They must be happy to know that their guy is really in charge, and in charge of the real military, and he’s only allowing Biden to play-act at being president because he’s kind.
They are happy, right?
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I assumed they meant the Great Seal of the United States, which is formally a big deal in attesting some governmental documents, has a history back to the early republic, and looks like the picture on the lectern. But given that’s probably in a safe somewhere in the State Department (it’s in the custody of the Secretary of State) and Trump hasn’t gleefully shown it off to some golfing buddy, that also seems unlikely.
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In fairness, Trump is doing much the same things that he did when he was President, which is to say golfing, grifting and posting angry bullshit on social media. So he’s certainly acting as if he was still President, which makes it hard to say that he’s not.
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Interestingly, magic seals (chops) are apparently still a real thing in Chinese business, at least when it serves the right people’s interests. The CEO of ARM’s Chinese subsidiary seems to have basically seceded from the global parent company, who failed to fire him because he refused to physically relinquish the company chop.
If China had outright nationalised the company, that would be pretty big news, given what the US has done to every other country that tried anything like that. But by clouding the story in weird nonsense about seals, as far as I can see they have in fact nationalised it, with very little attention outside the business press.
The way things work is, you get power by force, trickery, conspiracy etc.; and then you use myths and symbols to make it into Statecraft. Or, what Bagehot called “the efficient and the digniified”. MAGA chuds actually come pretty close to grasping this. I would say they’re less deluded than the kind of West Wing fan who thinks the abstract concepts of “law” or “decency” can exercise power on their own.
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Remember this?
July 2019, Turning Point USA.
Featuring a two-headed (aka Russian) eagle clutching golf clubs.
Now that is trølling.
ETA - found a better image:
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Well, If the Navy has seals, why not the president?
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It also has zero actual meaning or power in law. It might as well be a doodle in the margins as far as its ability to affect the workings of the US government.
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I thought it’s purpose was supposed to be formally attesting the US’s signatures on international agreements etc? I could be wrong: it’s a long time since I studied international relations.
I agree it’s of no practical value. If stolen, they’d just have another one engraved.
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That’s what happens when you forget to put fringes on things.
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Does “45 Es Un Titere” translate to “45 is a puppet”, or am I reading it wrong?
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Yes, it does. Nice touch, innit?
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What weirds me out about these sorts isn’t so much their adherence to symbol over substance(which does look ridiculous in the edge cases where you are insisting that the world is not as it seems because of flag fringe or who has the Real True Presidential Seal, as knocked together by the props department maybe 50 years ago, if it has been handled gently; but which is generally encouraged by entities that have actual power because getting people to consent to symbolic measures is a lot easier and less risky than having to use force a lot); but that it doesn’t seem to deter them from having an interest in cheating at symbols and, if anything, sometimes seems to degenerate into a complete inversion of symbol and symbolized that turns into an attempt to practice ritual magic by futzing with the symbols.
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They’re definitely referring the Seal of the President, not the Great Seal, since that’s the one that exists on the lectern.
The Seal of the President was modeled after the obverse of the Great Seal, but they added some marshmallows on skewers (presumably to represent our great love of s’mores), removed one of the arrows (presumably to represent no one bothering to fight over Maryland during the Revolution) and made the eagle stare up in concentration (presumably using its telekinetic powers to keep the banner up).
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Those little orbs should be golf balls.
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