Wednesday, September 7, 2022
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 294
The most recent U.S. aid package, $3 billion aimed at supplying current material and building long-term capacity, features a new weapon: the Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment (VAMPIRE). The confusingly named system is not the first or most capable air defense system the Biden administration has supplied to Ukraine, but its unique features and price point put it on the frontier of the evolving fight against small drones.
New American ‘VAMPIRE’ Weapon Could Crush Putin’s War
Tuesday, September 6, 2022
GO. OUT. SIDE. vol. 66
In the case of far-right ear-flicking such as this fiction-laced retelling of the Hunter Biden laptop nothingburger, a writeup in a semi-reputable publication like the Guardian gives hyperventilating Breitbart commenters all the ammo they need to prove that the libs have been thoroughly and irrefutably triggered. The truth is that the latest feature-length output from the conservative peanut gallery poses little threat to the viewing public, its foamy-mouthed partisanship speaking only to those already simpatico to its theories and alienating the saner majority within its opening minutes. It doesn’t deserve time or mental energy from right-thinking citizens, but if the past decade of American politics has taught us anything, it’s that ignoring extremism does not make it go away.
And so an intrepid critic has no choice but to tromp into the dank bog of paranoia and conspiracy theorizing that is the sophomore directorial effort from Robert Davi. (His only other credit being 2007’s forgotten The Dukes, he’s perhaps most fondly remembered as the sleazy club owner in Showgirls who muses to Elizabeth Berkley, “Must be weird not having anybody cum on you.”) In its hermetically sealed ideology, under which all of the favored Trumpian talking points about alleged corruption in the Biden administration can’t be countered with the real-world examples of his own misdeeds, the film offers fringe lunatics a safe space. “This is not a true story,” says a Secret Service agent with a smirk, moments after the currently sitting president takes a deep whiff of her hair. “Except for all the facts.” To ensure that the truth-to-power self-aggrandizement comes across loud and clear, these words also appear onscreen.
The film is much more secure in the vehemency of its anger than the hows or whys, starting with a news montage of flaming violence during Black Lives Matter protests that huffs and puffs on a racist dogwhistle. This has nothing to do with the proposed Biden crime syndicate, but like so many of the pushed buttons, serves to stoke the embers of rage in a presumed viewer all too excited to spend two hours fuming in like-minded company. That mentality of paradoxically paired grievance and gloating is the only way to explain the weirder flourishes, all of which suggest someone laughing a little too hard in an effort to appear not-mad.
That none of this actually makes any sense isn’t much of a problem; modern rightwing thought has relied on vibes over threads of logic for years now, assured of its own effectiveness so long as the correct fears and resentments have been exploited.
Davi wants to take a victory lap without the victory, so his only recourse is to build a tiny, isolated universe in which he and his cohort get to play winner. The creation of an alternate reality makes for a troubling yet apt sendoff, representative of a toxic strain of Q-adjacent conservatism that relies upon casting its subscribers as hero and star in an epic drama only they can see. “Maybe, in the end, the truth itself became the fairytale,” Grace says through the fourth wall. Whatever that means, sure, fine – but it does suggest the corollary that for those sympathetic to this movie’s tinfoil-hatted mumbo-jumbo, fairytales have taken the place of truth.
Laurence Fox and Gina Carano star in an unhinged low-budget drama based less on fact and more on conspiracy theory
Monday, September 5, 2022
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 293
The short and simplistic explanation is that journalists are most comfortable in the non-committed middle of political debates. A zero-sum power game determines who governs, and the reporter gets their credibility from calling the game without commenting on who’s right. This is a pretty old idea.
What’s new is the urgency. Every one of these reporters knows the gravity of the threat Biden identified, even if he did it in the context of politics (does a president even have another context?). All of them know that the GOP is effectively an anti-democratic party now, and that its authoritarian-populist momentum probably isn’t subsiding any time soon, no matter what happens to Trump.
Even though more and more of the press has grasped the emergency, bothsidesism is clearly alive and well.
Biden Finally Understands the MAGA Threat. Why Can’t the Media?
Sunday, September 4, 2022
U.S.A.! U.S.A! vol. 292
If one is feeling pessimistic about the future — that’s been a safe enough bet lately — there are a couple of possibilities to consider. It could be that even after Trump is finally routed, by prosecutors or voters or old age, he will have to be recognized as the supreme political innovator of his age. For a generation after FDR, or JFK, or Reagan, even politicians who did not embrace their policies often wove elements of their styles into their own public presentations. Perhaps that is what we are seeing again, when even a Democrat like Maloney talks trash about a fellow Democrat, in uncomfortably personal terms, with language that would have been astonishing seven years ago but is now only of passing note.
A more troubling possibility, however, might be that Trump is not the cause of the new crudeness and rudeness of contemporary politics — just an especially florid manifestation of much deeper trends. The paradox of modern technology, especially as harnessed by social media, is that it is especially proficient in unleashing primitive dimensions of human character. That suggests a renaissance of insult, indignation and conspiracy theory — the signatures of the politics of contempt — is going to be with us for a long time to come no matter what happens to Trump.
But why so glum? Pessimism becomes boring after a while. So, for that matter, does outlandish political rhetoric. In 2019, 85 percent of voters had already said political debate in the U.S. had become more disrespectful and negative over the last few years; things have only worsened since then. It’s at least worth considering the possibility that what we observed this summer was not a forerunner of the future but the spasms of a trend that may be running its course.
How Trump Taught Everybody to Be Obnoxious and Cruel
Trump's instinct for casual savagery used to be abnormal. Now it's part of the everyday diet of American political life, replicated by both Democrats and Republicans.
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