American Brain Rot

consciously we must turn back from the abyss and build anew ...

Introduction

In 1986, the band Genesis released the hauntingly satirical music video for their hit song Land of Confusion. Featuring grotesque puppets of world leaders, celebrities, and everyday citizens, the video painted a surreal portrait of a world spinning out of control; gripped by fear, vanity, and poor leadership. Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Mikhail Gorbachev bumble across the screen, caricatures of authority figures who seem less interested in solving problems than in performing their roles for a distracted, anxious audience. The refrain, “This is the world we live in / and these are the hands we’re given,” still strikes a chord with many of us precisely because it captured a deep unease about our institutions; they often feel inadequate to the complexity of our time. Yet we keep grasping at the same broken policies and patterns.

Almost forty years later, it is hard to watch Land of Confusion without feeling that the prophecy has come to pass. And then some. The puppets have been replaced by the real thing: populist strongmen, media figures, and partisan warriors who gleefully exploit confusion to advance their own power. Social media amplifies their performance, turning politics into a zero-sum spectacle while the underlying challenges — immigration, inequality of opportunity, scientific integrity, pluralistic governance — remain largely unaddressed. In America’s land of confusion, each side sees the other as the enemy, and reasoned, evidence-based dialogue seems hopelessly quaint.

But confusion is not merely a failure of our leaders or our media. It is also a failure of our own minds; or more precisely as I have argued previously, of how our minds are wired to handle complexity. Human beings evolved to navigate small groups and immediate dangers, to predict what comes next based on familiar patterns. When faced with pluralistic, global challenges that resist simple solutions, our cognitive machinery falls back on what it knows best: tribalism, overconfidence, and emotional salience. We cling to leaders who simplify, to stories that flatter our group, to outrage that feels like clarity. It feels natural (if not downright righteous) but it is deeply maladaptive for our diverse, interconnected world.

The question before us, then, is whether we can rise above our collective confusion. Can we use our reason, our evidence-based institutions, and our collective creativity to design systems that help us see past the tribal patterns our minds reflexively produce? Can we make our institutions into cognitive prosthetics — extending our capacity to understand, cooperate, and adapt — rather than mere amplifiers of our basest instincts? The Genesis video closed with a warning, not a resolution. Whether this truly becomes the land of confusion, or the land where we finally confront it, depends on the choices we make now.

Why Do We Fall for Simple Stories?

We’d all like to believe that we (and we alone) are completely rational. We tell ourselves we make decisions based on facts, that we “do our own research,” and that our opinions are carefully considered. But let me ask you something: When was the last time you really changed your mind about something that mattered? If you’re like most people, it doesn’t happen very often; and, when it does, it probably feels pretty uncomfortable. Why is that?

Why does it feel so good to hear someone finally say what you’ve been thinking all along? Why does it feel so infuriating when someone challenges a belief you’ve held for years — even when you can’t quite explain why you hold it? Why do we so often assume bad intent in the people we disagree with, but good intent in ourselves? There’s nothing shameful about it; that’s what our minds evolved to do. Human beings are wired to complete patterns quickly, to classify others as friend or foe, and to cling to the familiar when the world feels unpredictable.

We’ve evolved to predict what comes next based on the smallest scraps of information. That was a useful skill when you were trying to survive in a small tribe, avoiding predators, and spot danger. But how well do those instincts work in a world of pluralistic governance, global energy policy, and trade policy? Could it be that populist leaders, social media algorithms, and even well-meaning movements exploit the way our minds naturally prefer a simple story to a complicated reality?

We tend to overestimate our ability to reason and underestimate the pull of emotion and group loyalty. We like to believe our political opinions are based on evidence — but how often are they really based on loyalty to our group, our identity, our desire to feel certain and safe? Why do we treat “changing our mind” as weakness when it might actually be the mark of a stronger intellect? And why do we reward leaders who make us feel right even when they show no signs of being right?

So before we blame “the other side” for all the confusion, maybe we should stop and ask:

1. What are the costs of being so sure we’re right?

2. What damage are we willing to tolerate just to feel like our team is winning?

3. And, what happens to a democracy when even our elected officials stop asking those questions themselves?

What Are the Costs of Being “Right?”

When we think we’re right (and, by implication, that the other side is wrong) it feels good. There’s a deep satisfaction in believing we see what others cannot, that we stand on the side of truth, justice, and, who knows, maybe even history. But what if that satisfaction comes with a price we almost never stop to calculate? What if our need to feel right is blinding us to the damage it does?

Look and you can see it everywhere: institutions that once commanded broad respect are now dismissed as corrupt or irrelevant simply because they tell us something we don’t want to hear. We see science rejected when it produces inconvenient evidence. We see policies gutted, not because they don’t work, but because they came from “the other side.” Is being right worth weakening the very institutions that keep our democracy and society functioning?

Consider Congress. For all the talk of checks and balances, it seems that one of our co-equal branches of government is increasingly content to let the presidency carry the burden — or the blame — as long as members can keep their seats. Why does Congress, a body designed to represent us, so often choose to abdicate its role just to appease one man? Why does it seem easier to side with the loudest voice in the room than to stand up for the role they were elected to play?

If you’re on the left, you might shake your head at Republican lawmakers enabling Trump’s overreach. But pause and ask yourself: would you feel differently if it were someone you supported? Would you still demand that Congress assert its independence? Would you still hold your own side to account? And if not, what does that say about what we value more — the Constitution or our partisan comfort?

We all seem to have forgotten that institutions only work when people inside them act with courage and integrity — even when it costs them something. When lawmakers let fear of a primary, fear of a mean tweet, or fear of their own voters keep them silent, what message does that send to the rest of us? And when we, the voters, reward cowardice and punish independence, aren’t we complicit?

So maybe we need to ask ourselves more uncomfortable questions:

1. What is the long-term cost of letting the presidency become more powerful while Congress becomes more timid?

2. What happens when evidence-based policy gets sacrificed for short-term political theater?

3. And, how much longer can our country afford to treat every decision as a chance for our side to win — instead of a chance for everyone to lose a little less?

What Would It Take to Do Better?

If we can see how our own certainty damages the institutions we rely on, the natural next question is: what would it take to break the pattern? We know the system is broken; but, are we willing to fix ourselves first? Or, is it easier to keep blaming “them” and hoping someone else does the hard work?

What if doing better started with a willingness to ask better questions? What if we demanded more of ourselves (and those we elect as leaders) than easy answers and cheap victories? Would it really be so radical to expect that public policy be based on evidence, even when the evidence points somewhere uncomfortable? Would it really be so naive to insist that public servants serve the public, even when it means disappointing their base?

What would it take to build institutions that help us overcome our own limitations? Institutions that force us to listen to competing evidence, to weigh tradeoffs, to revise our predictions? What if the purpose of Congress, the courts, the press, and even our local governments was not just to govern, but to make us think better together? Could that be what the founders had in mind when they designed a system that assumed no single group would ever have all the answers?

We already know we’re vulnerable to oversimplified stories and tribal loyalty. We know populists and partisans will keep exploiting that. But we also know that humans are capable of incredible creativity when we design systems that extend our reasoning beyond what evolution equipped us for. After all, we created the scientific method, public libraries, open courts, and democratic elections — not because they felt natural, but because they made us better.

So here’s the real question: what new “cognitive prosthetics” might we need now? What systems, norms, or habits could we invent to help us slow down, challenge our assumptions, and prioritize evidence over outrage? Could our schools, our media, our workplaces be redesigned with this in mind? Could our political parties? Or are we too attached to being right to try?

If we aren’t willing to at least try, we have to ask ourselves:

1. What kind of future are we really leaving behind?

2. What happens to a pluralistic society when its citizens stop practicing pluralism?

3. And, if we keep choosing confusion over clarity, what exactly do we think happens next?

Conclusion: Beyond Confusion

I’ll be very honest: writing this has been super difficult. I grew up believing in a country that invested in its future, in its people, and in its promise to the world. A country that built public schools and public universities not just because it made us wealthier, but because it made us wiser. A country that funded research at our national labs, that landed rovers on Mars and vaccines in arms, because we believed knowledge was worth having even before we knew where it would lead. A country that sent food and medicine abroad not because it made us richer, but because it reminded us what kind of people we wanted to be.

And now, we find ourselves watching all that being dismantled — piece by piece with a complete lack of care for outcomes — not because it doesn’t work, but because it doesn’t fit the story some of us want to hear; or, worse because it satisfied some vengeful desire of the POTUS. National labs starved of funding. Wind and solar mocked at a time when our energy needs are unsatisfiable with fossil fuels. USAID and Voice of America gutted while authoritarian regimes fill the vacuum we leave behind. Education treated as a partisan wedge instead of a public good. And for what? To appease an isolationist wing of our politics that seems more interested in fighting culture wars than in building a future worth inheriting.

I don’t write this because I hate them — I don’t. I understand the fear that drives it, the longing to retreat into something simpler, the suspicion that someone, somewhere, is laughing at us while we foot the bill. I understand the desire to punish a system that feels distant and unaccountable. I understand it… and it still breaks my heart.

Because we are better than this. We know better than this. And deep down, I think most of us still believe that education, science, diplomacy, and leadership — the quiet tools of progress and peace — are not signs of weakness, but of strength. They are what set us apart. They are what keep the world from becoming even more chaotic, even more dangerous, even more confused.

This is still, as Genesis sang, the world we live in; and these are still the hands we’re given.

Now we must answer: what will we choose to build with them now?