This Medium Essay Kills Fascists
We sure are living in some fast-paced and confusing times, aren’t we? The headlines just keep coming at you whenever you turn on your TV or log on to social media. Horror piled upon horror, outrage upon outrage, hashtag upon hashtag. It’d be enough to give the Angel of History whiplash! And you’re no mystical angel, you’re just an everyday person trying to make sense of what’s going on. Which is tough, because, as you doubtless know, bad shit is happening.
But here’s the thing: it’s even worse than you realize. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. That’s not what you deserve, and it’s not who I am. I didn’t spend three years in a utility closet in a Palo Alto office park meditating on Von Neumann and Morgenstern’s Theory of Games and Economic Behavior just to fuck around like some unverified pissant on Twitter. And I didn’t just rail a bottle of powdered Adderall XR and pound a case of Clown Shoes’ finest witbier because I want to shine you on. I’m here to lay down some truth harsher than a vindictive Family Court judge on Mother’s Day — because American democracy itself hangs in the balance.
What You Need to Know
All the headlines you’re reading about the antics of our newly installed Dictator, Donald Trump? They’re not just the disjointed signs of a malevolent shitshow administration too inept to coherently implement a marriage of shameless kleptocracy, classic Handmaid’s Tale GOP ghoulishness, and the ambitions of a rageaholic dipsomaniac cosplayer whose worldview is basically one giant Nazi Space Opera. No, they’re part of a long game, a fiendishly deep plan more intricate than anything Cersei Lannister, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Rasputin himself could come up with — combined. Every single headline is connected, and it’s all part of Trump’s plan.
How Can You Tell?
Sure, you may be skeptical. Perhaps you’re saying “The events of any given ‘news-cycle’ are only epiphenomenal to the deeper operations of massive, impersonal institutions and the agendas of a few powerful individuals, filtered through the selection processes of profit-driven news outlets and social media algorithms.” Well, if you believe that, you should just move to Leningrad and rename yourself Ivan, because you’re already doing Putin’s work for him.
Truth is, the news cycle is as objective a unit of time and meaning as sunset to sunrise or the Seven Days of Creation, and once you develop the tools to decode its mysteries you’ll never look at the world the same way again. For example: say in any given 24 hours, there’s a heinous Executive Order about immigration, a Tweet where Trump drags Angela Merkel’s wardrobe, and the Senate confirmation of a Cabinet appointee who thinks we should repeal the Thirteenth Amendment because we have too many Federal regulations already. Now, someone less #woke than you or me might say all these things are nightmares on their own, and tell you all their boring reasons why. But I guarantee you they’re only seeing part of the picture. Some other headline — a fluctuation on the Moscow commodities exchange or the way Julian Assange parted his hair that morning, something nobody is talking about or paying attention to — is actually the key to the whole thing. And once you have that cipher, you can unpack the entire mystery and reveal exactly how deep the enormous conspiracy to ruin America truly runs.
What You Need to Do
It’s simple. Watch your feeds constantly. Journal your thoughts. Keep a log of which news aggregators and pundits you trust. Print out suspicious White House Instagram posts on notecards, nail them to the wall of what used to be your kids’ room, and connect them with red yarn. Tweet about your suspicions constantly, making sure to use the phrase “It’s interesting that …” (an offhanded observation that’s guaranteed to draw out double agents and moles). Finally, put your findings together in a Medium post, click Publish, tell everyone to RT for awareness, and then watch the democracy and justice roll down like rain.
What You Shouldn’t Do
Don’t listen to people who tell you that something is “obviously” wrong on the face of it, or who spin crazytalk about how if we want things to get better we need to reckon with how Trump’s vileness is also a clear continuation of longstanding horrors of American politics. Those people are just dupes, distracted from the distractions, which, as we all know, are where the story of what’s really going on is hidden. And whatever you do, don’t do anything foolish like attending an actual physical protest — these do nothing besides causing “resistance fatigue” and are exactly what Steve Bannon and the FSB want you to do.
Above all, remember: it’s an axiom of democracy that the most important political struggles are fought and won through the consumption and production of #content. These are desperate times, and America’s future hangs on the existence of heroes who can see and liveblog this difficult truth. Do you have it in you?
