Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume LXXVI: Shutting Down the Internet

 

The above screenshot is of prominent tech journalist Taylor Lorenz screenshotting a 4chan post where some claims "[REDACTED] are going to lock down the entire internet very soon." 

Can you guess what word was redacted?

If you answered "Jews", bzzt. Sorry, but that's not quite right.

The correct answer is "kikes". It's the "kikes" who are "going to lock down the entire internet very soon."*

Lorenz, to be fair, does make sure to point out one area of disagreement with the 4channer she's promoting. She thinks that "shut down" is not going to be literally true (rather, the internet will be "censored into oblivion"). But on the whole "kikes" thing, no correction apparently is needed. (And of course, even with the whole "kikes" things, you still get people saying "but it's just anti-Zionism!")

* Fun fact: When I told my wife the answer wasn't Jews but that it was "close", her next guess was "globalists". And I was like, "oh, you're reaching for euphemisms and that's going in the wrong direction here."

Seasonal Gradations

In the same vein as my post about the color green, I had a thought today about seasons.

Today is August 28, and we're in the middle of a heatwave here in Portland. This doesn't seem especially remarkable. It's August, the dog days of summer -- of course it might get hot.

However, once September rolls around -- just a few days from now -- then it would seem worthy of remark. September is fall. Fall is cool. A hot day in September isn't shocking, but it's not something taken for granted like a hot August day is. September is fall. Fall is cool. A hot day in September yields comments like "man, it's stayed hot late this year!"

August is summer and September is fall, and there is not a smooth gradation between them. February and March, aka winter to spring, is the same. Snow on February 28? Sure, it's February -- dead of winter. Snow on March 1? That's spring snow -- weird!

November/December (fall/winter) is a little less disjointed, but still has a clear break. Snow in December is completely normal, snow in November feels very early for snow.

The only seasonal break that, for me, has a truly smooth gradation is spring into summer over May and June. I can't think of a weather event in May that I'd think "wow, it's early for that" or one in June that I'd think "wow, it's late for that" (save something truly extreme like June snow). And that made me realize that I think of summer and spring as basically the same thing -- summer is spring, only more so.

Spring and summer are the warm seasons, and winter and fall are the cool seasons. Winter and fall further get divided into snow/no snow, but spring and summer have no such divisions. So spring can fade smoothly into summer without anything feeling weird about it -- the only such smooth gradation amongst all the seasons.

Trump's (Dis)order Gamble

Trump is invading U.S. cities.

It's a disgraceful assault on American liberty; the predictable upshot of electing a tinpot authoritarian to the most powerful office in the world.

But because this is still (nominally) a democracy, we also have to consider how it will play out politically.

These moves are not popular. And I think that over the mid-term, they will backfire on Trump, because paradoxically they give the appearance of disorder.

To be clear, I think it's clear that the main motivator of the Trump invasion of our cities is not about short-term political calculus at all. It is a genuine, earnestly-felt commitment to sadistic authoritarianism that in particular views terrorizing blue city residents as its own reward. We shouldn't overinterpret this as a product of deep strategy.

That said, the political logic at work here is I think clear enough: it's a gamble that when voters see these images of the disordered city, they'll instinctively race back to the "law and order" party. Cities are dangerous (so dangerous we need the military to step in); Trump is keeping you safe.

But I don't think the gamble is going to pay off. When one sees men in army fatigues marching down city streets accosting residents (and the inevitable protests and resistance such conduct inspires), the thought that tends to follow is rarely "things are going great!" Deploying troops to American cities is the sort of thing one does in chaotic, all-is-near-lost situations. And so the more we have imagery coming out of an America where our communities are under military occupation, the more it entrenches a public sense that we're in dire straits -- a sentiment that rarely redounds to the benefit of the incumbent party.

So I do think that Democrats need to press that sense of disorder -- not randomly or haphazardly, but intelligently and judiciously (and yes, I recognize the paradox of promoting strategic, well-calibrated "disorder"). You want to encourage voters to associate the Trump reign with thoughts like "things are falling apart," "I'm afraid to go downtown because of the men Trump sent there," "is my job going away?", "things feel very unstable," and "I'm sick of this ride and I want to get off."

The trick -- and it's not always an easy trick -- is to make it so that voters attributed these sentiments to Trump, not the Democrats resisting Trump. But one major advantage Democrats have is that they're the out-party, and voters (rightly or wrongly) tend to attribute anything going on in the world, good or bad, to the incumbent. And in the current moment, where Trump is doing so many things that seem to prompt those negative thoughts, Democrats have a lot of opportunities to entrench a very simple overarching message: All those fears, all those anxieties, all those bad thoughts you're having -- that's Trump.