I wrote most of this as a comment on a friend’s FB post forwarding a statement from the Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson. The quote I start with is from him, abbreviated slightly by me. It’s something I want to write about more but don’t usually have the bandwidth. This post is a reasonable start on it.
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“The willing fists of a regime that cannot solve real problems so must invent new spectacles” is on the nose. (Tufts seems to be backing their students & this one in particular, legally.) I’m incredibly concerned how eager some folks are to be anonymous jackbooted thugs disappearing people off the street. But beyond that, the GOP can’t solve problems. Because they try to only ever “solve” problems they made up, so when an actual problem arrives they have no tools to solve it, except (1) spin through their propaganda machine helmed by Fox and (2) distraction. The distractions/spectacles they choose are life & death stakes as well as a clear & present danger to individuals, marginalized folks specifically, & democracy generally. They disappear people to convince us not to point out that they’re useless and unable to meet the demands of their jobs.
The main purpose of Fox “news” entertainment is to gin up outrage over fake problems. The fake problems have a grain of truth for verisimilitude but, crucially, aren’t actually problems that need immediate attention or complex solutions. They’re a PR “problem”. They’re spin.
When democrats get hounded about these ginned up problems out of the blue they look unprepared. Because they _aren’t_ prepared to discuss made up nonsense. By the time they assemble the facts to address this concern - as the media won’t let them dismiss it out of hand as would be proper for made up nonsense - they get hit with some new ginned up nonsense or are accused of doing nothing about the 1st ginned up nonsense because of course they haven’t been working on a problem that the GOP spin machine invented on Tuesday. Meanwhile all this scrambling prevents them from pursuing their own agendas
They the GOP spin machine keep this topic going (but her emails!, migrant hordes overrunning borders) for as long as it serves to harass & distract people from perusing modern, relevant agendas (climate change, ahem). If the GOP gets elected they either drop the topic all together, pass draconian laws to “solve” the non problem they invented, or just claim that tgey’ve solved it, secure in the knowledge that investigation will show it’s no longer a problem - because it never was a problem at all or not a problem on the scale of their claims. It was always spin meant to derail progress by diverting attention from real problems that need real solutions. And this is how the GOP have “solved” problems for my entire adulthood.
So when they’re asked to address real problems like, say, a pandemic, they have no tools but PR. They have no problem solving skills beyond spin through propaganda. They exist to avoid letting people who mean well solve problems. It was ironic that in Rick’s statement saying as much, he listed off several of the fake problems as real ones, because sometimes even they forget not to buy what they’re selling.
(insert paragraph about feckless dems who claim to want to solve real problems then let just enough of their caucus defect so that they “can’t” pass that bill, so sowwy. But slow walking real solutions to actual problems is a different scale and nature of problem to “obstruct real solutions and divert attention from real problems until the government ceases to be addressing reality” then using fake crises (Iraq war, her emails) to roll back rules on oligarchs and curtail freedom for everyone else.)
And then they pull evil stunts like disappearing people off the streets so we’re all rightfully focused on that, and can’t bring up anything else relevant (progressive agendas) that needs solving because these insults to humanity need top billing to avoid imminent catastrophe.
I’m so frustrated by the media that plays into these narratives on purpose or by being credulous tools. I’m so frustrated that no one in power seems to have a plan to obstruct this evil nonsense. I’m so frustrated that enough people prefer being mean to being kind that this propaganda works.
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That was my comment, with a couple upgrades. I want, in particular, to point out the “migrant caravan” or “border invasion” nonsense. At the time the GOP started really leaning into the “illegal immigrant” narrative, the “punishment” for it was an $18 misdemeanor ticket.
… and a need to get the paperwork sorted for a vast majority of cases. We didn’t hold migrants in detention centers. We gave them vouchers to stay at a motel until their initial paperwork got sorted out, then they would go live in the community where they had sponsors. The entirely unnecessary detention centers were built to become concentration camps and I hope that everyone knows this at some level. When we elected Democrats in 2020, my expectation was that they’d demolish the detention centers. Building new facilities takes more time & effort than upgrading existing facilities with established personnel and supply chains, and making concentration camps harder to build and use should be a priority.
Of course the US has incarcerated more of our citizens by % than any other country and more by sheer numbers than most in an effort to (primarily) derail the lives of Black men for most of their productive & reproductive adult years. And we keep failing to address that at scale although we occasionally inch closer to it. California got so far as a ballot measure repealing the use of slave labor from prisons in 2024 and failed to get it over the finish line. This is all of a piece with the spectacle and terror. The GOP establishes it then the Dems treat it like the norm, to appear “tough on crime”, another PR spin, instead of dismantling unnecessary prison populations and going after the real criminals, like private equity and corporations who commit wage theft at scale. But that would involve holding rich men accountable and US leadership and legal systems don’t want to set the precedent that rich men, particularly rich white men, can be held accountable for crimes.
I apologize if the intermingling of “and” and “&” is distracting.
