“Nevertheless, almost never, with the exception of a few brief moments, did the conviction abandon me that sooner or later the absurd will fail, and this is what distinguished me from my despairing contemporaries.”[*] This can be true of you too.

Awash in a bleak mediascape, I had simply assumed that optimism had been long exiled to the realm of corny naivete, gone the way of “Live, Laugh, Loving” and #Girlbossing. So it came as a shock when my TikTok feed started filling up with posts about the “Indomitable Human Spirit.”

“Once I realized that there was no hope in any sort of normal future,” he said, “I realized that I have absolutely nothing to lose by fighting back. Because it was all going to be lost anyway.”