 The most disturbing thing about it is that nobody seems disturbed, the most disturbing thing about the ugly, endless streets of gas stations and strip malls and this unremitting ugliness of the built environment, the most disturbing thing about that is that people are not disturbed by it. You know, and sometimes I just want to be like, hold on, like, look, look, look, I mean, this can't be right. What's, you know, and oh, you seem fine with it, you seem fine with it, everyone seems fine with it, maybe I'm the problem, maybe I'm mentally ill. That's why we need to gather like this so we can join our voices and say, yeah, the emperor's got no clothes because the way that that story works, you know, the classic story, the emperor's parading around in his imaginary finery, which is, the tailors have told them that it has a magical quality of only wise people can see it and fools cannot see it. So everybody pretends to marvel at his fine clothing until a little boy says the emperor is completely naked and that, and that breaks the spell and everybody starts chanting the emperor is completely naked and he walks back to the palace in shame, but that's not actually what happens. What actually happens is the little boy says the emperor is completely naked and everybody else who also can see that the emperor is naked, reprimand the boy for being so foolish. That's how powerful the spell is. And that's why it's so important. That's why I say sanity is a group project because that suspicion, maybe everybody else is right and I'm wrong that that is almost unbearable. It's almost impossible not to capitulate to that in subtle ways and sneak up on you without even knowing it. But when you have others who also say, yeah, emperor's got no clothes, then you can hold sanity.