A few weeks before he started selling swastika T-shirts on the internet, I considered letting Ye back into my life.

It was inauguration weekend, and I’d been sitting in a restaurant where the bartender was blasting a playlist of songs by the rapper once known as Kanye West. The music sounded, frankly, awesome. Most of the songs were from when I considered myself a fan of his, long before he rebranded as the world’s most famous Hitler admirer. I hadn’t heard this much Ye music played in public in years; privately, I’d mostly avoided it. But as I nodded along, I thought it might be time to redownload Yeezus.

The bartender probably wasn’t making a political statement, but the soundtrack felt all too apt for the dawn of the great uncancelling—the sweeping return of various disgraced figures and discouraged behaviors to the public realm. Donald Trump, a convicted felon, was back in the White House and naming accused abusers, quacks, and even Mel Gibson to positions of honor. Trend forecasters were proclaiming that Trump’s reelection represented a cultural shake-up in addition to a governmental one, replacing the stiff moralism of wokeness with cowboy rowdiness and chic nihilism. Phrases such as “the boom boom aesthetic” and “dark mode” were being coined to describe the phenomenon of young people suddenly dressing like Patrick Bateman and availing themselves of the term retard.

Given this climate, I thought maybe I could loosen up and try that whole “separating the art from the artist” thing again. I’d not been boycotting Ye’s music per se, but for the past few years, the disgust caused by his conduct had ruined the pleasure of stomping around to “Can’t Tell Me Nothing.” Now I could sense something shifting. The second Trump administration’s flurry of disorienting news was already becoming soul-deadening. The bad actors who were reemerging seemed only energized by outrage. Exhaustion was supplanting my sense of ick.

A few weeks later, on Super Bowl Sunday, the ick came roaring back. That day, a commercial aired directing viewers to Ye’s online store, which he then updated to sell only one item: a white shirt with the black, swirling symbol of the Third Reich. When I pulled up the website to see for myself, I felt a few kinds of bad feelings. There was horror at the Nazism. There was embarrassment at the fact that I’d recently wanted to listen to this guy’s voice again. And there was the sinking, instinctual understanding of what Ye was doing: testing how numb America has gotten.

The shirt stunt was part of a sudden flurry of activity suggesting a Ye comeback campaign. He crashed the Grammys; he’s prepping an album; he’s hyping a cryptocurrency. All the while, he’s doubled down on Hitler talk—and asserted his kinship with the second Trump wave. “Elon stole my Nazi swag,” he joked in one X post, referring to the tech mogul’s alleged Sieg heil; “whit[e] guys have all the fun,” he wrote when Steve Bannon seemed to make a similar gesture. He’s been filming podcast videos with an influencer, Justin LaBoy, whom he calls “the culture’s Joe Rogan.” He has described his habit of parading around his wife, Bianca Censori, nearly nude as if she were a pet, in redpilled terms. “I have dominion over my wife,” he posted. “This ain’t no woke as[s] feminist shit.”

Maybe Ye is saying what he truly believes. Maybe mental health is at play (he used to describe himself as bipolar; recently, he’s said the more accurate diagnosis is autism). Definitely, he’s trolling for publicity. In any case, he clearly believes this moment is ripe for him to capitalize on. And perhaps he’s right.

Conservatives who are proclaiming a golden age for America like to talk about the fall of “the regime,” a handy term to refer to any power center steered by liberals, including in the entertainment world. The idea is that we’d been living in a centrally planned culture of racially inclusive sitcoms and feminist pop stars, whose Millennial-pink kumbaya vibe was backed up by vicious online campaigns to shun the insufficiently woke. Now the entertainment regime is under assault through such means as Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center and the Federal Communications Commission’s saber-rattling against broadcast networks. In the MAGA view, these efforts aren’t dictatorial—they’re liberatory.

This logic is credulous logic, conspiracy logic, that tends to downplay a crucial driver of culture: audiences’ desires. Certainly, the idea that 2010s entertainment was smothered by progressive politeness is overstated at best. The decade’s defining TV show was the brutal, T&A-filled Game of Thrones. Hip-hop was driven by young rappers whose music and personal lives defined the word problematic (Tekashi 6ix 9ine, XXXtentacion, Lil Uzi Vert). And, of course, Trump’s 2016 election delighted a whole new cultural scene: edgelords posting frog memes. The internet was undercutting old gatekeepers, turning culture—more than ever—into an unruly, competitive arena. If there was a regime, it was already weakening, not strengthening.

[Read: Kanye West finally says what he means]

Ye has long understood the crowd-pleasing potential of chaos over conformity. Though he once scanned as a liberal protest rapper—remember when he called out George W. Bush on live TV after Hurricane Katrina?—his misogynistic streak hardly made him a consensus figure. In 2016, he got into a spat with Taylor Swift by calling her a “bitch” in a song; the resulting brouhaha damaged her reputation more than it did his. Even after he started praising Trump in 2018 and called slavery a “choice,” he still drew major collaborators and successfully orchestrated hype for new albums.

It was only in 2022 that he pushed far enough to experience something like full-on cancellation, by going full-on anti-Semite. He posted that he wanted to go “death con 3” on Jews. He told Alex Jones, “I like Hitler.” He posted a swastika on X. Consequences piled up: Adidas exited their billion-dollar partnership with Ye; Def Jam, his label, severed ties; Elon Musk, of all people, banned him from X. Yet even then, his career continued: He released an unconvincing apology to the Jews, put out an album full of big-name rap collaborations, and landed a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1. In that song, “Carnival,” he compared himself to vilified men such as R. Kelly and Diddy. “This number #1 is for … the people who won’t be manipulated by the system,” Ye wrote on Instagram at the time.

“The system”—that term is pretty close to what people mean by “the regime.” Ye wasn’t wrong to suggest that important organizations had tried to marginalize him. But if someone booted out of the system can still hit No. 1, what does the system really count for? Maybe this: Even in a culture as fractured as ours has become, people intrinsically sense the existence of a “mainstream,” shaped by widely shared beliefs, norms, and urges. Powerful institutions stay powerful by catering to that consensus. After years of Americans becoming more socially progressive—after a decade in which gay marriage was legalized and Black Lives Matter gained broad-based popularity—it made some sense that, say, diversely cast Marvel movies would be the mainstream and the erratic Hitler-loving rapper would be subcultural.

Perhaps that’s not going to be true for much longer. “You are the media,” Elon Musk told his followers on X after Trump’s reelection, speaking to a platform that, under his watch, has become overrun by white supremacists. Seemingly every other day, a pundit proclaims that Trump is spurring a “cultural revolution.” The president may have been returned to office thanks in part to widespread dissatisfaction with grocery prices, but he was also helped by young people, typically our great trend-drivers, becoming more hostile to social-justice causes. And now here comes Ye, doing that thing you do when you think the masses will buy what you have to sell: film a Super Bowl commercial.

Vestiges of “the system” have, thus far, rebuked Ye’s swastika shirt. Two days after the Super Bowl ad aired, the e-commerce platform Shopify pulled the plug on Ye’s online store, citing a violation of its terms of service in a terse statement. Ye’s talent agency dropped him, and according to his own post on X, a few employees on his Yeezy design team quit. “Maybe one day they will understand why I had to do what I did, and one day they will forgive my method,” Ye wrote on X.

As for that why: In his X posts after the shop was taken down, Ye said he started thinking about selling the T-shirts after seeing the swastika—an ancient symbol used peacefully in Buddhism, Hinduism, and other religions—on clothing in Japan. In his telling, the point is to shock people and show them how free they are to embrace things that society has coded as taboo. That’s also the rationale spread by his defenders. Myron Gaines of the Fresh and Fit podcast, a prominent manosphere outlet, posted that Ye’s “genius” Super Bowl stunt probably got “millions” of fans to buy the shirt—“not because we’re Nazis,” but because Ye was flouting “years of censorship.”

To reiterate: The rapper openly admires Hitler and demonizes Jews. He posted that he made the swastika shirts to show “that I am not under Jewish control anymore.” Gaines wrote that Ye has “revenge to seek for 2 years ago when the jews launched a campaign to cancel him.” So these non-Nazis … just happen to use Nazi imagery while spreading the idea that the Jews are a shadowy cabal that needs to be brought to heel. In late February, Ye posted that he’s no longer a Nazi; a few days ago, he wrote, “Antisemitism is the only path to freedom.”

The absurdity of these antics is so obvious that to expend effort condemning them can feel pointless. I sympathize with the rapper Open Mike Eagle, who posted a video calling Ye’s latest phase a “predictable meltdown nobody has time for.” He noted that Ye’s shock tactics were largely getting drowned out by the drama caused by the Trump administration, and by broader shifts in the attention economy. “Things have changed,” Open Mike Eagle said, addressing Ye. “All the counterculture jive that you used to say, that shit is all mainstream now. There’s just Nazis all over Twitter.”

Ye may well see an opportunity in the fact that what once seemed insane now can seem inane. The institutions that helped us make sense of what’s normal and what’s fringe, what’s upstanding and what’s contemptible, what’s true and what’s false, are weaker than ever. But cultural change never really did happen through the dictates of regimes—it happens through ideas and attitudes moving contagiously, person to person. We absorb how others behave, what they react to and what they don’t react to. Certain people will buy into Ye’s posture of rebelliousness, and maybe even buy his shirt, and maybe even wear it on the street. The rest of us should try clinging to our disgust.

The Super Bowl halftime show is an opportunity for big, dumb fun: explosions, laser shows, left sharks. But big, dumb fun isn’t Kendrick Lamar’s thing. The 37-year-old Los Angeles rapper and Pulitzer Prize winner prefers subtlety, smarts, and fun that’s tinged with danger and unease. Amid tough, tense circumstances, he put on a tough, tense—and quite satisfying—show.

The event framed itself in self-conscious terms. “This is the great American game,” Samuel L. Jackson, dressed as Uncle Sam, announced at the start. He probably wasn’t just referring to football. Lamar himself was about to run a familiar artistic gantlet: the struggle to keep one’s integrity intact while entertaining the masses. The stage was set up in a tic-tac-toe design, and Jackson popped up at various times to score the proceedings. Lamar rapped with intense focus, nailing every bit of elegantly herky-jerky choreography. But his face also conveyed anxiety, even fear. We knew that he knew he was being watched.

One of the people watching was Donald Trump, in attendance in New Orleans on a brief break from upending the federal government. Lamar is widely seen as the social conscience of his generation of rappers, and he knew he was expected to make a statement of some sort. “The revolution’s about to be televised,” Lamar announced early on. But he added, “You picked the right time but the wrong guy.” One possible meaning: I’m not your revolutionary. It’s the same message he’s repeatedly conveyed on his albums over the years, replying to onlookers who want him to be more of a messiah than a musician.

Even so, he flirted with politics during the performance. Lamar rapped from the hood of a Buick GNX—the car that he, on his latest album, has held up as a symbolic trophy of his struggle to survive the violence and poverty he was raised amid in gangland Compton. His dancers’ red, white, and blue outfits evoked Crips and Bloods, which made it a bit stunning when they lined up to form an American flag, and raised their fists in what looked like the Black Power salute. Here was a vision of American pride from a group often locked out of the American dream. But also, here was a rapper playing that “great American game,” provoking while staying patriotic.

(A sharper bit of messaging was spelled out when one of Lamar’s dancers unfurled a flag representing Gaza and Sudan. The performer was tackled by security; “No one involved with the production was aware of the individual’s intent,” the NFL said in a statement afterward.)

Arguably the bigger risk Lamar took was in egging on his feud with Drake, which has embroiled the hip-hop world for nearly a year. Lamar has been riding a wave of acclaim for his diss track “Not Like Us,” which catchily claims that Drake is a pedophile. Drake has denied the song’s allegations and sued Universal Music Group, the label that the two rappers share, for promoting defamatory material. Lamar’s song won Song of the Year and Record of the Year at last week’s Grammys, but even so, it seemed possible that his own lawyers would forbid him from playing the song on live TV.

[Read: The hip-hop halftime show was an overdue triumph]

Lamar made a meal out of this suspense. “I want to perform their favorite song, but you know they love to sue,” he said midway through the set before a snippet of the track’s beat played. When he finally launched into the full song, he scooted forward onstage as the camera moved backwards, as if he were stalking prey just behind the lens. When Lamar finally said Drake’s name, he cocked his head and gave one of his only smiles of the night: a devious, cartoon-villain grin.

This was the moment that the halftime show went from studious art piece to hall-of-fame-worthy TV. The arena hooted for the song’s nastiest punch line alleging underage predilections: “Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor.” Serena Williams, the tennis legend who happens to be one of Drake’s exes, made a surprise appearance, clearly having a blast. In this rap battle, Lamar has styled himself as a force for good, a protector of hip-hop’s authenticity. But as the halftime show reached its full, delirious peak, the weight of righteousness seemed to melt away—leaving, simply, a great entertainer.

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So you’re a world leader and you’ve been threatened by the American president. What now? First, take some consolation: You’re not alone. The first two weeks of the second Trump administration have seen the White House trying to wring policy concessions from allies and adversaries both near and far.

Now to come up with a response. Simply ignoring Donald Trump is not an option. The United States wields so much power that even if you think the president is irrational or bluffing, you have to reply. Any leader must calibrate a response that will speak not only to Trump but also to their own domestic audience. This may be Diplomacy 101, but Trump will nonetheless expect your answer to be fully focused on him. “Trump doesn’t seem to have any concept that maybe other people have publics to which they’re accountable,” John Bolton, who served as national security adviser in his first term, recently told me.

As heads of state scramble for the best response, we’ve seen several different approaches. Each has clear upsides—but also some pitfalls.

Fight Fire With Fire

Example: Colombia. On January 26, President Gustavo Petro posted on X announcing that he’d turned back two American military planes full of deportees. “We will receive our citizens in civilian airplanes, without them being treated as delinquents,” he wrote. “Colombia must be respected.” Trump promptly threatened huge tariffs; Petro fired back, threatening tariffs of his own and saying, “You will never dominate us.” In the end, Petro agreed to accept military flights but also got assurances from the U.S. that Colombians would not be handcuffed or photographed, and would be escorted by Department of Homeland Security staff, not troops.

Why it might work: Trump doesn’t actually like conflict, so he might blink. (While the presidents sniped at each other, their respective aides were hammering out an agreement.) He also sometimes respects a bold, brassy response—just ask his good pal Kim Jong Un of North Korea.

Why it might not: If Trump had gone through with 25 or 50 percent tariffs, Colombia’s economy would have been devastated. It’s a high-risk play.

***

Make a Deal

Examples: Mexico, Panama, Denmark. These countries aren’t powerful enough to fight Trump outright, so they’re looking for a way to compromise. This weekend, the White House announced large tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods, but this morning, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo announced that she had struck a deal with Trump to avoid tariffs. “Mexico will reinforce the northern border with 10,000 members of the National Guard immediately, to stop drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States, in particular fentanyl,” she posted on X. “The United States commits to work to stop the trafficking of high-powered weapons to Mexico.” That’s a concrete commitment from Mexico and a rather vague one from the U.S., but it allows Mexico to escape tariffs and save some face. Elsewhere, Panama is promising to not renew an infrastructure agreement with China after Trump threatened to seize the Panama Canal. And Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen is offering the U.S. a chance to expand its presence on Greenland, even as she says the island is absolutely not for sale. “If this is about securing our part of the world, we can find a way forward,” she said.

Why it might work: Trump is fundamentally transactional, and in each of these cases he’s getting a win without having to do anything besides issue a threat.

Why it might not: Trump is getting a win without having to do anything besides issue a threat. He might be satisfied for now, but he also might conclude that you can be easily bullied—so he might come back for more later. Giving in to Trump could offend your domestic audience and win only a temporary reprieve.

***

Try Targeted Threats

Example: Canada. Facing similar tariffs to Mexico, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau initially announced his own tariffs. Trudeau’s list included a few particular goods produced in red states that support Trump, including Kentucky bourbon and Florida orange juice. At a press conference Saturday, Trudeau spoke directly to Americans. “Tariffs against Canada will put your jobs at risk, potentially shutting down American auto assembly plants and other manufacturing facilities,” he said. “They will raise costs for you, including food at the grocery store and gas at the pump.” Late this afternoon, Trudeau announced that he and Trump had struck a deal in which Canada made hazy commitments to border security in exchange for Trump pausing tariffs.

Why it might work: This strategy is effective for countries like Canada, large enough trading partners that they can inflict real pain on the U.S. economy—which gives their threats some heft. Trudeau's tariffs were also cleverly tailored for maximum political impact in the U.S.

Why it might not: Trump backed down now, but Canada still stands to lose more than the U.S., and Trump knows that Trudeau is a lame duck.

***

Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick

Example: China, the European Union. Trump has already imposed new tariffs on China and has threatened Europe as well. China’s government promised “necessary countermeasures to defend its legitimate rights and interests,” and French President Emmanuel Macron said today, “If our commercial interests are attacked, Europe, as a true power, will have to make itself respected and therefore react.” (Confidential to the Élysée: “True powers” don’t usually need to announce themselves as such.)

Why it might work: Trump doesn’t like conflict, has many reasons to work with American allies in Europe, and already lost a trade war with China in his first term. These vague threats are a sign of some strength, following Theodore Roosevelt’s maxim about foreign policy.

Why it might not: You think Trump’s going to be scared off by vague threats? This could just whet his appetite. Trump’s exchange with Petro suggests that threats work only if he thinks you really mean it.

Related:

What Trump’s finger-pointing reveals The price America will pay for Trump’s tariffs

Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

Purging the government could backfire spectacularly. The Democrats show why they lost. The race-blind college-admissions era is off to a weird start.

Today’s News

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was appointed to be the acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Trump wants to shut down, according to Elon Musk. Trump signed an executive order that sets up plans for a U.S. sovereign-wealth fund. The fund could be used to pay for infrastructure projects and other investments, including buying TikTok, according to Trump. The Treasury Department reportedly gave Musk and members of the Department of Government Efficiency access to the federal payment system, which contains sensitive information for millions of Americans.

Dispatches

The Wonder Reader: “To stay in or to go out, that is the question,” Stephanie Bai writes. The cost-benefit analysis of weekend plans never ends.

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Evening Read

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

The Illegal Drug at Every Corner Store

By Amogh Dimri

To judge by the shelves of America’s vice merchants, the nation is in the grips of a whipped-cream frenzy. Walk into any vape store or sex shop, and you’ll find canisters of nitrous oxide showcased in window displays—ostensibly to catch the eye of bakers and baristas, who use the gas to aerate creams and foams. At the bodega near my apartment, boxes of up to 100 mini-canisters are piled up to eye level, next to Baby Yoda bongs.

In fact, culinary professionals generally don’t shop for equipment at stores with names like Puff N Stuff or Condom Sense. The true clientele inhales the gas to get high.

Read the full article.

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David Frum: The tasks of an anti-Trump coalition The truth about Trump’s Iron Dome for America If RFK Jr. loses Trump’s campaign to dismantle the government

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Watch. Companion (out in theaters) is a horror movie that has already given away its twist—but it has others in store, David Sims writes.

Celebrate. This year’s Grammys ceremony showcased the next generation of willful, distinct talents, Spencer Kornhaber writes.

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Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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Looking quite a bit like a wizard casting a curse, Chappell Roan accepted her first ever Grammy by criticizing the music industry. Upon being named Best New Artist at last night’s ceremony, the 26-year-old singer took to the stage in a pointy cap (which promptly fell to the floor) and a robe that was scrunched into pearlescent folds. Reading from a notebook, she recalled being dropped from her first record deal in 2020 and feeling “betrayed by the system.” She urged labels to stop exploiting artists, by paying a living wage and providing health care.

These were striking words to hear from someone who, by all appearances, is thriving in “the system.” A theatrical vocal talent whose songs are barbed with sass and spite, Roan is pop’s greatest success story of the past year. She received nominations in all of the Grammys’ “big four” categories, and she put on an opulent, eye-popping performance featuring a troupe of rodeo clowns. Critical though it was, her speech fit well with a ceremony that felt like a generational changing-of-the-guard, ushering in a new class of willful, distinct talents.

Grammys ceremonies tend to be quickly forgotten, but this one stands to be remembered for a few reasons. One is that Beyoncé won her first ever Album of the Year, for her country-inflected album Cowboy Carter. Another is that the Los Angeles fires reshaped the night: host Trevor Noah repeatedly urged viewers to donate to relief efforts, ad space was given to local businesses that had burned down, and a group of firefighters presented the evening’s final award. The politics of Donald Trump’s second term loomed large as well: Noah joked that his deportation might be imminent; Lady Gaga spoke up for transgender visibility; Alicia Keys said, “DEI is not a threat; it’s a gift.”

But the real shake-up of these Grammys was simply the fact that the telecast felt primarily like a showcase for new music—and not for the nostalgic reunions and tributes of past ceremonies. The tone was set early on when the 25-year-old Sabrina Carpenter put on a medley of her hits “Espresso” and “Please Please Please.” The performance played up Carpenter’s signature attribute, her humor, by having her feign mistakes and miscues and then regain her composure. In a pretaped segment, she cracked, “I’m just being myself—with maybe bigger hair.”

[Read: The Grammys are built on a delusion]

Carpenter, like Roan, was nominated for Best New Artist, and many of the category’s nominees provided instantly viral moments. Benson Boone, a 22-year-old glam rocker, got his tux torn off and then executed flips in a glistening bodysuit; Raye, a 27-year-old hip-hop–soul fusionist from the U.K., crooned and scatted with remarkable finesse in front of an old-timey bandstand. Most impressively, the 26-year-old rapper Doechii blazed through an eclectic array of vocal techniques and physical postures alongside a legion of dancers in matching suits. Her outré presentation recalled the pioneering rapper Missy Elliott, but she also smoldered with a rare, know-it-when-you-see it quality: potential.

This being the Grammys, music history was still a big part of the telecast—but even this year’s definition of “legacy” felt a bit updated. After so many years in which the great rockers of the 20th century seemed to run the show, it now appears that the Millennials are becoming eligible for luminary treatment. (The Rolling Stones and the Beatles, centerpieces of many prior Grammy ceremonies, won their awards off camera.) Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars, acting like respected statespeople, performed a haunting rendition of the Mamas & the Papas’s “California Dreamin’” in response to the fires. A well-conceived tribute to Quincy Jones spanned the age spectrum: Herbie Hancock and Stevie Wonder shared memories from behind the piano, but crucial contributions also came from Janelle Monae (doing a physical Michael Jackson impression) and Wicked star Cynthia Erivo (dreamily interpreting Frank Sinatra).

The final awards of the night also called to mind generational change. Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” was named Song of the Year and Record of the Year—which is only the second time a rap track has been honored in either of those categories. Those wins, along with Beyoncé’s, will be celebrated as deserved but overdue, given the much-publicized difficulty that Black artists have had in the Grammys’ major categories over the years. The Academy may well have made significant progress in reforming itself to be more inclusive; several presenters took care to note the 13,000 voting members who chose the winners (and The Weeknd broke his years-long boycott of the Grammys to perform this time). Another simple factor to keep in mind: Beyoncé, 43, and Lamar, 37, have built bodies of work whose significance gets, with each passing year, harder and harder to deny.

Beneath all of the evolution these Grammys represented was a technological and social one: streaming. In the past few years, established stars and savvy newcomers seem to have figured out that the key to success in an era of content overabundance isn’t to try to be as broadly appealing as possible—it’s to play up one’s own personality, ambition, and even weirdness. Cowboy Carter, a genre-blending opus that caused consternation in the country-music world, is one example of that approach. Dressing like Merlin and demanding more of the industry that’s celebrating you is, quite delightfully, another.

The show is dedicated to those affected by the wildfires, with Billie Eilish and others performing.

A collection of some of the best looks from Sunday's ceremony in Los Angeles.