Le mot juste
“Fascist” slightly misses the mark. M. Gessen hits a bulls-eye:
Unmarked Vans. Secret Lists. Public Denunciations. Our Police State Has Arrived.
The 4chan White House Communications Office
Beyond the fact that this kind of shitposting is so obviously beneath the office, the posts are genuinely sinister. By adding a photo of an ICE arrest to a light-hearted viral trend, for instance, the White House account manages to perfectly capture the sociopathic, fascistic tone of ironic detachment and glee of the internet’s darkest corners and most malignant trolls. The official X account of the White House isn’t just full of low-rent 4chan musings, it’s an alarming signal of an administration that’s fluent in internet extremism and seemingly dedicated to pursuing its casual cruelty as a chief political export.
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And the posters have goals. The first is to engage and supply their loyal audiences with constant memes and content. The second is perhaps more strategic. The account’s blatant humiliation of immigrants who it alleges have heinous criminal records is intentional. The goal is to goad their opponents into defending people accused of indefensible crimes. The primary accusation from the MAGA faithful toward people who are outraged about the White House’s Studio Ghibli post or the ASMR video is that the left is more concerned with defending fentanyl dealers and immigrants accused of rape and robbery than they are about the safety of the country. “Disappointing that folks are more upset about this meme than they are about the fentanyl crisis,” Dorr said in the same post that the White House pointed me to. But this is a false binary; in all cases, the chief objections are to the dehumanization and glee on display and the worrying lack of due process.
Aspiring Dominatrix-in-Chief Kristi Noem added a $50,000 Rolex to the dehumanization.
Feeling like Abraham
The America I’ve known for all my life is gone. I don’t think it will be back in my lifetime.
I’m not going to complain about God allowing this to happen; I suspect that something like it needed to happen and I trust that my morning prayer for the nation, “Let your judgment be merciful,” is somehow being answered.
But it may be that the merciful thing in the long-term feels very harsh in the moment (and that’s the perception of a citizen who’s relatively safe; imagine the immigrants among us!).
And part of the background thrum that makes the moment unnerving is my concern that the Democrats might do no better.
It feels like an Abraham moment: “Get thee up into a land I will show thee.” No map.
I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.
Simone Weil, from a letter to Georges Bernanos.
[N]one of the things that I care about most have ever proven susceptible to systematic exposition.
Alan Jacobs, Breaking Bread With the Dead
I don’t do any of the major social media, but I have two sub-domains of the domain you’re currently reading: (a) You can read most of my reflexive stuff, especially political here. (b) I also post some things on the only social medium I frequent, because people there are quirky, pleasant and real.
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 