Autocracy Watch
It’s OK, He Just Plays a Neo-Nazi-Sympathizing Sociopath on TV
The 2025 G7 summit should be fun …
Good for David Lammy. If JD Vance gets a pass for saying even nastier things about POTUS XLV years ago, why shouldn’t the UK’s new Foreign Secretary, as well. Love the part about Spanko’s “thick skin”. Talk about postmodernism.
That’s our theme for today.
The entire politico-legal-media industrial complex, other than its greenest entry-level rookies, understands, down to its ribosomes, that we live in a world of “incredulity toward meta-narratives” … which is how Jean-François Lyotard defined the term ‘postmodern’ when he coined it back in 1979.
In less Frenchie-philosopher-speak: there is no reality.
What’s on the screens aren’t representations of reality, the pixels and sound are what is.
(Oh yes, and the only thing that matters, that isn’t virtual/socially constructed, is power. See Nietzsche/Lenin/Machiavelli/Thucydides.)
Why do you think The Zuck rebranded Facebook (a book, a representation of real faces) to Meta? That’s almost as ultimate a symbol to own as ‘X’ … or ‘✝️’.
How’s this for irony: the political party of Capital, its power built on a base of superstitious theocratic xenophobic blue collar (= Labor) bumpkins, has achieved the 1960s radical Continental philosopher ideal of the complete obliteration of the Enlightenment (understood first and foremost as an epistemological project).
I won’t belabor the founding of the USA as the Great Experiment in testing whether an entire “new order of the ages” could be established on those principles. MAGA being about definitively closing that chapter in world history, with a resounding “No!”
When reality is no longer, and we’re all in a 24x7 metaverse, whether on our VR headsets or not, is it any wonder that one team’s Head Pig (to use the Roger Waters taxonomy … duckduckgo.com(“Pink Floyd Animals”) if that one’s too obscure) has only ever succeeded as a Reality TV game show star. The Apprentice ran for 13 years. My President still has a few seasons to go.
Lucky US.
The feed these last couple of days bringing these bon-bons:
- MAGA Christian Nationalists unhappy over the Indian presence at the RNC:
[Propaganda tip for the blues and/or the Lincoln Project: narrow-cast an ad with Dhillon, Ramaswamy, Haley and Mrs. Vance to the most rabid evangelical red precincts in PA/WI/MI/GA. Take a page out of the 2016 Cambridge Analytica/Bannon/Manafort/KGB playbook. Make sure to begin and end the ad with this prayer.]
“When we say God, we mean ours, not yours!!!” Jews and Catholics, take note.
- A gang of GOP US Senators chasing and harassing the female head of the Secret Service on the floor of the convention:
Now, which party is the one that’s encouraging political violence again? Har. A TikTok clip for the influencers, I guess.
- Kevin McCarthy and Matt Gaetz refreshing their feud on camera
- Peter Navarro hot-foot from FCI Miami to the RNC podium
- Elon Musk, fresh from Xi Jinping bailing him out, goes all in bankrolling Trump
- the start of the long-awaited Wall Street crash (keep an eye on the VIX) … or just a little blip
- youngs trending red?
That means you, Jim Clyburn, and, yes, even you Madam FLOTUS. I understand you believe in your man. I understand how long that black line in the graph stayed high, even when the news cycle seemed to be moving against your guy … not budging much after the debate debacle.
But now think of his legacy. Think of the tarnish on RBG’s, from likewise staying too long. How far and fast her reputation has fallen. If Joe goes down as the cranky, senile, stubborn old geezer who took down his whole party and handed the country, our alliances and the whole planet over to the forces of autocracy.
The man who single-handedly killed democracy.
