it's so bizarre to me how the administration's understanding of what makes authoritarianism is not, you know, patronage and regime consolidation, but such hamfisted propaganda it wouldn't get past a hollywood copyeditor. like, they genuinely think the poster is how they win, not consolidation.
Trump can’t do anything right. Not even fascism.
they do patronage, it's just primarily in the form of fan service to 27 year old bap staffers on twitter
trump's heart has always belong to theater so of course he likes the theater of authoritarianism
They don't think liberals genuinely believe the things we do. They think we are all just mindlessly repeating what we see in the media, and if they just push out enough conservative propaganda, liberalism will disappear.
'the cathedral' and his consequnces
It makes sense in a warped way. Trump is an entirely mediated entity. His whole life has been about manipulating media coverage in order to "succeed" via ppl buying the image of him rather than the reality. Its potemkin fascism coming from one of the most potemkin dudes this countrys ever created.
Where Trump ran into issues in his first term--and where hes tunning into issues now--is the spaces/things that cant be bullshitted away via a good media presence. Materiality does in fact exist & it doesnt care what an aging huckster says on tv.
E.g. you can't change the path of a hurricane with a sharpie.
It both stems from Trump's media instincts, and owes to the fact that Trump's a television addict himself. So if you're a Trump underling told to go out and do fascism and you want to please the boss, you're going to err toward showy bullshit that he sees on TV over anything dull and effectual.
Makes total and utter sense from a psychoanalysis standpoint [ This is the bad place ] Irritable Mental Gestures me paraphrasing and get69ng the other mans words wrong. keeping the fat fingers spelling error to demonstrate the flaws of cult of action in regards to communication. The SLIP !
Now you saw my bizarre word 😯 it was meant to be getting
The proof of an actual dictator's real power is that they can just hang up their picture everywhere without having to conceal it behind a dumbass slogan.
Potemkin Matryoshka dolls
Valid point about a focus on aesthetics, but if you’re not seeing consolidation and patronage, you might be missing the plot.
the coalition is tearing itself apart over any myriad number of issues and there's approximately zero patronage being dispensed (in fact, much the opposite) to the key economic power brokers
Who is going to stop them though? Genuinely. If they keep winning they’ll eventually get there.
I also think the power brokers metric is a sliding scale. From my vantage point, I see positions of power brokered out to patrons, more who have cultural cache but some with financial cache, and that furthers the consolidation. It depends on where you look and how you define it.
i am apparently blocked by the image poster would you mind sharing it here
Baudrillard warned us
The man's spent his entire adult life in construction, but once one's gotten a glimpse of his interior decorating, it's not hard to grasp his paucity of understanding for just about anything below the surface.
Internet poisoning. We’ll see if the entire world is really vibes.
Everyone's saying this, but politics has always involved putting on a show. A ruler is legitimate if people think they're legitimate. Soldiers obey who they see the other soldiers obeying. Trump & co take it further, but it's an old phenomenon
The despot is a senile TV addict, so all the work is left to 25 year old 4chan shitposters who think they get their 1000 year reich if they make the women who wouldn’t date them in college cry.
I feel we’re brushing over the fact that the Boss is an image-obsessed TV gameshow charlatan. This and the sycophantic cabinet meetings are to project an image of strongmanism back at Biff, personally. Actually possessing that power is secondary to appearances, really.
We're currently ruled by content creators who seem to only understand imagery and haven't learned to play the power game yet.
There's a scene in Office Space where Michael Bolton complains that crime shouldn't be so hard, since they are so much smarter than criminals. They have read the steps to fascism in a dozen books, and figured its a checklist. But, that bloodless list isn't getting them an instant Reich.
"in 1984 there were posters of Big Brother everywhere, so if we put posters of Trump everywhere, we get to be dictator" is what they seem to genuinely believe. I don't know if it's a function of not knowing how to do consolidation, or what, but it's clearly what they're trying.
every single one of them lives in a world of pure simulacra and only ever impacts the real world because they don't even know it is there this is the same thing as what you said but makes it a permanent property of how they see all things
There's plenty of patronage and clientele and cronyism and attempted gleichshaltung. They're bad at it, but in the face of so much media indifference and Democratic diffidence, they don't have to be fascist ninjas to succeed.
Everything they do can be traced to one goal: does this annoy a lib somewhere?
It's what they all believe but only maybe 2% of them "understand," and that 2% isn't directly in charge, which is why it isn't working. To the extent Trump himself "knows" anything, it's optics matter more than actions because more people (especially MAGA "people") will see a thing on TV... 1/3
...or on Twitter than ever experience it firsthand; so it "matters more" to have 'money shots' of soldiers standing around and "libs crying occupation!" than actually DOING occupation, same as signing go-nowhere EOs instead of passing actual legislation ("I DECLARE DOGS BETTER THAN CATS!") 2/3
It's like an inversion of the conventional Fascist model, where you want the ugliness/evil under wraps while "the trains run on time" is the orderly "nothing wrong" surface: Trumpism is a gaudy Mussolini Reality Show for Twitter and Fox out front, while IRL it's another GQP tax-cut presidency 3/3
It may be half assed consolidation but there are real changes to the fabric of American civic and constitutional society right now, this is a comical form of it, but this seat of the pants fascism has better odds of entrenching than given credit for
I think it is a combo of being lazy and thinking that the support of the tech industry bosses is enough. Also wonder how deep “Cathedral” belief goes. If they are true believers it makes some sense but they have too many “smartest boys”. Not raising military pay and current DHS pay is their downfall
A more distressing takes is that the fascists don't *really* believe that - but they know that the libs believe that, so they do it because it causes panic, despair, learned helplessness and compliance-in-advance.
Fascists believe in power through the ‘strong will’ of a ‘strong man’.
It’s the Great Leap Backward. bsky.app/profile/casc...
It does remind me of the portrait of Mao In Tiananmen Square.
We nailed this months ago. Welcome to the Cassandra club!
I thought I was its president!
We can vie for the crown.
Is the competition based on correct predictions or most pessimistic without being obviously wrong?
It’s based on ballots, punched a poll site. No mail in ballots, no predictions, and I’m going to gerrymander.
Stop the steal!!!
To be clear: President just means king?
The first rule of Cassandra Club is, no-one ever listens to the rules of Cassandra Club. (Or anything else about it, obviously)
But do they vote for leadership of the Cassandra Club?
If ICE’s $100b hiring spree isn’t patronage, then what is?
Here's what kills me daily: It works on the desired audience either in spite of or because of the abject clunkiness.
Because they fell in love with the image and have little understanding or respect of the hard work going into it. They’re LARPer wannabes.
Seems like this is a product of administration members trying to curry favor with Trump by presenting him with new powers to wield and DPRK aesthetics. Their overarching goals are very half baked and much of the activity is just vile little mouths lunging about in search of an ass to kiss.
What’s even weirder is how all institutions from the media to Congress to corporations react to the propaganda as if it is consolidation
Man in the High Castle directors would have toned this down
reality-tv brained
"I'm not an authoritarian, but I play one on TV"
On that note, is it copium to be more optimistic at seeing the "Trump is pissy at the Army for not proper goose-stepping" stories because it shows there are still fissures between him and the brass?
It’s copium because what Hegseth is doing is kicking out the “fissures” and they’ll promote those who would love to “stick it to the libs” and those are the ones that ache to throw people from helicopters and execute folks in the street
there have been less than a dozen firings
How many are being separated due to shifting rules on LGBT+ service members or civilian employees?
Maybe there were only a dozen who gave a straightforward “no” answer when asked if Trump can put active duty troops on patrol in blue states whenever he feels like it. The ones who hemmed and hawed and said well it depends on the details got to stay for now, but they’ve been warned
Some of it will also be Hegseth going along with intra-military vendettas... for example: bsky.app/profile/wesl...
The big thing is, while it's an authoritarian regime in general, there's so many ppl in it looking out purely for themselves that the true consolidation needed won't happen. Majority just wanna get their nut and ride it out just paying Trump toll on occasion