A Dark Hope Story

America is ready for its next chapter.

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Whether you are unsatisfied with how people are treated in this country or numb from staring at your screen, surely you are ready to quantum leap out of this moment and into one that feels and functions much better than this. 

The infrastructure that should help us weather what’s coming—advances in technology, an aging population, fractured communities, chaotic weather patterns, job insecurity —is broken. There is no shared foundation, no trustworthy leadership, and no sense of common purpose.

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This is the darkness we face.

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But inside that darkness, there is an opening—a possibility for something new to be born. It’s what I call dark hope: the kind of hope you can only feel when you’ve finally stopped pretending that things are fine. It is the relief that comes after a long period of strain, when acknowledging what’s been lost allows you to imagine what could be built in its place. Dark hope is not naïve optimism or shallow positivity. It is forward-looking and unflinching, a call to take a quantum leap into a new realm because this one has reached its limits.

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I’m writing this because I can’t sit silently anymore. For over a decade, I’ve worked behind the scenes with leaders in politics and technology, trying to help them understand how our information ecosystem has evolved—and how it’s been weaponized. The only people who seemed to truly listen were those with extreme ideas at odds with American values of freedom and civility. The result is what we see now: a country yelling past itself, ruled by a leadership class that is uninspiring, uninformed, and fundamentally unprepared for the challenges ahead. ​

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I love this country. I moved back to the U.S. because I missed the American spirit: the excellence, the grit, the willingness to try. But love requires honesty. And honesty right now means calling things what they are: our attention has been stolen, our civic muscles have atrophied, and we’ve allowed shallow solutions to replace depth and shared purpose. 

 

We have to fix that.​ It is not the first time in our history that homegrown heroes had to fix homegrown hate stoked by a crusty, old worldview that’s desperate to stay relevant. Tale as old time. ​What those homegrown legends teach us is that we have to focus, take care of each other, and build what's next. ​

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There's plenty to build on. Next generation American leaders are already building what's next and solving problems from how tech is scamming our grandparents through to how to improve the care-giving experience. They are going to be the ones to make sure new technology works for us. They are interested in a functional future.

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Once you stop expecting to be saved, you start to see how much space there is to build. The future is not limited to what currently exists or what existing institutions are prepared to do.

 

Dark Hope is a website where I will think out loud about the country I love and the future I'm interested in. Maybe I'll post some videos. Maybe I'll share work from others that lights me up.

 

Some ideas will evolve. Some will be wrong. All are offered in good faith. 

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Dark Hope began as my framework for making sense of the moment. AI suggests it’s like I built myself a light house and now anyone can use the light. It is meant to be useful to anyone who wants to face reality without surrendering to it and to help more people move from passive concern to a world-building party with me ft. Gospel choir levels of inspiration.