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I’ve been thinking a lot about change and identity recently. Partly, the thought has been a result of my own life—but more broadly, I’ve been thinking about it on a national and even global scale.

You’ve probably heard people talk about the “vibe shift” ever since the 2024 election; across corporate, religious, political, and personal spheres, many causes and virtues that would have been fairly widespread just a few years ago have suddenly become taboo under the new istration—namely anything involving diversity, equity and inclusion of marginalized groups, or ability for men in positions of power. The Overton Window has now rapidly shifted to the point where statements and actions which are blatantly cruel and soaked in animus will often lead more to success than failure. Just pay attention the careers of Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Nancy Mace, or Charlie Kirk.

Of course, this “vibe shift” didn’t happen overnight; it’s been brewing for years. Some would even argue many of these patterns have been core to America since our founding; they’d say this is not some sort of foreign virus disfiguring America’s true nature, it’s who we’ve always been to one degree or another.

ittedly though, I can’t help but see the trajectory being thoroughly accelerated by the emergence of Donald Trump in 2015. For the past decade, we’ve been given a firsthand glimpse at what happens when a narcissistic reality TV host turns the whole country into his next ego-fueling entertainment enterprise—and the way the content of a leader’s character can seep into the very roots of all public discourse, transfiguring normal people beyond recognition. “Christians” were first labeled as such in the Roman Empire because they were a people perceived to have been transformed into “little Christs.” In a strange twist of fate, we’ve seen the Republican Party increasingly transformed into a party of Little Donald Trumps.

That’s not to say the whole country loves Trump. Every election with him as a candidate has been very close, splitting the population in two. Even his own voters don’t unilaterally worship him; in my own personal experience, everyone I know who voted for Trump (either in 2016, 2020, or 2024) still employed language of “the lesser of two evils,” regardless of how misguided I think that language might be. But even for those who don’t worship the man, his presence on the world stage has brought about a dramatic reckoning of identity on a national level—with some figures oscillating as far away as possible, and others inching closer and closer to the same tone and behavior patterns which have proved successful for the president.

One thing that’s really been troubling me recently along this trajectory has been the death of shame, particularly for leaders on the right. Take one glance at the official White House social media s—or god forbid, Elon Musk’s Twitter last month—and you’ll be treated to a barrage of “trolling,” half-serious-half-ironic memes making mockery of the suffering of others under the new istration. An ASMR-style video of immigrants being deported, with handcuffs clinking rhythmically. A meme in cutesy AI-generated Studio Ghibli style of a real migrant woman in tears as she’s handcuffed by a grim-faced ICE agent. Another AI-generated video of “Trump Gaza,” imagining the Gaza Strip completely rid of Palestinian people and transformed into a luxury resort littered with golden statues of Trump while he sips margaritas with a ghoulishly grinning Netanyahu on the beach. Then there’s Elon Musk waving around a chainsaw on stage as a representation of mass federal firings, and his statement that he “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood-chipper,” which will result in the deaths of thousands if not millions worldwide. And I’ll never forget seeing El Salvadoran President Bukele post “oopsie, too late!” online, in response to the fact that hundreds of men with no criminal records had been deported to life in prison at CECOT against a judge’s orders.

If there has been a vibe shift, it has been a shift away from shame. This shift has been felt even outside the borders of the US; it has manifested in brazen ethnic cleansing and genocide by Israel funded by the west, in legislation targeting LGBTQ people in places like the UK and Central Europe, and in authoritarian leaders following the mold of Trump worldwide.

I think the moment this “post-shame” swing really hit me was when I saw a video of the director of ICE onstage at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix, proclaiming that ICE needed to be treated more as a business “like Amazon Prime, but with human beings.” I couldn’t help but wonder: how might a person find themselves at a point where they feel comfortable uttering these words onstage and don’t feel any semblance of guilt or conscience? And is there any way to bring back shame in anyone after it has been silenced?

This has been a long prelude to an essay ostensibly about a movie—and that movie is Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, a rom-com thriller starring Glenn Powell and (unfortunately) released straight to Netflix one year ago in May of 2024. Linklater has long been one of my favorite directors, and it was disheartening to see one of his movies released to almost no fanfare on streaming, where it was quickly buried despite glowing reactions from those who did see it. Since seeing Hit Man initially and then revisiting it recently, though, I have felt ionately that it has profound things to say about this cultural moment which went largely unacknowledged upon release.

Very loosely based on a 2001 true story originally featured in Texas Monthly, Hit Man follows a college teacher named Gary Johnson who moonlights part-time as a fake hitman, meeting with suspects who think they’ve found a killer-for-hire and recording the conversation until each person offers to pay for the murder and incriminates themselves enough to be arrested by the police waiting outside. The rom-com element kicks into gear when Gary comes face to face with a woman named Madison (Adria Arjona) who wants him to kill her abusive husband—and after talking her out of it to prevent her arrest, Gary begins secretly dating her while maintaining the illusion in her eyes that he is a real hitman named Ron. Double-life deception-comedy hijinks ensue.

Spoilers for Hit Man, which I highly recommend: when Madison does eventually murder her ex-husband herself, empowered by “Ron’s” confident and blasé attitude toward killing, the two end up realizing that they’ll both be sent to prison unless they also kill the only other dirty cop who has figured out their whole story. In the penultimate moments of the movie, the two of them drug the cop and asphyxiate him with a plastic bag, ionately making out while he suffocates to death in the background of the shot.

If you haven’t seen the movie, what I’m describing might seem fairly dark—and it is. But in execution, and in the way many audiences have reacted to it, many of the darker elements initially come across more “rascal” than sinister. Just survey Rotten Tomatoes and you’ll find phrases like “cheesy and easy-peasy,” “purely entertaining,” “old-fashioned sexy caper,” and “darkly funny screwball noir.” Reviews at the time of release broadly heralded Hit Man as a rollicking romantic comedy that felt more Bonnie & Clyde than anything else. In spite of this, I’ve argued often since its release that the movie is more intentionally disturbing than many people seemed to perceive—hiding behind the veneer of a good time to work its dark magic on the audience and confront them once they’ve dropped their guard.

The difference between Hit Man and Bonnie & Clyde is that Hit Man has an ostensibly happy ending. After Gary and Madison have killed the only witness to their crime, we fade to black and return after an indefinite timejump, showing that the two have settled into a picturesque suburban life with children, puppies, apple pie, and the occasional lighthearted reminiscence about their unconventional meet-cute.

As the film comes to a close and Gary takes a bite of pie, Madison brings back the coded message they used to identify each other in the cafe when they first met to discuss a murder:

“Are you enjoying your pie?” she asks.

“All pie is good pie,” Gary grins knowingly.

“It sure is,” Madison beams. And the film cuts to credits.

Throughout the rest of the movie, the vast majority of people Gary arrests seem to be acting under the highly American belief that eliminating one person from the picture will allow them to finally “live their best life.” The deep irony to this, of course, is that this is exactly what Gary and Madison believe when they decide to murder a dirty cop at the end of the film—and worse yet, it actually works out. The two of them having embraced their darker selves for the purpose of love, they are allowed to have a happily ever after.

But is all pie good pie? Surely not. Certainly not. To truly say so would be to characterize bad as good. And it’s the emphasis of this final line that confirms for me that the movie is not actually as unquestioning toward the sunny disposition of its ending as it might seem.

Rewatching Hit Man recently, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a perfect portrait of a post-shame moment: Gary and Madison successfully delude themselves into believing that a violent act was justified—and not just that, but they don’t seem to feel much remorse or regret about it. The two of them should feel shame, but they don’t—and through the evolving (or devolving) of both of their souls, their life together seems to end up working out perfectly fine. I have to concur with writer Timothy Lawrence when he said in his review that “the concluding ages feel like an unblinking dare to the moral relativist crowd: ‘so, you good with this?’”

At the core of Hit Man is a question of change and identity. Glenn Powell’s Gary Johnson starts the movie as a comically dweeb-ish philosophy teacher who lives alone with his cats (“Id” and “Ego”) and tells his ex-wife that he doesn’t believe people really have the capacity to change their core characteristics all that much. In voiceover at the start, Gary says “I could never get worked up enough to kill or die for anything.” As the film goes on and Gary begins to play a hit man to coax suspects into itting their murderous intentions, though, he starts to morph drastically, with the line between himself and his uber-sexy and hyper-confident persona as “Ron” beginning to blur.

The question of how (and whether) we can truly change has been central to Richard Linklater’s work for decades. School of Rock features a washed-up rock musician masquerading as a substitute teacher and finding a new man within himself in the process. Boyhood is a movie made across 12 years exploring the evolution of one kid as he grows into an adult. Bernie is a story of a widely-beloved funeral director who somehow convinces himself to kill an older woman, leaving his community shocked and confused at how such a friendly person could have violence inside him. And of course, the Before Trilogy explores a similar evolution of one relationship at 9-year intervals—and how both individuals develop in certain surprising ways while also retaining some of the stubborn patterns and immutable traits of their younger selves.

Where Hit Man continues and elaborates this exploration of change in Linklater’s work lies in its portrayal of the change that comes from performance; Gary’s descent into a real killer starts by convincing himself to play one for a greater good. Eventually, that greater good—if what he was doing ever was good—is subsumed by a desire for romantic and sexual love, and the fumes he’s breathing as the fake hitman Ron start to become intoxicating. He becomes who he was pretending to be. But at what cost?

The road to the cult of MAGA has been paved with people pretending to be coldhearted killers until they actually became them. I was deeply struck by this quote from Ezra Klein on a podcast with Hasan Minhaj recently:

“When JD Vance was on my podcast back in 2012, back in the Hillbilly Elegy days…virtue was really important to him. Decency was. It was something he didn’t like about Donald Trump. And one of the things that frightens me about the modern Republican Party is watching people give themselves personality transplants in order to get ahead in it. Watching them unleash a cruelty and anger that maybe was always inside of them, or maybe it’s put on for show and then it becomes real. So many of them have imitated the worst part of Donald Trump’s character, to come up behind him. But you’re not cosplaying. Because you become what you force yourself to be. The parts of yourself that you exercise get stronger.”

This is exactly what Hit Man is about.

It’s this transfigurement, highlighted by Klein’s description of Vance, that has beguiled me the most in the last decade—particularly since COVID. Some people have always had the makings of little fascists inside them; as best any of us can tell, Donald Trump hasn’t known real shame or conviction since he was a much, much younger man, if he ever did. But what about the rest of the leadership of the Republican Party—those who challenged Trump initially and eventually got over it? There are myriad examples of Republican leaders who said just a few years ago that they didn’t have anything against trans people, who now make it their life’s mission to paint them all as dangerous outsiders. Listen to a Republican politician speaking about immigration 20 years ago versus today, and it’s almost like comparing two completely different parties. And what about the ordinary American citizens who were radicalized in the last few years? What about those people we know to be generally good, honorable folks who have been somehow caught up in a bloodthirsty MAGA cult of personality?

The idea that even fairly ordinary, mild-mannered people can still have latent, violent demons lurking within them is present throughout Hit Man. Richard Linklater is an empathetic and often humanistic director, and an interesting thing about the film is the complex space it holds for the individuals who find themselves caught in Gary’s web of undercover assassin performance. On the one hand, some characters do seem borderline irredeemable—like the teenage “future school shooter” who orders Gary to kill his “b*tch” mother, seemingly with no hesitation or remorse. But far more of the characters feel less than sinister and more misguided and pathetic. When the cops swarm them and they realize the trust they placed in Gary as a savior was misplaced, you can’t help but feel pity for some, who will now likely spend life behind bars. And more challenging still, some of the suspects end up finding forgiveness in court with the people they’d planned to have killed. Without Gary as a fake hitman coaxing their worst impulses out of them, would their violent desires have ever amounted to anything substantial? Linklater takes pleasure in forcing the audience to sit in that icky human complexity—while illuminating the ways that we must be vigilant of both who and what we allow to coax us toward change, and how our tactics to achieve a desired goal can begin to change ourselves.

In our world, this issue of change and identity now goes beyond the political right. An identity crisis has been central to the Democratic party since even before Joe Biden stepped down and Kamala Harris took his place, and it’s only become more prominent since her loss. I’ve listened to about a dozen various podcast conversations about what the identity of the party “should” become in a time where its public is breathtakingly low, the failure of its previous approach has been laid bare, and winning back the American public in 2028 feels like a necessity. I do not consider myself to be a loyal member of any party, but I’m certainly in agreement that the identity and approach of the Democrats needs to change for the good of the world and democracy at large. But is change possible? And more importantly, what is to guide that change? If, for instance, Democrats were to simply decide to give up moral vision and embrace petty retribution as a unifying goal, what will differentiate them from their Republican counterparts? If the party is motivated not by principles but by finding its “own version” of a Trump-like figure, what is to prevent the little virtues that still exist from being corrupted by a desire to win?

Toward the end of Hit Man, Gary gives a lecture to his philosophy students recapping what some might take away as the fairly obvious themes of the film: namely, he says that “there are no moral absolutes,” and “to seize the identity you want for yourself.” I’ve had a few friends tell me that they hated Hit Man because of this truly sinister moral relativism, and if I believed the movie actually agreed with it, I’d probably concur with that distaste. But I think Linklater knows what Gary is saying is total bullshit. Rather than didactically contriving an ending to show that this path leads to destruction, Linklater is depicting something far more challenging: sometimes, it doesn’t. Sometimes, abandoning morals and contorting your identity to suit a primal desire to win or dominate will get you ahead and earn you a happy ending, especially in America—but you’ll lose your soul in the process.

We live in a world now where a multiverse of potential identities can be embraced, and many are left paralyzed by the malleability of their performed self. Maybe, Linklater ponders, people are capable of true change, and we all contain within us many possible selves which can be embraced and stoked. I don’t think Linklater (or myself) would argue that this capacity for a changing identity is entirely bad, or that making active choices about who you want to be and become are wrong. We’re all faced with those choices, and we can choose with wisdom.

But when we’re untethered from any sense of moral framework to guide us and curb us, what is to prevent us from deciding to change for the worse? Without such a guiding vigilance, we can all become monsters—and not even how to be ashamed of ourselves for it.