Fatal Distraction (Fight The Memeocracy, Part One.)
Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins. It's as simple as that. The CIA doesn't kill anybody anymore, they neutralize people, or they depopulate the area. The government doesn't lie, it engages in disinformation. The Pentagon actually measures nuclear radiation in something they call sunshine units. Israeli murderers are called commandos, Arab commandos are called terrorists. Contra killers are called freedom fighters. Well, if crime fighters fight crime, and firefighters fight fires, what do freedom fighters fight? ~George Carlin
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Meme
/mēm/
noun
an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.
a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by internet users.
Last week,, I saw this...rather creepy...exchange between MTG and Matt Gaetz. I guess they were talking about going to Arizona and holding one of their Substitute Trump-rallies there or something. I guess that didn't pan out, but let's look at this...
"Election Integrity."
Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins..
I can't imagine the DOJ trying to interfere with what the people of Arizona want...
You mean the people who voted Donald Trump and Martha McSally out? Is that "The People" you're talking about, you dumb hoe?
You mean the people whose votes you're actively trying to cancel, so you can try to bring Trump back in some kind of pale imitation of every dumb-ass, short-lived "Restoration of the Monarchy" that there ever was?
Look here, as one of The People (TM) I'm goddamned sick and tired of being used as a justification for Whatever Republicans Feel Like Doing Today, especially considering that it often directly contradicts what I was taught as a Christian, a conservative, and eventually a young Republican myself, 30 years ago.
Even a fair number of Republicans in Arizona are questioning this "Audit" and the demands and methods of the fly-by-night org conducting it. But then it's not like the name "Cyber Ninjas" doesn't itself invite such questioning, right?
Nor the fact that so far, everybody that these idiots have put in front of a camera is either a flaming racist or obviously fucking nuts. It seems to me that people ranting about stuff like Bamboo fibers and the Illuminati would cause certain questions to be asked, like "Are you insane?"
Their entire actual methodology so far seems to be "Get as many people's private information as possible" which makes me think that the whole goddamned thing is nothing but a scam and somebody's eventually going to try and rob an entire state or subject it to identity theft.
Of course, these are the same fucking people who just threw out Liz Cheney, of all fucking people, for being too honest.
Think about that for a second.
This is the daughter of the guy who sent the world down a crazy rabbit hole and lit half the Middle East on fire over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that simply did not exist.
And all she actually did was admit that Trump lost and refuse to sign on to the Republican "Big Lie" that he didn't.
She did, for all intents and purposes, the literal minimum necessary.
And people have called her Presidential material because of it.
Why?
In the last five years, Republicans themselves have destroyed everything that they ever stood for or ever were before, and they did it for Donald Fucking Trump, who has basically thanked them for their trouble...for their constant abasement towards himself...by letting them twist in the wind. And what's worse, they're continuing to lie to themselves about how popular Trump is, and for what?
You can certainly make the argument that it's about power, or he lets them do what they want, or whatever, and in a sense you're not wrong, either.
And yet you are. It's not any of that...or I should say it's not just any of that. The truth is, if it was just any of that stuff they'd have gone with Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz. Please Clap.
The truth is so much more banal and idiotic, which just makes it worse.
They did this to themselves, and the country, for cheap internet fame.
Because whatever else Trump was, he was a fucking magnet for dumb shit on the internet. His capacity for saying stupid shit, his ugly orange mug, his rambling racism and various insults toward anything and everything made him an instant attention-grabber, an internet sensation whether you were against him or for him, and whether we like it or not these days we're all functionally held as a captive audience to some dumb shit that somebody saw on the internet.
And nobody knows this better than Republicans do, or former Republicans like me, particularly those of us who were stuck dealing with the crazy 20 years ago and should have seen all this coming.
And 20 years of Internet Nihilism and memes later, here we are. If anything, we're lucky things aren't much worse.
Internet Nihilism is a big part of what brought the world Vladimir Putin's long tenure, or Brexit, and the continuing viability of social heroin like fascism and racism.
1/6 was predicated on cheap internet fame. That's why the FBI could bust those people using their own social media posts as evidence. The Revolution will not be televised, it will be Facebooked and Hashtagged and Instagrammed and Twittered. "Look, Mom! I'm overthrowing the government!"
Think I'm wrong?
Standard capitalism or conservatism as written would impose constraints on people's behavior, and demands on people's efforts, energy and time.
If you have to enforce what you say on the world stage ("invade everyone") up to and including potentially the use of force, that takes effort and requires a certain level of engagement with reality and you have to do stuff the right way or even more people die. For that matter, you also have to make sure what you say might even be a little accurate or it all falls apart no matter how much you bomb shit, or threaten to, and you look weak no matter how much bellowing and chest-thumping you do. (See Also, Kingdom, United; Post-Brexit.)
Likewise, standard capitalism ("Invite everyone") is a hungry beast that requires constant feeding or shit starts to backfire. You're always going to need more people. If you don't want to pay good wages and something happens (Like COVID-19 and assorted relief programs because of it) that enables them to, anybody who can is going to find ways to opt out of the system which means you're going to need even more new people and that's all there is to it.
Human nature guarantees that no response to this short of raising wages, improving working conditions and dealing with the virus effectively is going to work. In point of fact, a hell of a lot of those people will end up expecting to have better jobs to go back to work to, and that those they consider to be of lesser status will have taken the jobs they had before...and this is and will be by no means exclusive to white people...and the sick part here is, under a standard capitalistic system with continual immigration they aren't actually wrong in real terms.
Under the kind of closed system that people like Matt Gaetz think they want, they'd find that not only a lot of white people, but many in more established black and brown communities simply don't want to do soul-crushing low-wage service industry type jobs...and in one hell of a lot of cases they'll go without before they go back to that shit. It's fundamentally a status thing. (Again, See Also; Kingdom, United: Post-Brexit.)
Is that wrong? Yes, it actually is in a moral sense, but that's how shit really works.
No job should be soul-crushing.
But, Try telling that to the asshole customers, particularly the anti-mask conservatives who are still wearing their Trump hats six months later, that I have to deal with every work night. These are the people who'll make a mess just so I have to clean it up, while thinking "Dance, monkey, dance!" and then they'll leave 23 cents on the counter by way of "compensation" knowing full well that I can't take tips.
If you want to actually change things, you have to make things better.
Of course that's exactly why conservatives are rabidly against making things any better.
They think it's somehow better to force people to do what they want, to not engage, to not speak to those they deem lesser than themselves. They might disparage George W. Bush for wanting to "Invade everywhere" but the truth is the modern Republicans who've succeeded and superseded him and his type think it would be ideal if they could just have men with guns force their way upon the world.
But in a democratic, capitalist, open society that requires engagement with the world to function, none of this works that way. There's always going to be resistance. And in a free country, eventually the other side is always going to start shooting back.
So, If you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen. Because if you don't, this is what you're going to get.
A video dropped last week of MTG going full Fatal Attraction outside of AOC's office in 2019. As Reed Galen remarks here she's one rabbit short of full Bunny Boiler crazy.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is now in the position of filling the attention-void left by the banishment, collapse and subsequent wilting of Donald Trump. She's getting an assist from Matt Gaetz, but she doesn't really need it.
And MTG, who had this crazy meltdown in front of AOC's office in 2019, was literally a Conservative Internet Rando establishing her cred as an activist at the time.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is the Apotheosis of Cheap Internet Fame, at least Donald Trump had a business and stardom (however questionable on both counts) before he got into politics. Her entire bit, her entire operation could then and now be summed up as what I, frustrated, refer to as "Internet Dumb Shit" and she's ridden that lightning into being the person setting the tone for the future of the Republican Party.
I'm warning you now, that FOX News and people like Kevin McCarthy will never be able to catch up, much less keep up, if nothing else because they are not products of the Internet-driven Post-Information Age as much as MTG is. On the "Conservative" side of the fence it's her (and soon to be, people like her) that are running the show. I'm willing to bet that even Kevin McCarthy will have gone the way of Liz Cheney by November of next year.
Even Matt Gaetz is disposable, and MTG will shank him if his own scandal gets any worse...and the airheaded media will call her a hero for it.
I'm not going to lie, as disturbing as the thought is, it's worth noting that I think this probably won't be the first time or the only way she's fucked him, either.
As for Qevin McCarthy?
The knives are already out for his dumb ass. His last words may well be "Et Tu, Margie?"
Don't doubt that Lauren Blowbert will be his replacement as House Minority Leader, and the Republicans will hail this as part of some commitment to diversity, including intellectual diversity, claiming the high school dropout who worked at MacDonald's brings something to the table, and they'll get people like Newt Gingrich (who for all his faults, mind you, is a no-shit historian) to chime in on that act.
The mob will roar its approval.
And the rest of us had best prepare accordingly, and be prepared to do the work to stop this bullshit.
Otherwise, it's "Welcome to the Memeocracy."
Think I'm kidding? Start the clock and we'll see where they're at in a year. In a year, maybe less, MTG or somebody like her will have replaced Trump as the Republican Jesus.
Bet you it'll be worse than even I think it is. As certain friends of mine say, I've thought about it more than they have already.
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