On November 6th, 2024, I woke up at 2:30 a.m. I was cold. Many hours later, Boston would reach a high of 80 degrees. I didn’t fall back asleep. I decided to check my phone instead of closing my eyes and letting my heart beat in uncertainty. I checked the news. I saw the news. I clenched my jaw. I checked Twitter (or whatever it's called now) to tap into The Culture. I kept clenching my jaw. The first thing I saw was a tweet from Ivy Wolk, a divisive icon of radical honesty, sayer of whatever-the-fuck-she-wants, and proponent of freaky art. Posted at 1:37 a.m, it read: “comedy is gonna be so bad.”

A prophet of her time.

This was, really, the only thing I could think about all day. The Culture would soon be castrated. I could see it clearly: we are on the precipice of 2017 pink pussy hats, Hamilton lyrics, Taylor Swift lyrics, empty platitudes, slam poetry, morality, “this isn’t America!” — you get the gist. Jokes will no longer be funny, comedy will be pacified, art will be boring, and the culture will regress.

Around 7 a.m, I got up to shower. As I showered, I braced myself for inevitable bad poetry about Being-A-Woman. I cursed myself for being so jaded. I seethed at the dull fact that there is nothing interesting to say about a second Trump presidency. There is nothing subversive about MAGA ideology in a country built upon destruction and subjugation. A racist, misogynistic old rich white man is the next president of the United States of America. How original. I thought about nuclear war and how if a giant interdimensional psychic squid fell on Manhattan and killed three million people, then maybe there would be world peace. I thought about how everything arcs towards entropy, and therefore, everything is always dying and everything has always been dying and everything will always be dying. I thought about all of these things while I stepped out of the shower, wrapped my damp body in a towel, coughed, gagged, and then vomited in the toilet.

As a white, upper-middle-class girl from New Jersey, I have the luxury of worrying about the sanctity of our culture. I don’t have to fear for my life, my healthcare, the lives of my family, and the countless other perils that many Americans will face under a second Trump administration.  Still, I believe that art is the most powerful force in life, that culture is the most powerful force in society, and that art directly informs culture. I worship at the altar of art; I fear for its demise.

The answer to the question of how Donald Trump won the presidency in a landslide lies in our cultural climate. America’s culture is currently very far-right and has been for a while: Joe Rogan has the top podcast in America, and Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Ben Shapiro are close behind. Gen-Z is adopting Hays-Code-era conservative ideologies, and Chappell Roan is shunned on the internet for yelling at paparazzi and saying provocative things (quintessential pop star behavior). But, can’t she just be polite? No one will listen to you if you’re abrasive. You have to be polite to get things done. You have to exercise peaceful disobedience; you have to exercise polite dissent.

So, “progressives” respond to far-right culture by reinforcing “safe” art. Safe art has clear cut morals, is made by good people, and supports good messaging. Sometimes, this safe art masquerades or markets itself as radical art. In a culture of fear, people crave comfort. Luckily, comfort sells.

Art has the undeniable power to shift culture. When the culture shifts to a widespread desire for progressive policies then, sometimes, politicians start to listen. But, we must center the roots of institutional issues and produce provocative art to tackle them. The cultural shift we need cannot be facilitated by hand-wringing, neoliberal, #girlboss, commercialized, and individualized art featuring good morals and good people. We need to make art that moves the culture forward. But, how? And forward in what direction? It is nearly impossible to answer these questions because art does not have quantifiable, capital value. One cannot write a play that reduces greenhouse gasses (but feel free to prove me wrong). One cannot accurately measure how the 1968 original Broadway production of Hair incited social and artistic change.

So, what is the value of art in a never-ending apocalypse? And what is the value of being an artist?

In her essay, “me at the end of the world (that has been ending for as long as i've known it)” Eliza McLamb writes, “my work in the entertainment and artistic spaces has not seemed like enough to me for a long while. it is a frankly repulsive belief that the work of an artist can be done only through their projects, communicated solely through small contributions to the gradual shifting of the collective consciousness. my aim was never to report from higher ground. i will and i must be as involved — if not more — tangibly as i am in my translations from the emotional ether down to the physical world.”

McLamb stresses the function of artists not as lofty disciples of enlightenment, but as people responsible for actionable social and political change. It is one thing to sing “Let The Sunshine In” with an ensemble of your peers to comfort each other and cultivate community support; it is another to posture the performance as a noble, radical act. Catharsis is different from revolution. I am not insinuating that creating art doesn’t have value in fostering hope, community, and love. I am, however, arguing that existence is not an inherently radical act. For some, it is. For me, it isn’t. I have an obligation to do more. Art must be paired with action.