Anyone from a divorced family would.

The children, a boy and girl who both seem to be under 5, move between vehicles. Mom gives a friendly wave to the kids before closing the door to Dad’s car. The only fighting happens between the parents and the car seats, but only because neither adult speaks to the other during the entire interaction.

Sorry, kiddos, you think. It’ll get better after awhile. Even as a child you understood that it would have been so much worse if they stayed together, and that wisdom is exactly as useless to you now as it was back then.

The unwelcome reminder comes at a time when your system was already on very high alert. Not an hour before that moment you had just been sitting with a pastor, a veterinarian, and several people you hadn’t seen in 30 years as your mother collapsed into paroxysms of grief over the body of her last remaining dog.

You’ve had better days.

It’s hours later, just past 10, when you feel the first defenses fall.

Warning systems. Fail-safes. Firewalls. Barricades and trenches running like Maginot Lines through the circuitry of your consciousness. You’ve erected dozens of them in recent years, and every single one is designed with a singular purpose: structural stability.

Your clothes begin to itch, then they suffocate you. You not only feel but also hear the pounding of your heart. Your breathing echoes in your ears. Sensations, noises, everything is either too loud or too close.

You’ve learned a lot in recent years. You recognize this moment for what it is: overstimulation. You also understand that sometimes you can steer away from the skid, but other moments require you to steer into it.

You take a shower and blast some 80s pop. Your system immediately resets.

The next afternoon you visit your alma mater for a meet-and-greet with a candidate. So much has changed. So many buildings have been demolished. Even as a relatively recent alumnus you seem to be running out of recognizable classrooms. Nearby, in the town that abuts the campus, restaurants that you’ve never heard of have already come and gone.

The library still smells the same, though.

You walk through the main part of campus. Nostalgia fills your heart with a pungent bouquet of emotion. The memories come flowing back. You see faces without names. You think of names but can’t remember faces.

Years ago, in another life, you called this place home. A part of you thought it always would be. But campus is quiet now. Too quiet. It doesn’t feel like very long ago when the sidewalks would be packed during class change, but those days died along with all the people taken by the pandemic.

It’s this perspective, visible in a split screen that spans decades, that lays bare the invisible scars that run through our society.

You go home. You eat your favorite food. You cuddle your dogs. You watch TV. You rest, and you pledge to do better tomorrow.

The moments in which the weight of your heart exceeds the weight of the world are the moments when you need to give yourself some grace.

A lesson you learned the hard way, but one that is not easily forgotten.

It's already over, to tell you the truth. We won it on the first day.

It was over before it ever happened.

Here’s your fun fact for the day:

George Orwell never actually said this.

Yes, it’s a paraphrase of 1984’s thesis on war. Yes, the idea appears in the book, buried inside a fictional text written by a fictional author named Emmanuel Goldstein. But the quote as popularly shown was never written or spoken by Orwell himself.

You know what he did say, though?

“When I joined the militia I had promised myself to kill one Fascist. After all, if each of us killed one they would soon be extinct.”

That’s not a call to arms. It’s a line from Homage to Catalonia, his memoir of the Spanish Civil War.

In 1936, George Orwell went to Spain to fight fascism with a rifle. He arrived with idealism and a willingness to use violence, but soon found himself disillusioned. The front lines were relatively quiet. There was constant infighting among various leftist factions. Propaganda ran rampant.

“I had seen newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie.”

In the middle of 1937 he survived a sniper’s bullet through his neck. Spain soon began falling to the Fascists so he and his wife, Eileen, escaped back to England after he recovered. Orwell published Homage to Catalonia the following year.

The memoir was his sixth book, and he wrote three more before passing away at only 46 years old: Coming Up For Air, Animal Farm, and (of course) 1984.

13 years passed between the moment that a bullet exited George Orwell’s neck and the moment that he actually died. He published Animal Farm a week after the bombs fell in Japan and he wrote 1984 in a sanatorium while suffering through the final stages of a 12-year battle with tuberculosis. Orwell fought fascism to the very end, but he never again fought it with violence.

He was a man lived through the most horrifying escalation of warfare and weaponry in the modern era. The war that waged through the most critical portions of his life began with bayonets and ended with a nuclear bomb. Nevertheless, he placed his faith in the power of the written word.

A bullet can end a dictator, but words can end a dictatorship.

A knife can expose an authoritarian’s organs.

Words expose the systems that make their ascension possible.

Unfortunately, those are the parts that never seem to die.

Like a lot of people have, and a lot of others still need to do, I’ve spent some time poking around in my own head.

Adjusted a few things. Broke a few things. Fixed them again. At some point, something clicked. Or at least stopped actively breaking. The right mix of sertraline and vitamin D and cannabis and sunlight and movement keeps the fuel injecting and the pistons lubricated. Couple of knocks in the engine every now and then, but that’s not uncommon with these refurbished models.

So some quirks remain. Neural pathways that run through your prefrontal cortex like the weirdest roads in your town. The ones that don’t make sense in the modern era, but they’re still working and have been there so long that maintenance is cheaper than construction.

Neurodivergence.

Like the paradoxical yet positive correlation between my anxiety and my ability to fully express my feelings. When the former is elevated the latter is too.

Which is how I can drop the Happy Warrior facade, just this once, and tell you that I am scared.

How can you not be?

Frankly, it’s a horrible time to have even a high schooler’s understanding of history and a moderate ability to think critically.

In some way we all feel the tangible pall that has descended over our lives. Its dark tendrils can touch us in such small ways as annoying headlines heard on our morning commute, or in cataclysmic fashion where you are forced to watch the power of the state weaponized against your neighbors.

Or you.

If I ever seem aloof or even dispassionate when I share information about current events, it’s because part of me has to be. Because we all have to be. At least a little bit.

How you gonna shop for groceries if you can’t stop trying to predict how this all plays out? (One earbud in and one ear on the world. Works for me, but your mileage may vary)

So yeah. I’m scared. But I use that as motivation. I use it to push myself forward to do what I can when I can.

Our power is in our collective. If our voices already didn’t matter then they wouldn’t still, to this day, be working so hard to take them away.

I made this Substack almost 3 months ago, but at the time I couldn’t fully articulate why I did it. I had to think on it for awhile. In that interim period I’ve struggled to update as much as I’ve wanted to. It’s harder to write when you don’t know what to say.

I still don’t. And that’s the rub, isn’t it? I never will.

Not until I need to say it.

So let’s start here.

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My name is Shane Assadzandi.

Donald Trump is a fascist con man who has mashed potatoes for brains and liquified McDoubles in his veins.

Trans rights are human rights.

Abortion is not a “social issue”, it is an economic issue because rich people are always gonna be able to get them and poor folks are always gonna be at the mercy of the law.

Billionaires should not exist.

Did reading any of that piss you off? Too bad. First Amendment, snowflake. We The People means all of us.

I do not comply in advance.

I will never consent to authoritarianism.

But I exist in a world with it anyway.

The power of the state is being weaponized against the American people at an accelerating rate, but I still gotta buy groceries and put the dogs outside every couple of hours.

This Substack is an expression of my struggle with that cognitive dissonance. Reflections from an ordinary life in extraordinary times.

What I’m feeling about it. What I’m doing about it.

Dispatches from the dystopia.

If you read this and feel like we won’t get along, you are more than welcome to scroll away and go back to letting Daddy tread on you.

But if you found this essay relatable, put up your feet and stick around for awhile.

Welcome to Cognitive Dissidence.

-S

Riven sits by their bedroom window, staring out at the garden that they will soon restore with their family. It's an annual tradition, one handed down through the ages. There is no need to grow food anymore, of course. Not in a society where everyone's needs are met. But the act of doing so connects them to the traditions of their ancestors. It also gives them a way to pay tribute to Terra, the spirit of the Earth.

"Riven! Riven!"

Mirae, their younger sibling, bursts into the room. "Come on! We're going to be late for Fart Day!"

Riven sighs, but follows them anyway.

"Don't forget your wig!" Mirae says, already halfway down the hall.

Riven grabs it on the way out.

The two siblings walk with their family to the town square. Neighbors trail along, either just ahead of or just behind them. It's a joyous occasion. There is laughter. There is friendship. Everyone seems to be in a jovial mood. Almost everyone, anyway. In a world that lies centuries beyond our own, moody pre-teens still exist.

Riven knows little of the cataclysms that defined the earliest centuries of the millennium. Famines that spanned continents. Violent storms. Fuel shortages. Devastating earthquakes. A small but significant meteor strike somewhere in the late 2100s. Another global ice age. And war. So much war. Several global wars, in fact, before the calendar even turned 2100.

What finally ended the wars was not enlightenment, but exhaustion. When borders collapsed under the weight of climate migration and resource scarcity, maintaining nations became more expensive than abandoning them. Over time, the structures that rewarded hoarding and domination simply failed to function, and the ones that favored coordination endured. The world didn’t become kinder. It became constrained.

Riven is dimly aware that these things happened, but like most people their age is far more interested in toys and friends and school. The family reaches the town square. One person climbs up onto the stage and welcomes the jubilant crowd with a short speech.

Riven's mind wanders. To them, Fart Day is just another stupid holiday. A silly one. The kind of day that even a child can find to be too juvenile.

"Everybody!" cries the announcer. "Please put on your masks and wigs now!"

Riven doesn't understand the wig. It's thin, light, and wispy. It makes Riven look much older the moment it covers their head, but they wear it anyway.

Many people in the crowd put on the same hairpiece. A couple are dressed in poorly-fitting suits. Others, those who don't own either, simply wear something red.

The crowd, led by the announcer, counts down: "Three! Two! One!"

In unison, nearly 3,000 people begin blowing raspberries. With short pauses to catch their breath, they keep it up for exactly forty-seven seconds.

Nobody knows why the number forty-seven was chosen for the holiday, or why or how the quirky celebration known as Fart Day became an annual tradition. If they did, then they would know that as our international borders dissolved our languages also began to blend. Somewhere between World War V and the collapse of nearly every technological pillar of society, the American President Donald Trump became conflated with the word 'trump' in British slang. And thus, 200 years later, Fart Day was born.

After the annual Fart, the townspeople gather and mingle. Some make plans for the weekend. Others offer to help each other with household chores. Riven knows there will be things to do tonight, but is excited because the family will also have company for dinner.

As they walk home, Riven thinks about this and realizes, quietly and without ceremony, that's what Fart Day is all about.

Bringing people together so they can never be divided again.

I am a Planeswalker, and I will protect my home.

I wave my hand and call upon the wild magic that lives deep within Lorwyn’s soil. The air crackles, brimming with energy drawn from sloped forests and shallow shores alike. The ground splits open at my feet. An elemental, a swirling cloud of lightning and vapor, emerges from the depths.

The creature lets out a mighty roar and immediately explodes.

A second form, identical to the first, emerges from the smoke and lunges toward the intruder.

“Evoke Maelstrom Wanderer with Ashling’s ability. I’ll cascade twice before it ETBs. Then it’ll immediately die, but I’ll make a copy of it that doesn’t cascade and gives my creatures haste.”

I am not a Planeswalker. I’m a 37-year-old man with a beard, a belly, and a bunch of Bernie Sanders books.

This is not Lorwyn. It is my living room on a Saturday night that is rapidly approaching Sunday morning.

Mark studies his cards. He doesn’t have an answer, but he won’t die this turn. Maybe next turn. If I’m lucky.

My phone vibrates once. Twice. I glance down just long enough to see headlines before I turn it face down. A breaking news alert at 3:30 a.m. is a guaranteed vibe killer.

His turn. He draws.

It’s a board wipe. I am not lucky.

The battlefield evaporates, casting me into the Blind Eternities.

[2011]
Adam’s dorm room.

“So you play one land a turn,” he says. “Then you can tap it for mana as long as it’s still untapped.”

“And then you play a creature?”

“If you want to. You can also--”

[Present Day]
It’s Friday Night Magic. We arrive at a Lorwyn Eclipsed prerelease event.

I pull an Ajani and some great Kithkins, going 2-1 for the evening. Mark, who is attending his first prerelease, goes 3-0.

My final opponent wins a raffle for a booster box and opens some packs while I am still there. We trade cards.

The evening is FNM in one of its purest forms. Cramped. Raucous. Joyful. Veterans and newcomers shoulder to shoulder.

It snows that night, but we don’t care. We arrive at 6 and leave much closer to midnight. Those hours give us refuge from not only the storm outside, but from the heavier one that follows us everywhere now.

[Circa 2013-2014]

I am the terror of the Commander tables at Gaming Universe. 29 KOs on the leaderboard. The next highest person has 14.

Some nights I play. On others, I work. We run tournaments several nights a week. We move mountains of product. We give away so many prizes. We build something people return to, week after week.

Booster packs are 3 bucks a pop and Obama is President.

Life isn’t perfect, but sometimes it feels pretty damn good.

“What? Who has time to play Magic anymore? COVID, the elections, whole damn world’s on fire. It’s a cool game, but I don’t really do a lot of it anymore. I’ll play Commander if I know someone who has a deck. Played one of the new Ravnica prereleases a couple years back. 2018? 2019? That was a good time.

Anyway, wanna run for State Executive Comm—”

[November 15, 2014]
Grand Prix New Jersey. I attend the event to play, but I also attend to pay rent. Over the course of those 3 days I sell nearly everything.

It’s a rational decision. Shauna has just started medical school. I’m about to begin a much more stable job, but those paychecks are still months and an entire Christmas away.

I get on I-95 not long before sunset, driving home with lighter binders and pockets that feel almost as heavy as my heart.

I don’t know it yet, but 10 days earlier, the Democrats in West Virginia just lost control of the legislature for the first time in over 80 years.

[Present Day] (again)
I open my eyes.

It’s Sunday morning. Well…maybe closer to lunchtime.

I stumble out of bed, groggy but motivated to start my day. After all, it’s the last day of prerelease weekend.

We get a booster box. It’s the first one I have purchased in years.

We go home. We open packs. We play more Commander games. We watch football.

The world waits just outside the front door. But for a little while it does not get inside.

I still read the news. I still sit with what’s breaking. I still try to understand what’s being lost and who is paying for it.

But this weekend gives something back to me.

Not answers.

Energy.

-S

2,000 dead in Iran*.

Murdered by their government during the largest uprising the country has seen since 1980. My father first set foot on U.S. soil just a couple of years before that. His younger brother stayed behind. Amoo, they say in Farsi. Uncle. He still lives there today.

No Internet. No contact. Just the news. What little leaks out after communications get shut down.

In Iran, the movement is led by young people. That gives me a strange kind of comfort. I doubt my uncle, now in his late fifties or early sixties, is marching in the streets.

But Renee Nicole Good wasn’t marching either. Not that day. Not on the way back from dropping off her child at school.

“It’s alright, dude,” she told ICE officer Jonathan Ross. “I’m not mad at you.

Thirty seconds later, Renee Nicole Good was dead. Her blood stained an airbag that never had a chance to save her life.

“Fucking bitch,” Ross said, either oblivious or apathetic to the bodycam recording it all.

Elections have consequences.

Iran doesn’t really have elections.

Not like we do.

A family member messages me.

“Please use your ability to write effective pen to spread the word, they are killing people.”

Helvetica strips away the musical undertones that normally accent the edges of her sentences. What’s left is a good woman who is worried about her friends and family.

But what words exist that can adequately describe the feeling of knowing your heritage runs through two different countries where protesters are being executed in the streets?

Two regimes. Two religions.

One playbook.

After the revolution, the Ayatollah purged Western culture from Iran. Today, MAGA Republicans crusade against “woke culture,” a phrase they often repeat but never define.

Different slogans. Same instinct.

Conquer.

Assimilate.

Burn.

2,000 dead in Iran.

One person killed in Minnesota last week.

Four other protesters killed by ICE since June. Seven more injured.

Thirty-two people died in ICE custody in 2025 alone.

Humans didn’t reach the top of the food chain because we’re strong. We made it because we learned how to think together and protect each other.

Hatred always reaches for violence. It’s the tool of the oppressor, even though it runs counter to our natural evolution…and even our survival as a species.

The good news, at least for Americans, is that five deaths is not two thousand.

The bad news is that the distance between zero and five is a lot wider than the distance between six and ten. Violence tends to foment violence, which is of course exactly what both of these regimes want.

I wish I had better news for the people of Iran, for the protesters being massacred by a regime that has had forty-five years of practice oppressing its people.

May we never fall that far here in the United States of America.

Even though it kinda looks like we might.

-S

*Given how hard it is to get accurate news reporting out of Iran, there is some dispute as to the actual numbers. I’ve seen reputable outlets reporting 2,000 and other just-as-reputable outlets reporting 12,000. An Iranian official has admitted that the toll is at least 3k. I wrote the original draft of this when the headlines cited 2,000, so that’s the figure I stuck with for the final copy.

It’s a brisk morning in Virginia, one of the first of the year, as Officer Michael Fanone gets ready for what he thinks will be just another day on the job.

Fanone has been a police officer for more than twenty years. He began his career with the U.S. Capitol Police, the federal force that protects the seat of our nation’s government, before moving to the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C.

He settled in Virginia. Had a couple of kids. In 2016, he even voted for Trump.

Another day, another heroin bust.

Then he hears the radio code.

“10-33. Officer in need.” A distress call.

Michael Fanone drops what he’s doing and races toward the United States Capitol.

Because today is not just another day.

It’s January 6, 2021.

Miles away, Daniel Rodriguez has already arrived in D.C.

Rodriguez, a man in his mid-thirties from California, is deeply devoted to President Donald Trump. When Trump calls on his supporters to gather outside the Capitol, Rodriguez answers.

After the rally, Rodriguez joins the crowd that marches toward, and eventually storms, the U.S. Capitol. On the steps near the Lower West Terrace tunnel, he and the mob collide with a line of police struggling to hold ground.

By mid-afternoon, the city is already in crisis. Pipe bombs are discovered outside both the Democratic and Republican National Committee headquarters. Police identify a Trump supporter’s truck packed with guns and eleven jars of gasoline. The original breach point at Peace Circle is overrun.

Police forces are stretched thin. Too thin.

And the Lower West Terrace tunnel becomes one of the most violent flashpoints of the day.

The clash lasts for more than an hour.

Michael Fanone arrives in D.C. He puts on riot gear and joins other officers. He can’t believe what he’s seeing, but he does the job anyway.

A commanding officer shouts, “We need fresh guys!”

Fanone steps forward to relieve a colleague who has grown exhausted.

The line buckles. Pressed by the crowd, Fanone loses his baton. Arms wrap around his neck.

“I got one!” he hears his attacker yell.

The world starts to go dark.

On the other side of the chaos, Daniel Rodriguez calls out:

“We need tasers!”

Later, in federal custody, Rodriguez says he never thought someone would hand him a weapon. He claims that he expected others who had them to move forward and use them.

But someone hands him a stun gun.

At that moment, another rioter drags a fallen officer into the crowd. Fists and boots rain down.

And Daniel Rodriguez presses the stun gun into the back of Officer Fanone’s neck.

Twice.

That moment happened five years ago today.

Michael Fanone survived. Other officers pulled him from the mob and rushed him to a hospital. He suffered a concussion. He suffered a heart attack. He lived.

But January 6 ended his career all the same. He officially retired from the Metropolitan Police Department in October 2022. The day he was dragged into a violent mob, however, was his last day as a street cop.

Daniel Rodriguez made it into the Capitol. Inside, he vandalized offices, ransacked rooms, smashed windows, and stole what he could. He was arrested nearly three months later.

In interrogation footage later aired publicly, Rodriguez breaks down. “I’m so stupid,” he says between sobs. “I thought I was gonna be awesome. I thought I was gonna be a good guy.”

Court records later show that Rodriguez had organized a Telegram group chat called “PATRIOTS45MAGA Gang” in late 2020. The group had been used to plan premeditated acts of violence.

In June 2023, Daniel Rodriguez was sentenced to 151 months (12 1/2 years) in federal prison.

On the afternoon of January 20, 2025, just hours after his inauguration, President Donald Trump pardoned Daniel Rodriguez along with roughly 1,500 other January 6 rioters. Hundreds of them had been convicted of violent crimes.

That same evening, Michael Fanone appeared on Anderson Cooper 360.

“I have been betrayed by my country,” he said. “Rest assured, I have been betrayed by my country and by those who supported Donald Trump. Tonight, six individuals who assaulted me as I did my job on January 6, as did hundreds of other law enforcement officers, will now walk free.”

More than 140 police officers were injured that day. Fanone was one of them. But in some ways, you could argue that he got lucky.

Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick suffered two strokes as a result of his injuries and died the next day.

Three days later, Officer Howard Liebengood died by suicide.

Five days after that, D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith also died by suicide.

All three are classified as line-of-duty deaths.

Not because they fell in battle overseas. But because their own country broke faith with the people who stood between it and the mob.

That’s what betrayal looks like.

Donald Trump calls January 6 “a day of love.”

But love doesn’t look like abandoning the people who protected our seat of government from a violent insurrection.

Love doesn’t turn violence into virtue.

And it sure as hell doesn’t look like betrayal masquerading as patriotism.

-S

Out of bed? Out of your chair? Off of the couch?

Yes.

You know the protocols. You've practiced them dozens of times. Usually successfully.

It is 11:46 when you throw on a sweater that is almost comically oversized. Maybe very comically oversized with the right percentage of limonene.

It's 11:48 when you pour yourself a fresh glass of water.

11:49 when you find the candle.

You leave the kitchen and scurry back to your bed or chair or couch. You can't help but feel a little bit like a woodland critter that just scampered out of its den to forage for resources before quickly returning to safety. A blanket. An emotional support water bottle. One of your favorite soundtracks for a late-night lesson. Life is good at 11:51 pm.

At 11:54 you return from your second trip to the kitchen. You forgot the lighter, and while there are others that one was your favorite. While you were there you added a can of ginger ale to your cache. Sure, it's the dead of night in the dead of winter. A chilly Tuesday evening with 7 inches of snow on the ground. Even so...hibernating critters deserve treats, too.

It's 11:58 when you finally feel better. Still pissed, though. The front page of Politico looks like they got hacked by The Onion. But that's just every day now.

You've gotten better at conquering the aversive stimuli. Not great, necessarily. But better. We're all just doing our best anyway, right?

You take a breath. Then another. A third.

The aroma of bergamot and (somehow) flannel fill the room. One of your favorite albums of all time fills your ears. The headphones are sound-cancelling, too!

The winds outside your window are roaring. An arctic blast is blanketing the nation with freezing temperatures and wind chills, even taking some areas in places like Florida down to 20 degrees. And people still don't think that when you fight with nature sometimes it decides to fight back. Idiots.

11:59 pm. Almost exactly a minute until there is but one day left in the year. One more day. Just one more day.

And here you sit, steadying yourself against what you know will be a year that brings raging storms, both literal and metaphorical, unlike any that you or many people you know have seen in their lifetimes.

One more deep breath.

At midnight, you type the first words that appear on your screen...

”It is 11:45 pm when you feel the uncontrollable urge to stand up."

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