Base and Superstructure

Alienation, autonomy, and ideology

Category: Culture (Page 1 of 23)

These are posts on culture from the blog Base and Superstructure. Mostly the focus is on American culture. But there might be a few posts on broader, international issues.

This is a map of all 50 states of the United States with traditional Big 10 college towns and their states highlighted in blue (Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania) or green (Nebraska).

Iowa City vs. Bloomington

May 18, 2026 / / 0 Comments

After last week’s post on the changes in Iowa City, I wanted to compare Iowa City to another college town. And since I used to live in Bloomington, Indiana, that’s my choice!

When I moved to Iowa City (from Bloomington) in August 2007, I saw Iowa City as a bit of a step down. Bloomington felt like a slightly larger city with a slightly larger university in a slightly larger state. I thought I would spend a few years in Iowa City before moving on to a larger city.

On top of this, I saw Bloomington through rose-colored lenses. Hailing from the middle of nowhere in rural southern Indiana, Bloomington stood out to me as an oasis in a barren wasteland. Surely Iowa City couldn’t match any of that.

But 20 years later, I’ve reconsidered my views on all of this. Maybe Bloomington isn’t quite the place I saw as an 18 year old. And perhaps Iowa City can more than hold its own.

Continue reading

This is a photo of professional wrestler Hulk Hogan speaking in front of a Trump Vance sign, designed as a representation of the kayfabe presidency.

The Kayfabe Presidency

April 20, 2026 / / 0 Comments

We have no shortage of comparisons and metaphors for the Trump presidency! Let’s see how professional wrestling and kayfabe fit into that picture.

Many of these metaphors stem from the Great Fascism Debate, which I joined for some time before swearing it off. Among other problems, the “Trump as Hitler” and “Trump as Mussolini” move is lazy. Even worse, it commits the sin of lack of imagination.

But I’ve flirted with several comparisons myself. Entering the 2016 race as a media mogul using right-wing populism and a kayfabe personality to climb to the top, Trump looked remarkably similar to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

More interestingly, I compared Trump to trash TV character Al Bundy from Married with Children.

How’d that go? Bundy was a roughly middle class guy in suburban Chicago, so he’s not like Trump in terms of job or income. Rather, Bundy personified the Trump voter. He aired white male grievances at a variety of targets – a feminist neighbor, a woman boss, a Latina TV anchor, and so on.

However, these metaphors have all become tired. With that in mind, let’s return to that earlier word ‘kayfabe.’ Maybe it can offer us new clues.

Continue reading

Sci-Fi and LLMs

March 23, 2026 / / 0 Comments

I recently re-read Cal, one of Isaac Asimov’s final short stories. It was published in the 1995 collection Gold, which is a hit-or-miss collection of unpublished Asimov stories sitting around near the end of his life, paired with essays on sci-fi as a genre and writing as a practice.

That’s enough by way of an intro. Here’s the point: In the story, Asimov lays out a scenario involving a robot that learns how to write. As the robot becomes more complex, its writing becomes better than the writing of its master. The master worries that the robot will come to overshadow him. In response, he calls a technician to dumb down the robot’s programming.

This produces a crisis in the first law of robotics.

Sound familiar?

Continue reading

« Older posts

© 2026 Base and Superstructure

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑