On one side of the splitscreen plays, some people say, one of the greatest stories ever told. A band of pilgrims wanders the desert wilderness of the American West, maybe the Mojave. The brilliant light of the afternoon sun–punishing, ecstatic, purifying– floods the ready metaphorics of the landscape.
It’s been quite a month for those fighting the holy culture wars. Like an old Flintstones episode, their battle scenes take place before animated backdrops, where the scenery appears on endless loop.
His presentation was anchored by satellite and surveillance images, dark and blurry and indefinite, meant to illustrate a vast capacity for weapons production. Each image contained arrows and circles and thought bubbles, designating what each image was supposed to mean.
Although riddled with omissions, Pyle wrote and became popular with the presumption that the truth, well told, however personal, degrading, and personally horrific, was a communicative act that could unify. Curiously, once upon a time, truth did work this way, in the stylistics of American propaganda.
But where is the evidence–not the belief, but the evidence–that anyone on the white, political right who has agreed to the contract is now being excluded from participating in it? Getting in a huff about Starbucks holiday decor doesn’t count.
Our blip of a moment in history may instead be more frequently recalled for a worldwide pandemic, for the resulting number of dead, for the speed in which a vaccine was developed, and as a perfect, pithy example of the ever resurgent power of propaganda.
Telling without telling, the cashout stays in the just beyond, in the future conditional. We never find out exactly what Lady Gaga did. That’s okay, actually. It’s better that way, even.
Come the day after, little of what exhausted and demoralized you has changed. Trump is going, going, we think, gone: but with 71 million, almost half of the country’s votes stuffed in his pockets. The racism, nativism, misogyny, and the authoritarian style he represented live on. These folks probably don’t even need to go underground.
Thanks to the horrific associations they conjure, any floodlit, outdoor, nighttime political rally can bring on a reflexive chill. To frighten? And by frightening, impress? Was that the message behind Amy Coney Barrett’s nighttime gathering of Republican conspirators in a strange, after hours Supreme Court swearing in ceremony? Why the inverse mimicry of an earlier, afternoon super spreader event?
Derby Day, September 5, 2020. Six white men are in attendance: the very important SENATOR FROM KENTUCKY, the not as important SENATOR FROM SOUTH CAROLINA and the as-yet-disgraced EVANGELIC IMPRESARIO, all Dixie born, and THREE YOUNG MEN, in sailor suits, who attend to them. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, all seats of Churchill Downs remain vacant, save those occupied by these six men.
