Excerpt from this Substack post: https://nickrafter.substack.com/p/the-rent-may-always-be-too-damn-high
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2026
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A Boring Dystopia
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Fundamentally, I think trying to shortcut and use terms to consolidate and represent a complex idea is broken.
If you have never encountered the concept or had it explained, then it's some black box. What does "I support DEI policies" mean at face value. How do you parse that sentence if you've never heard the acronym?
"It means diversity, equity, and inclusion" doesn't clarify anything. Diversity of what, specifically? Who is being included in what? How do we measure equity?
Especially for people who have been conditioned to think that you don't qualify for diversity if you're white.
The lesson isn't that we need new terms to rotate through to stay ahead of media. The lesson is we need to speak to the actual fucking meat of the matter.
Yes and no. Yes, we should explain actual policy stances without saying "this is single-payer healthcare" or "wealth redistribution" or whatever phrase causes conservatives to shutdown. However, there still needs to be a name for shorthand purposes. It's like a pronoun in language. It gets tiring fast to keep using a person's name rather than saying "she/he/they/etc." and that causes its own issues.
Ultimately, the outline of a solution I can see is to advocate for "common sense" reforms and explain them (first at a high level so anyone can get an idea and then at finer detail later on). Call the policy something 'Murica-esque that any truck driving, gun totin', farmer from Texas would get behind. Then stay as far away from what the rest of the universe calls the policy and deny that it's what the policy is. Those who know, will know and not care or roll their eyes, and the disengaged will go for it. For example, "This isn't socialized medicine! It's my own idea! The American Patriots Help Each Other Be Healthy policy!"
Repackage social democracy as "the cowboy mentality"