You Can Be My Enemy

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• April 27, 2026

People need an enemy. The world needs an enemy. You see it all the time. That’s why political tribalism is so bad in America in 2026. It’s so easy to say that the fault absolutely the other guy. No nuance. No accountability. No reflection. If people don’t have a monster, they will create one.

The moderately neutral people drive the average person mad. Because we empathize. Because we hold a mirror. Because we use logic to discern that things are not so black and white. You need us to side with you. But we don’t like sides. This has been going on forever. The sane moderates have been hated and blamed before I was born. John Cleese created a hilarious breakdown the dichotomy in the 80s. And so, I was destined to be a pariah, shaking my head at everyone.

People love a cult. People need a cult. Because cults offer an enemy. And makes thou holier than the others.

What a fucking joke.

Still, I am human. And the wisdom of neutrality feels more like a curse than a blessing, I want enemies too. This is why I choose you. You are my enemy. My monster. My sick obsession. I love to hate you.

Printers.

Yes, the printer has haunted me since I was a child. A born writer with a lust for the environment, we were doomed to be on this path. When I think back, it starts in my childhood. In my own home. Printing out homework assignments.
We wanted to save the trees but needed to print the assignments. Printer ink cost more than blood and my father would fret at the sight of printing multiple pages. God forbid they be in color.

And it’s not like you made it easy, printers. You frequently jammed, stopped mid project, and we’d have to start over. And surely, once I left our home office/laundry room/pantry in the suburbs for an office in the literal embodiment of capitalism, New York City, I’d be dealing with better printers? Wrong. Sure, these printers were bigger and faster, but just as infuriating. Every office job I had, the printing room was a low level office hell.

Oh the irony of being a writer and needing something so profound as a printer and loathing it simultaneously.

In various office jobs, I’d print my screenplays between duties as discreetly as possible for myself or for read-throughs or even gorilla style shooting. Perhaps one of the best parts of a soulless office job was my access and relation to the machine I hated most.

How I love the feel of a physical book and never owned a kindle. The printer does fine work. My stupid enemy. I need it. Despite every interaction I’ve had whether an in home printer or business one, I fantasized about smashing it to bits. Taking a sledgehammer to it, or using a blow torch to melt it. My sick fantasies of what I would do to you.

Are we not all cursed in such cycles. Of hating the very thing that provides us with something that we love. We’ve always been our own enemies all along.