the white house twitter posting ghibli ai edits of ICE arrests or “asmr” of innocent people being extradited to gulags or “WE WILL FIND YOU AND WE WILL KILL YOU” is the natural conclusion of Sassy Brand Twitter
the arrests cost us a lot of money! there is no material gain to this! it’s just brand management. photo ops. memes.
american politics has not been this visceral in generations. it’s terrifying to imagine where it will go next. you might be addicted to bad news. it’s very easy to be drawn to fear. the cultists feel the same way! violence is exciting! terror is exciting! in the same sense that stockhausen called 9/11 a great work of avant garde art this state violence is a theater of cruelty for the pent up rage of much of america.
america’s bizarre infrastructure has engineered a populace of deeply misanthropic isolated little kings who yearn for wars of conquest or at least the chance to defend their petty territories. yarvin’s neo-feudal fantasy is here - it was always here - it was the small business owner, jefferson’s yeoman farmer, cowboys and indians, Ring doorbells. they want the zombie apocalypse! they want the purge! they want to kill! they want pain that is real, that hurts to watch, and yes, they want to wear the boot but they also want to be under the boot.
why do people drive fucking tanks in the suburbs?
why the fuck do people have “favorite commercials”?
America, the constitution, democracy, is a series of rituals with no solid ground. under all of that lies a machine which seeks EFFICIENCY, that is, the optimal accumulation of capital. it is a death drive - endlessly approaching infinity and in doing so overwriting all codes all rituals and all culture til all that is left is whatever moves the line up up up to heaven
communication is culture. mass media, social media. it too was swallowed. it too has been warped in the name of EFFICIENCY. native advertising, bots, influencers, “this video is sponsored by”, Brand Accounts for you to form parasocial attachments to.
“It is nothing but the definite social relation, between men, themselves, which assumes here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between things.” - Karl Marx, Capital Vol 1
it’s no surprise a reality tv star is at the center of this. reality tv was always a theater of cruelty, beginning with the televised state violence of COPS. we love an asshole! be an asshole for the camera! put on a show! we want to see the underbelly we want to see the sausage get made we want a horror movie that scares us for real and we want it in a nice package.
EARTH IS FINITE, THE PURSUIT OF INFINITY IS SUICIDE
YOU DO NOT WANT TO RUN A NATION LIKE A CORPORATION
YOU DO NOT WANT AN EFFICIENT GOVERNMENT
YOU DO NOT WANT TO OPTIMIZE YOUR LIFE
WASTED TIME IS TIME SPENT LIVING FOR THE SAKE OF LIFE ITSELF
“We need to get better at treating this like a business, like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings” - Todd Lyons, director of ICE