institutions to really create change. Just like Bono and U2 have done for years.

Because if you’re not winning the algorithm, then you’re not winning anything at all.

But of all the misguided revolutionaries who misunderstood where real power lies, perhaps no one squandered their moment more catastrophically than Luigi Mangione.

Luigi had everything he needed to reach maximum cyberspace virality: He had a great story with a cause, a villain, and a moment of crisis ripe for catching the algorithm. And what did he do?

He threw it all away in meatspace. (Disgusting.)

Instead of playing it smart, instead of leveraging the attention economy, Luigi took action in real life (dumb). And as a result, his impact was messy, unmeasurable, and worst of all, completely un-monetizable.

Had Luigi been thinking like a real digital revolutionary, he would have realized that Brian Thompson, far from being an enemy, was actually his most valuable content asset. The real move, the high-ROI engagement strategy, would have been to pivot his entire grievance with the insurance system into a brandable, viral-ready content funnel.

Here’s what he should have done:

* Start a podcast. Title: This Is Sick: A Podcast on America’s Healthcare Crisis. Subtitle: Sponsored by UnitedHealthcare™.

* Book Brian Thompson as his first guest. A civil, televised, corporate-sponsored debate on America’s broken (but profitable!) healthcare system.

* Live-stream it on all platforms. Monetize the debate in real time.

* Sell ad space to pharma and private equity firms. (Because if you don’t let them speak, how will we ever have a real conversation?)

* Capitalize on the moment with merch. Limited edition This Is Sick hoodies. “Single-Payer Healthcare Is For Be…

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendonfreakinglemon.substack.com/subscribe

People like to explain political movements in economic or ideological terms. Trump’s rise, for instance, gets framed as a reaction to economic precarity, globalization, or political correctness. There’s some truth to that, but it doesn’t quite get at why people feel so strongly about him.

Because that’s the real question. Trump isn’t just supported, he’s desired. His followers don’t just believe in him. They enjoy him; and that enjoyment isn’t rational, it’s visceral.

Midwest Existentialism - Brendon Lemon Official is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

That’s why the usual contradictions don’t matter. His policies don’t really help his base. His personal history goes against their supposed values. He contradicts himself constantly. None of it sticks. Because the appeal isn’t about logic, it’s about libidinal energy.

Jean-François Lyotard’s concept of libidinal economy helps explain this. Politics isn’t just about policy or rational interests. It’s about desire, about energy flows, about emotional investments that don’t always make sense. Trump is a perfect example. He doesn’t offer people a coherent vision, he offers them a feeling. Excitement. Rage. Catharsis. A sense of breaking the rules, of transgression.

That’s why his rallies feel more like Wrestlemania or Lollapalooza than a political event. His words matter less than the charge in the room. The spectacle is the point. His base gets a thrill from his unpredictability, even when it actively works against them. It’s the same kind of energy that drives movements built on spectacle—where being part of it matters more than the outcome.

This ties into the Lacanian idea of jouissance. The word in French means “enjoyment,” or “pleasure.” But as Lacan described it, isn’t just pleasure, but an excessive kind of enjoyment, sometimes even painful or self-destructive. Trump’s appeal isn’t just that he fights the establishment. It’s that he lets his followers enjoy the fight. The chaos, the rule-breaking, the endless outrage cycle, is intoxicating.

And that’s the thing: politics isn’t just about governance. It’s about affect. People don’t always vote based on their best interests. They vote for what feels right. What excites them. What scratches an itch. Trump understands this in a way that traditional politicians don’t. He knows how to hook people, how to make them feel something deep in their gut.

This isn’t new. History is full of political figures who succeeded not because of their policies but because they knew how to channel energy, how to become a focal point for people’s frustrations and fantasies. Mussolini didn’t rise to power just because he had a coherent economic or military strategy. He rose because he tapped into the anger of an Italian public that felt humiliated after World War I. He took their wounded national pride, and turned it into a spectacle—bold speeches, dramatic gestures, a vision of restored greatness. He didn’t govern through policy so much as through performance.

Hitler followed a similar path. The Treaty of Versailles had left Germany economically broken and psychologically wounded. More than a set of political solutions, Hitler offered Germans a narrative—one where they were victims of betrayal, where their suffering had been orchestrated by internal enemies, and where he, personally, was the force of reckoning that would set things right. His speeches were less about governance and more about catharsis. He didn’t just tell people what they wanted to hear—he let them feel what they wanted to feel: righteous anger, defiance, the intoxicating promise of revenge.

These figures weren’t thinkers or administrators in the traditional sense. They weren’t great reformers. What they did was absorb and reflect the emotions of their time. They took resentment, humiliation, and fear and turned them into movement. They gave people something to be part of, something that made suffering feel meaningful.

This is what Trump taps into. Not in the same way or on the same scale, but through the same basic mechanics. The logic of his movement isn’t about governing effectively—it’s about channeling frustration into spectacle. People don’t follow him because he has clear plans for their future. They follow him because he lets them enjoy their anger, their defiance, their sense of belonging in a battle against enemies—real or imagined.

If you’re trying to understand Trump—or any figure like him—you have to look beyond demographic changes and economic breakdowns. You have to ask: What are people getting out of this? Because it’s not just about winning or losing. Sometimes, people don’t just want progress, security, or justice.

Sometimes, they just want to feel something.

The Democratic Party has spent years misreading the moment, believing that voters—especially Trump’s base—want stability or security when what they actually want is momentum. Trumpism doesn’t function like traditional politics; it’s not about securing long-term benefits for his supporters. It’s about giving them a continuous sense of motion, of shaking things up, of striking back at an ever-changing list of enemies.

Democrats keep assuming that Trump’s voters will eventually realize he’s not delivering for them materially. That his tax cuts didn’t help the working class. That his trade policies didn’t bring back manufacturing. That he’s openly corrupt, lining his own pockets while pretending to fight for the common man. That his deportation policies will mean that eventually one day ICE will come for them or their loved ones. But his supporters already know this, at least on some level. And they don’t care. What matters is that he feels like he’s fighting, like he’s causing pain to the people they’ve been told are responsible for their problems—whether it’s DEI consultants, immigrants, China, or the amorphous blob of “the left.” They’re not looking for a better life in the conventional sense; they’re looking for a more satisfying fight.

The Democratic Party cannot seem to engage with this emotional economy, partly because their own base is fractured by identity-driven coalition politics. Different factions within the party are focused on different kinds of justice—racial justice, gender justice, economic justice—but these don’t always unify into a single, shared grievance. The result is a party that sounds more like a committee meeting than a movement. There’s no singular target for its anger, no simple, visceral enemy that can hold the whole coalition together.

In a more rational world, the obvious enemy would be the billionaire class. Decades of wage stagnation, corporate consolidation, and financial speculation have made life more precarious for nearly everyone outside the top 1%. A coherent populist movement would direct America’s rage toward the ultra-wealthy—the people who actually hold power, who actually rig the system. But Democrats can’t make that case with full force, because their campaigns rely on money from those very billionaires. They try to play both sides, offering just enough economic rhetoric to appeal to working people while making sure their donor base stays comfortable.

The problem wasn’t just that Democrats misunderstood the emotional pull of Trump. It’s that the ticket they put forward, Harris-Walz, embodied the exact opposite. Where Trump radiates a libidinous chaos, grievance, and an unfiltered will to power, the Democratic strategy seemed to be built around sexless competence, stability, and managerial calm. The assumption was that people were exhausted by Trump’s noise, by the instability he brings, and that what they wanted was a return to order.

But this misreads the moment entirely. People are exhausted, yes—but exhaustion doesn’t always lead to a desire for stability. Sometimes it leads to a desire to burn it all down, or at least to be entertained while everything crumbles. The Democrats’ play for rationality missed the deeper truth: …

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendonfreakinglemon.substack.com/subscribe

I sat down with Eddie Liger-Smith, co-chair of Midwestern Marx, to discuss the state of the American Left, the role of Marxism in the U.S., and global shifts in power. Our conversation covers a range of topics, including the decline of labor unions, the rise of MAGA populism, and China’s economic success.

Topics Covered:

* Introduction to Eddie & Midwestern Marx (00:00:00)Eddie talks about how Midwestern Marx started as a think tank focusing on political analysis and socialist theory. He shares his personal background, including how his father’s union was dismantled in Wisconsin during Scott Walker’s tenure.

* How Unions Were Dismantled in Wisconsin (00:01:00)Eddie explains how private and public sector workers were pitted against each other, and how Fox News helped push anti-union narratives. He critiques how corporate interests have systematically eroded labor rights.

* Why Anti-Union Arguments Don’t Hold Up (00:02:30)We discuss how blaming teachers and unionized workers for economic struggles is a distraction from the real issue: corporate exploitation of labor.

* How Bernie Sanders Radicalized Eddie (00:03:40)Eddie describes how Bernie’s 2016 campaign helped him recognize economic injustice and led him toward Marxist analysis.

* Why the American Left is Weak (00:06:30)We discuss why leftist movements in the U.S. struggle, including internal divisions, an obsession with identity politics, and a lack of focus on class struggle.

* MAGA Populism & Why Working-Class Americans Support Trump (00:10:00)Trump has successfully positioned himself as an anti-establishment figure, while the Left has failed to connect with working-class frustrations. Eddie explains how the Right has co-opted economic anxiety and redirected it toward culture wars.

* Marxism vs. Identity Politics (00:15:50)Eddie critiques how mainstream media and even some leftist groups have abandoned class struggle in favor of identity politics, which has made socialism less appealing to working-class people.

* The Rise of China & What the U.S. Gets Wrong (00:22:30)Eddie breaks down China’s economic strategy, how Deng Xiaoping restructured the economy while maintaining state control, and why China has outpaced the U.S. in infrastructure and poverty reduction.

* Why the USSR Collapsed & What We Can Learn (00:30:20)We discuss the successes and failures of the Soviet Union, including industrialization under Stalin, life expectancy gains, and why the economic transition after its collapse led to mass poverty.

* How the U.S. Hollowed Out the Midwest (00:40:10)Deindustrialization in the Midwest has devastated communities. We discuss how globalization, corporate offshoring, and neoliberal policies gutted the manufacturing base.

* Why the American Left Needs to Be More Aggressive (00:50:30)We critique the Left’s tendency toward political correctness and self-policing instead of focusing on mass mobilization and economic issues. Eddie argues that working-class men are being pushed toward the Right because the Left fails to present itself as strong, pragmatic, and action-oriented.

* The Midwest’s Unique Political Identity (01:05:00)We discuss Midwestern culture, values, and why the region is often overlooked in national politics despite being a key battleground. Eddie shares his personal connection to the Midwest and why he’s committed to staying there.

This conversation covers a lot of ground—whether you’re curious about socialism in America, the failures of neoliberalism, or the geopolitical shifts happening today, this is worth a listen.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendonfreakinglemon.substack.com/subscribe

My motivation for New Year’s Resolution, nearly one year in.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendonfreakinglemon.substack.com/subscribe

Okay y’all - I wrote the dumbest sketch of my life.

Maybe it’s the clown school leftover from this summer but I wrote a wildly offensive and ridiculously moronic sketch that was TOO DUMB for Tiktok.

Anyway, here you go.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendonfreakinglemon.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brendonfreakinglemon.substack.com/subscribe

I catch up with my Chicago comedy buddy Tony Sykowski, who's embedded in the New York comedy scene. We talk doing comedy in COVID, telling jokes on a ship, and what stand-up will be like in the future.

Check out Tony on Instagram: www.instagram.com/tonysykowski/

If you want to check out The Power Bible, as I mention on the opening of the show, check it out here: https://amzn.to/2Et2uVx

I sit down and talk with Brian Morton & Rachel Ibrahim of Zanies in Old Town, Chicago.

Brian you may remember from years ago when I furtively kept glancing at my phone and he very much noticed it. Rachel is head of marketing at Zanies and is a complete delight.

This was a fun one - it was really something to get back in that room and actually share space with some real humans.

They're open! Book your tickets to see the show at http://chicago.zanies.com/