Hear me out here, but maybe it would help sell your agenda to fully prosecute a tyrannical, irresponsible, criminal of an ex-president, which is the right thing to do anyway, and make the case that an ambitious new direction isn’t just necessary but imperative.
But, what do I know. I’m not an overpaid political consultant who’s lost 98% of the campaigns I’ve worked on and eaten dirt every time I’ve been in power but keeps getting massive jobs because I already know everybody anyway. Maybe it really is “complicated.”
The degree to which the Democratic Party can continue to make the same, predictable mistakes, and how those mistakes are so often spurred and directed by a class of centrist, talentless mercenary consultants, is just truly and breathtakingly astounding.
Years and years of the same Politico articles. The same anonymous quotes. The same trepidation. You could just write these things in advance and spend years on vacation. It’s the same people doling out the same bad advice and playing the same bad games while people suffer.
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For people who want to know just how dangerous conspiracy theories like Qanon are, and want to know how and why we must defeat them, let's talk about the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and what these paranoid appeals are capable of doing.
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We need to start back in 1682, with a cartoon printed by Francis Barlow called "A True Narrative of the Horrid Hellish Popish Plot."
From the beginning of the printed word conspiracy theories about deep states and international plots were being disseminated.
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This "Popish" conspiracy theory claimed that the Pope and the Catholic Church planned on overthrowing England using a "state within a state" that would undermine the nation and turn its citizens into Catholic slaves.
Thinking a lot today about how fortunate we all are that Trump is an absolute coward. Coup attempts, plots to overthrow the election, war-brinksmanship. Things could’ve been so, so much worse if he was made of sterner stuff.
Watching Mike Lindell’s documentary was like realizing I’d narrowly avoided being struck by lightning in the past. The madness Lindell and Sidney Powell surrounded Trump with, and the madness Trump listened to, was as toxic and deranged as it gets.
Reading accounts now of the meeting Powell and Flynn had in the Oval Office, where Trump listened to their plans for coups and takeovers, waiting on someone to just carry it out for him...if he would’ve acted on any of this we would’ve been in real trouble.
Again. Do not retweet or respond to these blatant attempts to provoke outrage. It only amplifies her reach and gives her impressions. She isn’t in DC to govern, to make anyone’s life better, she’s there to build a brand for herself.
We have to learn from the past.
We’re dealing with an incredibly dangerous thing here, a generation of fame-obsessed people who traffic in fascistic ideas and inspire violence as a means of self-aggrandizement, profit, and, sadly enough, brand development. We have to change how we deal with this.
If you feel the need to deal with people like MTG, to get information out, don’t retweet, quote tweet, or respond. Screenshot, explain what she’s doing to try and distill the poison, and recognize this is a communications strategy she’s employing.
Politics has been turned into a reality television show. It’s no surprise that we’ve reached the point where fame-desperate grifters are performing in an attempt to get elected, act as disrupters, and push the political system into dangerous chaos.
Actors like MTG and Boebert are running a no-lose grift. They’ll either gain political ascendency, with no actual platform beyond self-aggrandizement, or they’ll fail and profit off that failure as perceived persecution. None of it has anything to do with making America better.
Trump’s turn at using politics as a grift broke the seal wide open and the shift is toward politics-as-entertainment-as-a-grift-as-a-platform-builder. It’s a cynical, dangerous shift, especially as paranoid, fascistic appeals are inherent in the process.
By saying something stupid, offensive, cruel, and misogynistic, the troll set off an outrage that grew his profile and undoubtedly raised disturbing levels of money from people who love it when people are rightfully outraged.
This political economy is broken.
And yes, I’m talking about the most recent incident, but this bad faith grift has trended this country toward authoritarian fascism, has powered the entire Right Wing ecosystem, boosted Trump and MTG and Boebert and that whole gaggle of dangerous grifters.
As long as people see a financial incentive to being cruel and racist and misogynistic and fascistic and in destroying shared society they’re going to take it and it’s going to continue to cost us lives and valuable, precious time.
We don’t talk enough about the relationship between online-interactive conspiracy theories and the corporate strategy of increasing interest in movies and TV shows by injecting Easter eggs and puzzle boxes to spur online chatter.
Internet-era viral marketing, dropping hints into properties to inspire online articles and social media chatter that prioritizes obsessive fandom and rewards investigative consumption, taught consumers to view everything as a treasure hunt for hidden knowledge.
Anymore, the most popular properties are ones that inspire sleuthing, piecing together clues, restless conjecture and repeated viewings for narrative construction that benefits “researchers”
who interpret hidden “clues.” Movements like QAnon just bring it into political reality.