prologue.
JULY 12, 2017.
New York City, New York.
Any production of Stephen Sondheim’s work feels like an event in this town. But this particular show, at this particular time, is destined to draw unusual attention.
On paper, Sondheim and John Weidman’s Assassins seems dubious material for a musical revue: a string of vignettes starring people who tried to, and in some cases did, murder American presidents. But this particular presentation of the musical featuring president-killers is opening seven months into the first term of the most hated American president of my lifetime.
I’m watching the opening number from off-stage left. Even here, hidden in the cold, safe dark of the wings, I feel the electricity of the nearly 3,000 New Yorkers who’ve stacked themselves into Manhattan’s City Center, right next door to Carnegie Hall.
I’m working alongside some of the top talent in the city, playing a character called The Balladeer. It’s a perfect featured role: pop in now and again to crush some outstanding showtunes, the leads handle the heavy drama. Been one of the busiest actors in the City lately—I could use a “break.”
Opening sequence is almost over, which means I’m on deck. My excitement overrides my terror. I sense that whatever happens will be extraordinary. I’m unprepared for just how “extraordinary” things will get.
“Sic semper tyrannis!”
John Wilkes Booth’s line echoes over the orchestra’s ominous discord. It’s my cue to come on. I wonder if the sound guy hears my heart thundering through the lav taped to my temple.
I hit my mark, glow-taped in the dark. My spot comes up. Before me I vaguely spy an ocean of people stacked high toward the back of the house. This is my office.
A guitar strum cues me to sing:
Someone tell the story.
Someone sing a song.
Every now and then
The country goes a little…
Wrong.
Normally this lyric would garner little reaction. Everyone knows things go bad from time to time. But tonight, for 3,000 New Yorkers reeling from the shock of Trump’s ascension, the impact is volcanic.
Peals of laughter explode into prolonged cheers and whistles. One wave cascades into another. There’s nothing but to wait. Barely ten minutes into the presentation, the show has stopped cold.
The instant the energy dips I draw in breath for the next phrase, signaling to audience and conductor that we’re moving on:
Every now and then,
A mad man’s bound to come along!
The lyric is, of course, about people who choose to kill presidents. But everyone in the venue has only one guy in mind. The roars reignite. We have to stop again.
I see what’s going on. Best to address the orange elephant in the office with us. To calm the clamor I lean into the microphone and offer an ad-lib:
“I know.”
ROARRRRRRRRRR!
Shit.
Definitely getting a note for this.
But who cares?
Seven years ago my first speaking role on a New York stage was right here. I was full of angst and despair. Before shows I’d gaze out and up into the empty seats and wonder if I belonged on that stage. On any stage.
Now I’m charming an audience of 3,000 jaded New Yorkers.
I’ve never felt more alive.
“I wish Clifton Duncan was on Twitter so I could tell him that Bernadette Peters laughed at something he did!” – random tweet
Unfortunately, I am on Twitter. I’m in my dressing room, avoiding the post-show pandemonium. After performances I prefer vanishing into the mist to socializing. But it’s opening night: there are step-and-repeats and handshakes-and-huzzahs to attend to. And I am not not meeting Bernadette Peters.
Pushing through the lobby I beeline for the bar. As I’m handed a Sprite I sense an older gentleman to my immediate right. I know him instantly before fully seeing him. Before I can catch myself, I—
“STEPHEN!!”
I worry I’ve frightened him—
”Hmmmm?…Oh!…OH! HEY!”
—but he seems as excited to meet me as I him, which my mind can’t accept:
This man has worked with every Broadway star since Ethel Merman.
This man has won every distinction there is to to have won.
This man is the most revered man in the American theatre.
This man is Stephen Sondheim.
I feel no nerves. I don’t even register any awe. Just pure, unabashed joy. Our exchange is wholesome and effusive. Eventually he rasps—
“I’m a bit embarrassed to ask, but...do you have an album?”
“….uh, no…?! I don’t, sadly.”
“Ah, well. I’d listen to fourteen songs if they were sung by you.”
In a few weeks I start rehearsals for my first Broadway show. Now the titan of the musical theatre is telling me I should drop an album.
All these years. All the heartache. All the sacrifice and struggle. All the indignity and uncertainty and instability. All of it worth being in this city, in this spot, in this moment right now.
Things are finally falling into place.
SEPTEMBER, 2026.
Atlanta, Georgia.
Glad to be in Atlanta. Easy to get a gun.
Surprised how good I feel. Guess there’s some peace in knowing what to do. Sketched the plan on the phone:
- Get anything that’s broken repaired
- Get a deep-clean for the apartment
- Draft the appropriate texts, emails and DMs
- Donate clothes, books and electronics
- Dress nicely and go to Piedmont Park
- Find an out of the way bench to sit on
- Call 911, inform them of location
- Still your mind
Haven’t been sober in six weeks. Haven’t bathed. The stink from my genitals is worse each day. No dental hygiene either. My gums are whiter than my teeth.
Can’t get out of bed. Can’t remember last time I changed clothes. Can’t remember anything other than what I don’t want to.
Two months’ worth of shed dead skin on the sheets. Looks like a blacktop salted before a blizzard. Sometimes I fall asleep—pass out—between 8 or 9pm. Wake up at midnight. Don’t go back to sleep. Sometimes I don’t sleep.
Sense of time eroding.
Speaking ability eroding.
Mind slowing.
But ‘slowing’ is far from ‘stopping’:
YOU COULD’VE BEEN SOMEBODY YOU RUINED YOUR LIFE FOR NOTHING YOU WASTED YOUR PRIME FOR NOTHING NOW YOU’RE A MIDDLE-AGED FAILURE YOU COULD’VE BEEN SUCCESSFUL YOU HAD EVERYTHING YOU WANTED AND YOU FOUND A WAY TO FUCK IT UP NOW YOU’RE A PATHETIC PIECE OF SHIT YOU HAD EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING GOING YOUR WAY AND YOU FUCKED IT UP YOU FUCKED IT UP YOU FUCKED UP YOU FUCKED IT UP YOU FUCKED IT ALL UP
Endless. Drugs don’t work anymore. But that’s fine. I’m finally going to make it stop.
Almost had a great life.
Should’ve kept my mouth shut.
“Woke 1 Was Crazzzzy!”
In a recent interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was pressed about some of Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong’s more radical past positions.
Here is the relevant transcript (emphasis mine):
KARL: So, you have Wisconsin coming up next. Francesca Hong, who is the Democratic Socialist of America supported candidate for governor.
Are you — you haven’t endorsed her. Are you going to?
OCASIO-CORTEZ: No, I haven’t endorsed in that race.
…
KARL: What do you make of those controversial statements? I’m sure you’ve seen. I mean, she’s — you know, the Thanksgiving dust-up.
OCASIO-CORTEZ: Uh-huh.
KARL: She says she doesn’t, you know, still believe that. But, you know, the abolished prisons, abolished police.
…
OCASIO-CORTEZ: My understanding is that — is that Francesca Hong has made clear her present stances to her electorate.
KARL: Yeah, she’s moved away from a lot of that.
OCASIO-CORTEZ: Right, she’s moved away from it. And I have a local city councilman that —
KARL: Yeah.
OCASIO-CORTEZ: — has this saying, woke one was crazy.
(LAUGHTER)
KARL: Woke one was crazy.
”Woke 1 was crazzzzy, Madame President,” tweeted New York city councilman Chi Osse, amplifying what became a popular pull quote from the clip. Thus came a thousand posts and think pieces about “Woke 1.”
Many smart people have devised technical definitions of “Woke.” Some mishmash of Marxian philosophy and post-modernism and Critical Theory and so on. But for the faithful it’s uncomplicated: you’re either “Awake” to the world’s suffering or you’re a fascist. What the smart people miss, even in cliché analogizing of “Wokeness” to religion: it’s as much a state of being as it is a political philosophy. The modern progressive isn’t just better than the broken and backward society in which she’s been cursed to live—she is literally operating on a higher level of consciousness.
She is unaware this presumed state of enlightenment makes her no different from her “Red Pilled” right-wing nemesis. Both believe themselves uniquely “enlightened” possessors of dangerous truths. But Red Pilled Rodrigo is ghettoized within “Alternative Media,” while Bluegeois Becky controls vital cultural machinery. Put another way: the Red Piller’s conspiracy theories are debunked by the New York Times, while the Bluegeoisie’s spend years dominating its front pages.
We attend schools governed by bluegeois administrators and bluegeois unionists, are taught by bluegeois teachers who themselves had bluegeois university professors, patronize bluegeois cultural institutions gatekept by bluegeois artists, and have our news filtered by bluegeois journalists who answer to bluegeois editors—all while engaging via tech platforms based in San Francisco. While unfair to call these institutions “temples of worship,” their devolution over the past decade into entities dedicated to embodying (and transmitting) a specific, sacred doctrine of beliefs that one risks excommunication for violating is unmistakable1.
The minority who flock to and thrive within these institutions know they enjoy tremendous control over Overton’s Window. It only takes a handful of teachers, techies, journalists and artists to corner the market on public perception—to forge, in effect, a “Reality Cartel” where their truth becomes THE truth, and collective confirmation bias soon redefines “educated” as “aligned with bluegeois educators,” “informed” as “agrees with bluegeois journalists,” and “Belief in Science” as “ignoring all evidence incongruent with bluegeois ‘consensus’.” Ours, then, is a society ripped from an Havelian essay, where “Reality” is can be defined as “that which is most expedient for the bluegeoisie at that particular moment.” The ultimate impact is that survival in public life hinges on how adept one is at not offending liberals and leftists.
This is what the “cancellations” that came to define “Woke I” really mean in popular usage—defying the bluegeois conception of reality. The disingenuous claim that it is “Consequence Culture” is only half correct: to be “cancelled” is not karmic retribution for being an irredeemably terrible person, but punishment for being insufficiently left-wing. Yet given my firsthand experience, I’d characterize of the treatment by leftists of perceived political opponents in starker light:
If Bluegeois Becky learns that you are not among the enlightened, she’ll neither date nor marry you; she won’t want you in her family; she’ll refuse to hire you; she’ll even refuse to rent to “your kind”. If ever you challenge her presumed supremacy you risk the wrath of a vicious, even bloodthirsty mob who will stop at nothing to exact punishment. She will feel justified in treating you this way, as in her eyes you’re barely human, and society would be much better if “your kind” weren’t around. In this light “Cancellation” at the behest of liberals and leftists is too polite a term. A more fitting one is “Niggerization.”
Once tarred as a nigger the stain never washes off. Once a nigger, always a nigger. There’s no way to “pass.” Becky wouldn’t dare associate with a nigger, even if they were once a close friend, even if they’re family. And why would she keep such a thing around? If linked with you in anyway she risks contamination as a traitor to her own. The trendy term is “Far Right-adjacent,” but “Nigger Lover” captures the character of the accusation more accurately.
Hence the paradox of the past few years of my life: allegedly racist Republicans never niggerized me over my (correct) positions on COVID. The “Far Right” won’t dig up past podcasts and use them as a means to re-destroy my career. MAGA isn’t lying to prospective employers by claiming I’m “difficult to work with” or that I’d “cause tension” by being in the room. It is not “Around Blacks, Never Relax” Fuentesians claiming my presence would disturb them; it is antiracist progressives claiming I’m too dangerous to have around. In four decades of life as a black man—which include formative years spent in Europe, and performing all over America as an actor—the only discrimination I’ve ever faced is currently coming from people who’d have been kissing my feet in June 2020.
Of course, the primary rebuttal to my analogy is that it fails because one can’t choose their race the way they can adopt or discard a vision. By pointing out the analogy’s incongruency critics are both beside the point and proof of it: their primary problem is with the analogy, but not with treating people like niggers.
interlude.
JULY 2026.
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA.
On a panel at an event called FreedomFest. Sitting between Dean Cain and Rob Schneider.
We’re on the well-worn topic of ideological bigotry in the entertainment industry. Sadly I’m an authority on the subject.
In 2020 I denounced COVID policy and the entertainment industry’s self-destructive approach to it. I also became vocal critic of left-wing identity politics, and a host of other dogmas sacred to their side of the spectrum.
My online following began to explode. It was the beginning of the end.
In addition to landing on shows like Triggernometry, TimcastIRL and The Dr. Drew Show I created a podcast where I interviewed many “cancelled” artists: ex-The Mandalorian star Gina Carano and ex-Mumford and Sons musician Winston Marshall; popular “Anti-Woke” YouTubers such as Will “Critical Drinker” Jordan and Gary “Nerdrotic” Boechler; controversial conservatives such as Heather Mac Donald and Douglas Murray.
That’s why today I’m in a hotel ballroom in the middle of a desert, sitting on a stage between Superman and Deuce Bigelow.
At one point Rob pointedly asks me “Don’t you feel empowered now?”
Many among The Cancelled have an “Everything in My Life Improved Afterward” story. The quality of people in their lives improved; they finally feel free to be themselves; they’ve learned who their real friends are, etc.
I feel no newfound sense of freedom. Just a gaping wound where an identity used to be.
“No, actually, I’ve been quite depressed,” I quip, drawing intended laughter from the audience. I make a brief point about having one’s reason for being stripped away. I spare everyone the extent of my true feelings:
Resentment at being a middle-aged Almost-Was; self-loathing for sabotaging a prosperous future; disgust for wallowing in self-pity; shame for being unable to move on; fury toward those who contact me privately to cheer me on from the security of their unshattered lives.
Dave Chappelle once said “taking a man’s livelihood from him is akin to killing him.” Nine days out of ten I’m a dead man walking.
IT NEVER DIED.
In the wake of Kamala Harris’ 2024 election defeat, non-leftist politicos rejoiced in the supposed “Death” of “Woke.” This was always absurd, a “Luxury Belief” plausible only to those safely outside the fallout zone. They can scarcely define what “Woke” means, how do they know it’s dead? What intelligent person could believe that such a sweeping, morally compelling, socially advantageous, radically romantic vision built on centuries-old ideals could be vanquished by a single election? To wit:
Broadway star Laura Osnes was niggerized in 2020 for not taking the COVID shot, and is still not being welcomed back.
Conservative musician James Zimmermann is suing the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra for a naked attempt at blackballing.
Veteran GI Joe voice actor Mary McDonald-Lewis was chased out of Portland, Oregon and continues to be hounded by gender activists.
In September 2026 actor Geno Segers was forced out of Broadway’s Hadestown after past gender-critical statements “resurfaced.”
A month later the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers fired a commentator on his first day after racially insensitive tweets from 13 years ago “resurfaced”—posted when the cancellee was 15.
Yet when I share misgivings about my professional safety if I decide return to show business, I’m met with skepticism by those still in it. They are sorry about what’s happened but wonder if I’m truly still on a blacklist, and how long could that last, really? I’m told that if I truly wanted to be back in New York City and return to Broadway, and star in TV and films alongside other top talents of my generation, I’d just be there. Sure my past content/views might cost me some work (should it cost me any?), but I’m just being paranoid, they say, making up a story and framing myself as a victim, they claim, and caring too much what others think2. I’ve got the chops, I’ve got the credits, they say. I’m standing in my own way!
I’ve been on popular right-leaning shows, created what essentially became an “Anti-Woke” podcast, and have written thousands of words directly attacking some of liberals’ and progressives’ most cherished dogmas. Were I ever to re-integrate into show business, how long before some malicious cunt decides to incite a mob by “resurfacing” my past statements? Is it “paranoia” for niggers to be wary of lynching?
The Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezes of the world are free to wave “Woke 1” away. It was “crazy,” she chuckles. In her continued distancing from past extremism she admits a “huge opening” of the Overton Window (spoken with a practiced detachment that belies any involvement in its opening) and confesses that “rhetoric [used during lockdowns] is not rhetoric we would use today.” Yet the impacts of that rhetoric and the vision that inspired it live on.
If “Woke” died tomorrow we’d still be left with an enervated entertainment industry, poisoned school curricula, disintegrating gender relations, declining tolerance for sexual minorities, failing states and doom-looping cities, collapsing trust in once-credible institutions, the unknowable number of lives, families and futures denied or destroyed via polarization, and a post-Kirkian reality where non-leftists are now aware they may be shot through the neck as punishment for heresy. To borrow from Thomas Sowell, “Civilization has been aptly called ‘a thin crust over a volcano3,” and the entire aim of the progressive project is to deconstruct, dismantle and destroy that barrier.
The AOCs of the world are allowed to distance themselves from any hand in creating these circumstances. Now that the Democrats have crushed the Republicans in the 2026 midterms, will the bluegeoisie be magnanimous in victory? Will everyone who engaged in “rhetoric they might not use today” be allowed to walk away from their pasts? Will normalcy make a comeback? Can it, after a decade of treating half the population like niggers?
History is a useful guide for future behavior. Neither Democrats nor Progressives have a great track record, in that light, regarding their treatment of niggers.
epilogue.
NOVEMBER, 2026.
“It’s been almost seven years and you’re still living like you’re in ‘lockdown’.”
Sven isn’t pulling his punches. Good.
Our conversations are often spirited. Sometimes argumentative. He understands masculine psychology. Doesn’t treat it like a cancer. He’s refreshingly Based. That’s why I chose him as a therapist4.
My last one dropped me because I didn’t get the shot. We weren’t even meeting in person.
Sven has a theory that millions around the world have psychologically and emotionally never exited COVID lockdowns. Everyone feels that something unaddressed has been “off” since 2020. Maybe he’s right.
“Are you still isolating?”
For two months I didn’t respond to anything. Emails, DMs, text messages. Didn’t see the point. Hadn’t planned on being around.
But slowly, I’ve been reconnecting with old colleagues. People who knew me before the madness. All are compassionate. All encourage me not to compromise my values. All encourage me to keep speaking out. To stay true to myself.
And I am. Revisiting art: new music from Talib Kweli and Kanye West; morning tea backed by Bill Evans; fresh soundscapes via Jhene Aiko; broken sleep filled with Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Tourneur’s Revenger’s Tragedy. Might even return to drawing, a discipline I once thought would be my career.
“Stop defining yourself by what’s happened. Stop talking about it. You have to move on. The rest of the world has.”
He’s telling me what I need to hear. What’s done is done. Your old life is dead. The old world is dead. The old you is dead. Time to move on.
No one gives a shit anyway. It is what it is.
“How’s the Sowell play coming along?”
In 2024 I pitched the idea of a one-man show about Thomas Sowell to IndieGogo. The campaign took off. In 2025 I settled on a concept and began writing. In 2026 I had two public presentations that went well. I have a vision for 2027 and ‘28. “If nothing else I gotta finish this before offing myself,” I think.
I don’t share my gallows humor with Sven.
“The beard’s looking good!” he says.
It’s true. The sable and silver work well.
I’m back in the gym. Now that I’ve finally figured out how to fix my twisted pelvis I can barbell squat without fear. I feel my body is mine again. I feel myself getting strong again. I can finally walk tall again.
I’ve learned some tough lessons:
Dwelling in the past is deadly.
Protect your reputation at all costs.
The Just-World Hypothesis is a fallacy.
That which is given can just as easily be taken.
Men DO go mad in herds and recover one by one.
A crucial one:
Never let your enemies see you bleed.
But there’s new knowledge, too.
People are creating great art all over the world.
The “Doomers” shrieking that “Art is Dead,” that “Beauty is Dead!” and that “Everything’s Too Woke!” are content creators, but not culture creators. Complaining about everything, contributing nothing.
I can’t do that anymore.
The institutions may be in terminal decline, but Artists are still thriving. I will focus on them. Returning to my roots.
Scrolling Twitter I find a quote that jumps out at me, from Epictetus. It stays with me:
“The man who can walk away from what he desires for the sake of what he must become is a man no one can own.”
Returning to the example of the New York Times, both Bari Weiss and former editorial page editor James Bennett were forced to leave the paper for ideological reasons. Professor Roland Fryer was ousted from Harvard after research data clashed with prevailing beliefs about racial bias in policing.
This is far from a bizarre concern in an industry where reputation and relationships are essential.
From The Vision of the Anointed (Basic Books, 1995).
If you’re in need of help, I recommend checking out the Open Therapy Institute.
I’ve been following you for about seven years… six? This is extremely painful to read but of course it is understandable. Thank you for being here and please STAY. Thank you for your bravery and your clarity.
I'm so deeply and profoundly moved by this essay. This is such a nightmare we're living through.