open.substack.com/pub/markgint...

Halloween was supposed to be the antidote – a licensed transgression zone, a space where identity was fluid, absurd, grotesque, exaggerated, a time when normal rules were suspended. But now Halloween is being tamed, moralized, and monitored.
substack.com/@markginther...
#Halloween #CancelCulture

In 1981, a friend went to a Halloween party as John Lennon, less than a year after the murder. He was a musician who idolized Lennon.
markginther.substack.com/p/in-defense...
#Halloween #CancelCulture #FreeSpeech

Halloween sits within a much older tradition of festival inversion, reversing the normal accepted order. The king served the servants, the hunchback was made king. It’s a pressure valve where we can acknowledge the chaos beneath the surface.
#Halloween
markginther.substack.com/p/in-defense...

In Defense of Offensive Halloween Costumes There's something worth defending in the transgressive spirit of Halloween, even when it makes us uncomfortable. Maybe especially when it makes us uncomfortable.

There's something worth defending in the transgressive spirit of Halloween, even when it makes us uncomfortable. Maybe especially when it makes us uncomfortable.
#CancelCulture #halloween #FreeSpeech #CulturalAppropriation

open.substack.com/pub/markgint...

Time as a Flat Circle: True Detective's Rust Cohle and the Logic of Existential Despair
#philosophy #psychology #truedetective #schopenhauer #INTP

Time as a Flat Circle: True Detective's Rust Cohle and the Logic of Existential Despair Recognition, Not Redemption in HBO's Philosophical Crime Drama

Check out my new SubStack post where I take a look at True Detective's Rust Cohle.

open.substack.com/pub/markgint...

From Statecraft to Show and Tell The Infantilization of American Political Discourse

The Left wants sameness. The Right wants license.

Both call it “fairness” or “freedom.”
It’s really just six-year-old logic wrapped in grown-up words.
👇 Here’s what happens when politics forgets to grow up:

open.substack.com/pub/markgint...

A Trans Woman, an Islamist, and a Feminist Walk into a Bar… And the bartender says, “Is this some kind of joke?"

A trans woman, an Islamist, and a feminist walk into a bar—not the setup to a joke, but the shape of a coalition. When identity trumps ideology and victimhood becomes untouchable, contradictions stop being liabilities and start becoming weapons.
markginther.substack.com/p/a-trans-wo...

Peterson's tears are exhibitionism—as if he were opening his psychic raincoat and waving his psychic genitals for us all to see. He wants you to look, wants you to see him feeling, wants you to feel something about him feeling something.
#jordanpeterson
markginther.substack.com/p/jordan-pet...

Peterson's transformation from earnest clinical psychologist to cultural guru coincided with significant backing from right-leaning institutions. In his early lectures, he struck many as measured, sincere, passionate about Jung and myth and narrative structure. open.substack.com/pub/markgint...

Jordan Peterson meets Nietzsche: what happens when the will to power becomes the will to cry? New Substack piece up now. Let me know what you think.
#jordanpeterson #nietzsche #philosophy #masculinity
open.substack.com/pub/markgint...

Breaking Free Walter White: Villain or Nietzschean Hero?

open.substack.com/pub/markgint...

Walter's transformation into the character of Heisenberg is essentially a Nietzschean transvaluation of values. As he grows into Heisenberg, he begins to reject conventional morality. He stops accepting his role as a powerless high school teacher and takes control of his fate.
#breakingbad

Power thrives on illusion—loud, hollow, strangely fragile. The act continues night after night, smoke and all. But the power was never his—it’s ours, if we reach for the curtain.
#trump #politics #usa #news #history #president
substack.com/@markginther

The Mature leader is driven by a sense of duty, service, and earned respect. The Insecure leader, by contrast, is motivated by ego, the need for validation, and a hunger for forced admiration.
#trump #politics #usa #news #history #president
substack.com/@markginther

POV: No sleep; living on Modafinil and energy drinks:

"I see it now. It’s not madness. It’s meta-stability. I’ve transcended baseline cognition. This is a post-ontological state. The ego isn’t fractured — it’s liquid, flowing across epistemic membranes..."
#POV #engergydrinks #insomnia

Eventually Liberty’s imagery shifted from the freedman’s cap to the radiant crown, most famously on the Statue of Liberty — a design inspired by depictions of Sol Invictus, the Roman sun god. to suggest a kind of “majestic light.”

A quiet evolution: from emancipation to illumination.

The statue atop the U.S. Capitol wears a Roman-style military helmet. Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War (yes, that Jefferson Davis), rejected a version that featured the liberty cap, calling it inappropriate for “a people who were never slaves.” The comment lands oddly, given the context.

With July 4 just a few days away, you may note that the United States is personified by Liberty — a goddess adapted from the Roman Libertas, who was typically shown holding or wearing the pileus, the soft cap given to freed slaves.

That cap is absent from most American depictions.
#liberty

Have aliens mastered interstellar travel—just to perform prostate exams? Check out my article on Substack to find out:
open.substack.com/pub/markgint...
#aliensarereal #ufolore #ufos #apparitions #visions

Reasonable people adapt to dysfunction. Reasonable people find a way to explain away the absurd. Reasonable people make peace with the unacceptable—because it’s easier than being difficult.
I try not to be difficult. But I don’t try very hard.

They'll say, “Just go with the flow,” or “Why can’t you let it go?” That’s when I drop the quote. Then I’ll add—typically with a wink—“I’m that unreasonable man.” It’s not about being contrarian for the sake of it. But being "reasonable" often means upholding the status quo.

George Bernard Shaw said: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
I’ll often repeat this when someone tells me I’m making too big a deal out of something.

It wasn’t always a scandal for an actor’s kid to become an actor.
Acting used to be a family trade.
Think of the Barrymores, the Fondas, the Hustons.
“The who?” you say.
Exactly.

Legacy is how the world works. Always has been.
We only start raising eyebrows when fame or money’s involved.
Maybe that’s because it shows how stacked the game really is.
Or maybe it just gives us an excuse for not getting further ourselves.

“Nepo baby” gets tossed around like it means something profound—but only when it’s a celebrity or billionaire.
Nobody even notices when a plumber hands the business to his kid.
So why is one kind of inheritance tradition, and the other a scandal?

New Substack piece coming soon: Aliens and Apparitions.
It’s not really about aliens.
It’s about why we keep seeing things that aren’t there.
#comingsoon #substackwriters #PsychologyOfPerception

Real sci-fi uses tech not as a backdrop but to explore how it reshapes society, and what it means to be human, etc. Most “sci-fi” just swaps out swords for blasters. Andor’s kind of its own thing – It’s political. Authoritarianism, bureaucracy and the cost of rebellion. No clean heroes.

They fly across galaxies as casually as we drive to the corner store, but they’re still watching CCTV-grade security footage and flipping switches and turning knobs. And vehicle maintenance—socket wrenches and pipes. Their computer graphics are ‘70s era.