The disturbing unconscious of Trump's social media slop
A new preview from Issue Seventeen
The propaganda that the Trump administration has disseminated relentlessly on its social media channels is distinguished, among other things, by its mind-melting semiotic density. Take the now-deleted image the president posted to his Truth Social account yesterday evening; it appears to be an A.I.-generated painting of Trump as Jesus Christ, receiving the prayers of the faithful while healing a man described variously by interpreters as Uncle Sam and Jeffrey Epstein, as something like an eldritch god marches out of the heavens flanked by what may or may not be American troops. In the face of such a blitzkrieg of bizarre symbolism, it is tempting to throw up one’s hands and simply conclude, alongside the Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon: “I genuinely believe Trump is currently demon possessed.”
We at The Drift lack the expertise to assess whether the president is in need of an exorcism, but we have something better: a new essay by Mitch Therieau on the current administration’s online phantasmagoria. Building on his short piece “Agit-Slop” in last summer’s issue, Therieau presents a tour-de-force exegesis of the torrent of videos, memes, and A.I. nightmares that has issued from official government accounts since last January. In the Trumpian dreamworld, Therieau writes, “opposites converge: insanity and reason, self-actualization and self-annihilation, Jedi and Stormtrooper, bootstraps and jackboots, North Pole and South.” Read the essay online today, and be sure to subscribe by Wednesday to receive Issue Seventeen when it arrives.
Into the Right-Wing Dreamworld | DHS’s Regime of Images
MITCH THERIEAU
In the same way that the physical sensations we experience in the sleeping body are registered obliquely in our dreams, the right-wing imagination senses that history is coming for our treats: our conveniences and little indulgences. It senses, in other words, that the diminished horizon of its own political vision is entertainment, enjoyment, and consumption, insulated from the surplus populations that the American empire has produced around the world. And if Americans can’t have our treats, nobody can.
The President needs medical attention. Where is his family? Where are his doctors?
Be it far from me to believe that anyone in this day and age (even a high-functioning imbecile like Trump ) would engage in a
corn ball stunt like "selling one's soul to the Devil" , but I have to reluctantly admit his situation bears all the classic earmarks. I'm not a believer in Last Days
mythology, and by way of comfort to those who do, he's much too stupid to be the Antichrist, but even so Rev.Franklin Graham & other Christian kool-aid drinkers
will be lucky to get a studio apartment in Purgatory for the enthusiastic way they groveled at the feet of such a grossly unrighteous man...