I think that was the most dispiriting thing for me, as a foreigner, about the whole Trump affair.
It made it clear that once things are far enough along, tribe is way more important than anything. As long as Trump keeps saying what the tribe wants to hear, his actions are utterly irrelevant.
It also made history make a lot more sense. Before history was full of people following leaders to obvious self-destruction and it had a vague sense of “I guess people couldn’t think back then”. Now I understand that no, it is simply people being human.
This less tribalistic interregnum may well have been an aberration and that leaders who give people the tribe they have so desperately desired for so many years may well be the model for the future.
But then contemplating Trump brings out the pessimist in almost anyone I know, either liberal or conservative.
I wish I could give this more “likes”. Just as brilliant as Sarah Cooper. Someone should hack all his speeches and replace the voice. The lip smacking noises were the cherry on top.
Sarah Cooper’s performance also lets me recognize the same narcissistic idiocy in my former bosses and co-workers. Somehow, it’s no longer Trump, the character, but representative of all the dangerous toxic people I need to learn to identify quickly and stay away from.
Many folks have observed that the systemic structure of our tech platforms rewards outrage and conflict. Both sides throw red meat to their bases and reap the rewards. I get why people applaud this sort of thing but it’s also a kind of tribal blindness on the Left that they don’t see this as adding fire to the hatred and division they decry on the Right. Content like this will in no way convince anyone who doesn’t hate Trump to suddenly start hating him. It’s tribal echo-chamber ridicule, and it has a cost.
Trump is a human being. The Left really does have a pathology in which literally nothing Trump does can be in any way acknowledged or praised, only attacked. This stance does nothing to resist the actual policies the Left supposedly opposes; it only serves to fire up more hatred in the base.
This is a VERY dangerous moment in America and the tendency of both sides to throw virulent attacks at one another greatly increases the likelihood of a catastrophic break in the social fiber. Maybe sooner than any of us can imagine.
Shock Doctrine can work both ways. We have a unique opportunity to restructure the entire dysfunctional social order before it’s too late. Feeding tribal hatred is the exact wrong move, especially now.
Note: Please don’t make assumptions about my political allegiances – or lack thereof – by my strong condemnation of hateful speech directed at your political enemies. Memetic ridicule ≠ #Resistance.
Liberals mock Trump by quoting his actual words, in context.
Trumpists attack liberals by making up crazy shit, like Birtherism or Pizzagate or Obamagate or “Plandemic.”
Know why nobody on the right never did one of these lip-syncs for Obama? Because Obama never said anything so blatantly ridiculous in a press conference that the mere act of saying the words aloud made people seriously question his basic mental faculties.
If playing a recording of the President’s own words in context is “hateful speech” then it’s clearly the President who is the problem, not the people mocking him.
How if you’re fucking a goat ironically, you’re still a goatfucker?
WELL, ALSO, at the other end of the rhetorical spectrum, if you’re fucking a goat on principle, because goatfucking is protected by the Constitution and after all there are fine goats on both sides, …
The golden rule is nice, and it would be great if such an intuitive, satisfying core philosophy could solve every problem, but…it doesn’t work so well when the group you oppose is working with a different set of hermeneutics…
Also, pointing out to a vaguely defined group that the leader they (anonymously) voted for is rotten and incompetent is not a direct violation of their egos. They can walk away any time and unless they’ve slathered themselves in MAGAwear (narrator: they have), no one need be the wiser.
