Subway Sovereignty: Why Your Paperback Is A Tactical Weapon In 'The Rebellion'

While the world scrolls toward despair, I’m sleeping with dead presidents and Nazi children. Here’s why you should join the insurgency.

Image by Thought Catalog from Pixabay

Last year on the subway I was reading The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.

I held the ‘Okay grandma’ large clunky hardback edition.

I noticed the young man opposite was looking at the cover. He looked exactly the age of its subjects, Gen Z. He stared, eyebrows slightly knit.

I smiled behind my book, hoping my subversive declaration of intellectual sovereignty encouraged him to read it. (You may owe me a beer, Jonathan Haidt!)

Support Local Bookstores: You can find the titles mentioned in this post on my Grow Some Labia page. Every purchase supports independent booksellers (and this newsletter!).

The beauty of reading dead-tree books in public is so others can see what you’re reading. My titles alone will make the woke-comfortable squirm, and perhaps encourage the Silent Exhausted Majority to track them down. It sends a message from The Cognitive Resistance: I’m not a mindless consumer of the Attention Economy. I read books that challenge me, that require more than 5-10 seconds of attention.

Even when I’m reading an e-book, you can tell I’m not doomscrolling: I stare and swipe. My thumb isn’t in constant motion.

Reading isn’t just a hobby, it’s a rebellious act of intellectual sovereignty.

The “Pro-Vaxxer” of the Mind

I have a greater immunity to anxiety, outrage, and Trump Derangement Syndrome than the Doomscrollers of Despair I wrote about last year.

I read. A lot. I read hundreds of Substack’s long-form essays and bang through 12-15 books annually. When I was in college I counted 70 books in one year, only a fraction of which were required, and I did read those, except Anna Karenina which was simply too unfocused and boring.

Doomscrolling-filtered, highly biased, questionably- or badly-sourced ‘information’ has led us to where we are: Everyone hates each other, it’s okay to murder your enemies; we’re not having sex; we scream about billionaires after putting a billionaire retarded toddler back in charge of the most powerful country in the world, and no one in America thinks it’s their fault.

As if the manchild and the knuckle-draggers in Congress just wandered in and took those chairs.

I view politics as surmountable, rather than insurmountable problems because I read.

Books are like drugs or The Force: They can be used for good or evil.

Subvert the dominant paradigm! Embrace cognitive liberty! Weaponize your brain against the Agents of Algorithms, for whom it’s in their best interests to keep you scrolling, outraged, and dangerously stupid.

Treat books not as an escape—eventually you have to sober up, or stop to make dinner, where reality awaits—but as an escape from The Mucktrix.

Because when you finish a good book or a really killer longform essay, you feel better. More empowered. Even if all you scroll is silly animal videos and people making cooking mistakes, it’s harmless, but then you realized you pissed three hours away. At worst, you want to kill yourself or someone else—maybe both.

When I finish a book, or an idea-packed longform essay, I feel like I’ve accomplished something. I feel better about myself. I feel smarter.

I’m a reading pro-vaxxer! I believe everyone should vaccinate themselves against the Despots of Doom by refusing to consume their mental garbage.

But I wouldn’t, like, force you into a library and chain you to a chair in front of an open book. I’m not a booknazi.

I know. You ‘can’t focus’ long enough to read a book. Bear with me.

The dangerous people I’m sleeping with

(Ha! You kept reading because of that provocative subtitle!)

I just started sleeping with Matt Ridley. (Don’t tell his wife! In fact, don’t tell him!) He’s the author of The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge.

His book makes me think, to see past, present, and future slightly differently.

Here’s something creepy: I’ll be sleeping with Hitler’s children after I’ve had my way with Matt and tossed him on my Mighty Bookshelf O’ Subversion.

I know, Hitler thankfully blew himself off this mortal coil without leaving any bad seed behind. Hitler’s Children is a book by Gerald Posner detailing the children and grandchildren of leading Nazi figures, including how they dealt with their ancestral legacies.

And after that? I’ll be sleeping with a DEAD GUY! Thomas Jefferson! I slept with his dead friend last year, Benjamin Franklin. It was electric! (Ar ar!)

I read in bed, obviously. Just before lights out and, in the morning before breakfast, on the weekends. And always on the subway! Heaven!

Reading is for rebels, not for bland conformists who believe everything their algos tell them to. It’s taking the time to sit down and focus for more than a few seconds and think about what you’re absorbing. It sometimes takes me a long time to get through a normal-length book because it makes me think so much I have to stop and think some more. Or I put it down to Google questions it just brought up. James Lindsay’s and Helen Pluckrose’s book Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody was one of them.

So was Becoming a few years ago when I was sleeping with Michelle Obama. (Yes, I’m bitextual!)

Heterodox thinking is badass. I want to better understand the people I don’t like (wokies, Trumpies, Islamofascists, etc.) as well as ask other points of view. I started subscribing to the right-leaning The Bulwark a few months ago, and found that the conservative columnist Mona Charen, who I hated with every fiber of my being thirty-five years ago, is now my sister-in arms against crazy Trumpism!

Intellectual sovereignty means asking yourself what those people you hate the most believe in, and why. It teaches me not to ass-u-me I already know.

Heterodox thinking is the most effective reduction in Attention Economy-induced negative outlook. When you look for or listen to other viewpoints, you often get a takeaway or two even if you still don’t agree with the thesis. Viewpoint diversity is The Rebellion. It’s digital inoculation against nihilistic extremism.

An hour before I sat down to begin banging out this article, I read one by Eva Kurilova, Contending With The Dark Nights Of The Soul. She pours out the dark stretches of depression plaguing her life, and how she found respite in books.

I’m a ‘Five Percenter!’

Here’s something interesting: When I asked Google Gemini what percentage of Substackers actively write, it claimed roughly 5% or less were active publishers. Further, that 44% of publishers ‘ghost out’ after three posts, never publishing again. It also claims many joined for Notes, possibly as an alternative to X and Bluesky, the respective right-wing and left-wing shitholes of humanity.

When I asked (because I know you will, you little heterodox insurgent!) where Gemini got its information, it responded, “…by triangulating current platform data (April 2026), industry reports from analysts like Backlinko and Exploding Topics, and Substack’s own growth updates for the first quarter of 2026.”

You join Substack for two reasons: Either you love to read, love to write, or both. Substack, with its allergy to censorship, supports others who also subvert the dominant paradigm.

Substack is the ‘Tactile Tap’. Social media is the ‘Infinite Scroll’.

One is a treadmill, the other a destination. Treadmills are better for building bodies rather than minds.

Soul Therapy: Beyond the “Woke” Filter

I don’t read much fiction, and when I do, it’s older. Today’s pap is too ‘woke’ and ‘preachy’. Or just—not really good. I bought a novel last year on a lark about a house sort of haunted by puppets and the brother and sister inheriting it who’ve never gotten along. It was—okay. But not very fulfilling.

At least it didn’t tell me how to think or feel about Indigenous, Pride, racial, gender, or other political issues. The back cover blurb made it clear what to expect, which few books I pick up in a bookstore can. “K’taelrylny-thyn, the stunning pseudointrapolyhedrasexual with creative pronouns to match every single permutation of feeling ghi has,” invokes a gravity attack that lands it back on the table.

I read almost entirely non-fiction. I keep a ‘wish list’ on Amazon, but I buy locally.

Heads up: “King Dork” is one of the funniest novels I’ve ever read. If you lived through the ‘80s, and especially if you were or knew a bullied teenage boy who dreamed with his equally dorky friend of becoming a rock star, this is the novel for you! Bonus: It makes wicked fun of Catcher in the Rye if, like me, you don’t get what the big deal is about it. And yes, that’s an old Kobo reader. Not to mention an appalling collection of shot glasses.

I read to inoculate myself against my own brain. I keep up on the news, without falling into the dirty laundry basket. I read outside the idiot box. Idle, unchallenged neural synapses are the devil’s workshop.

The Sovereignty Protocol (How to Take Back Your Power and Start A Revolution)

If you have trouble focusing, remember: You’ve been trained not to. The Mucktrix abhors People Who Concentrate.

If you’re not used to reading books, start slowly. Find an interesting book and commit to reading five minutes a day, at minimum. Or, if it has short chapters, one daily. If the book is boring, drop it. Find another. When you find one you like, read for five minutes or until you get fatigued.

(Training fiction: James Patterson’s books are super-popular with extremely short chapters.)

Then, read in public. Send the silent signal: I’m not one of The Scrollzombies. I think for myself!

Embrace heterodox thinking: Read books that challenge you. Not simply ‘books that make you angry’. Those are for advanced readers who’ve built up resistance to outrage. If you’re on the left, read something a little right-wing, and vice versa. ‘Extremist’ books aren’t useful unless you’re trying to understand extremists (a laudable goal!) A really terrific book, in my opinion, is Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. (Two beers, Jon!) There’s plenty of well-researched, well-written food for thought no matter where you fall on the political spectrum. I promise you, you won’t hate ‘the other side’ as much as you did before, and you will notice a reduction in anger.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise…
- Rudyard Kipling, ‘If’, courtesy of The Poetry Foundation

Read. A. Book.

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The Sovereignty Protocol: Your Field Manual for the Rebellion

1. The Five-Minute Tactical Strike: Commit to just five minutes of reading per day. It takes a little work to rebuild those neural pathways. You might find you like it.

2. The “Boredom” Ejector Seat: Crappy books are as soul-sucking as your algorithms. Just drop yours, and try another. I’ll admit: I can’t stand James Patterson’s army-written books, but I’m using him as a gateway drug to lure you into better, more mind-blowing books. Pssst! Hey kid!

3. The Public Signal: Show off your paperback in public. You signal ‘You Are Not Alone’ to the Silent Exhausted Majority as you dare to read Forbidden Literature in front of God and everyone.

4. Embrace Tactical Heterodoxy: Cognitively vaccinate against your own echo chamber. Read something provocative. If you don’t want to buy it, LIBRARIES!

5. Digital Decoupling: Bookmark interesting essays and keep a books wish list. Ask for them for Christmas. Don’t let the algorithm decide for you; consciously consume what interests you.

WARNING: Subverting the attention algorithm paradigm could lead to other dangerous revolutions in critical thinking, fact-checking, source-checking, and heterodoxy. VIVE LA REVOLUTION!!!