The Demagogues Are Here (and They're Smarter Than Trump)
As attempted coups go, that was a fucking mess.
Trump, like the anarchists and zealots he emboldened (on both sides of the horseshoe), had no other strategy than Burn it all down and see what happens. His M.O. was so incredibly transparent to anyone paying attention. First, distract and deflect from anything he couldn't lie about. Second, lie. BIG. A lot. The more truth obfuscated, the less centralized the potential for objectivity until all truth fits the postmodernist subjective reality mold. Third, use the passions and emotional immaturity of those most convinced by the lies to inflame the situation. Wind 'em up and let them go.
Granted, we have to give the man some credit. He introduced incredibly sticky terminology that will far outlast his four years in office. Fake News. "Everybody knows" as a sign of evidence or proof. "Loser" has taken on an entirely enlarged importance due to Trump. While primarily the quintessential bullshit artist, the man knew exactly how to use social media in ways that have been constructive for everyone from middle school kids trying to out their classroom bullies to college students unhappy with their professors.
His use of Hitler's Big Lie technique is almost unparalleled.
So, if the man was so good at this despot thing why was his coup attempt so blatantly obvious and unsuccessful?
Ego. Trump is so in love with himself and the aura of invincibility he's created that he didn't care that it was in plain sight. He wanted it to be in plain sight so that he, and only he, would get the credit for it in the end. Hitler had a host of sidemen, each equally brilliant and despicable as he. Trump surrounded himself with sub-par bigots, industry insiders, and his moron children so that he was always the smartest person in the room.
His only real problem is that he is far from the smartest person in Washington, D.C.
The only action that will eliminate his threat to our country (or at least severely minimize it) is in the hands of the Gods of Social Media. Take away his bully pulpit and Don Jr. is the only one he reaches. Zuckerberg snapped his FB and Insta until after January 20 but he should consider it permanent if mitigating the TrumpFire is a goal. Twitter has closed him out temporarily—should be permanent.
Yes, Trump will be a problem for us until the fatass finally clogs his heart-hole up with a Big Mac and he croaks on the shitter like Elvis, but at this point, we have more insidious things to worry about.
The demagogues of 2021 have been watching. They've been fine-tuning their approach to power and are constructing their own Big Lies to spread. Unlike Trump, they aren't supposed captains of industry and have no designs on public office. They've seen the constraints of political power and know those obstacles are not the clear road to dominance.
Like Trump, they've seen the power of populism gone rogue and intend to use us against ourselves in exactly the same way. That's how Trump came to power. The Russian hackers didn't rig our election, change votes, or tamper with machinery. They hit us where we can't see it: social media propaganda. They ginned up our own hatred for one another and jacked us all up emotionally. They used our own blind faith in the authority of the internet to divide and conquer. It was nearly flawless and extremely effective.
It's easy to see the asshats who breached the Capitol as stupid morons, stealing lecterns and taking selfies but each one is you. Each one is a normal American who was victim of propaganda. Every QAnon believer has been messaged to over time until the conspiracy seems reasonable.
There has been plenty of handwringing think pieces written about the dangers of both social media and populism. Populism is not in and of itself a bad thing. It is, on its face, the ideal behind our democracy after all. Neither is social media. How could a technology that allows my mom to see pictures of my wife and I in Rhyolite, NV or David Himmel's parents see videos of his two-year-old son saying "Fuck" be evil? Nonetheless, the combination of the two elements create a potentially deadly mix.
As recently as this time last year, when confronted with the idea that so-called hate speech should receive censorship, my eyes would roll around like marbles in a coffee cup. The very concept of censorship in a marketplace of ideas is against everything I believe America to stand for yet, after watching anti-vaxxers, QAnoners, maskholes, and Donald Fucking Trump use the unlimited reach of the internet to poison that very marketplace, I have to re-examine my stance.
I have to imagine what the Third Reich would've been if Goebbels had had Faceborg, and the thought is horrifying. If Hanoi Hannah had Twitter instead of the radio? Christ. These sorts of propagandists are not new. In a war, messaging to the enemy has been standard operating practice since Alexander the Great ("Great," see?) but the addition of the awesome reach of our modern-day soma is giving the Big Lies rocket fuel.
We have licenses to drive and speed limits because there are always going to be few who can't be trusted to drive responsibly. We have licenses for owning guns because a few are always going to use them criminally. Perhaps, in the argument to somehow regulate communication we require a license to tweet? Yeah, I hear you. How dare we even consider something so legislative? The libertarians will go apeshit at the government overreach. Right now the internet is only regulated in any meaningful way by the providers. For a large enough fee, you can use it without limitation.
Perhaps the internet should be a public utility like water or electricity? Sure, you're still gonna punish black people in Flint, MI but at least there are legal remedies to that sort of bigoted grift. Whatever the answer, we need to be talking about this now. QAnon came to be via an unlicensed, anonymous jackass convincing otherwise reasonable people that there was a pedophile ring in the basement of pizza parlor in D.C. run by Hillary Clinton. That's the kind of spew one would hear from a raging lunatic digging into a trash can on a street corner wearing stuffed animals for shoes but somehow, on the internet, it suddenly seems more plausible to the gentle-minded few looking for answers to the question "What did Hillary do with those seven year olds who only wanted a slice?"
Expanding the definition of hate speech isn't going to help us. The further we go to muddy the waters of what is and is not hate speech has left us with the notion that everyone white is racist and that everyone Asian is also white. The expansion of hate speech has us somehow agreeing that a dirty joke in the wrong setting constitutes assault and that sort of thinking is just one virtue signal away from being Pizzagate.
No. The demagogues have been watching and waiting and Trump's yuge shadow merely kept the light of day off of them. He'll be out of the picture (at least as much as he'll accept it) soon enough and those Capitol-storming jack holes and Seattle-burning Antifa posers will find another power-thirsty grifter to follow like Moses did a shrub on fire.
You'll know them because their credo has no evidence for their conclusions, it centers on them as the experts, denies corroboration from science or credible expertise, and intentionally creates division and Otherism in order to maintain a foothold into the mania that is their Big Lie.
They are also smarter than Trump so their coup will be sneakier and far, far more effective.
