Everyone has some favorite theory about this, the Age of Trump. Mine is that the entertainment wing of the Republican Party took over from the governing wing. For decades the conservatives had become experts at whipping themselves up. Finally, that function assumed command. The people in charge of it were now the people in charge of the whole Republican apparatus; government was included in that if they won elections, which they did. Hence Trump, the TV performer and TV viewer, is calling the shots, last stage in a process I’ve seen galloping ahead since Rush and “Fair and Balanced.” It rolled into place, big as a cliché, the fact you could see coming from a mile off, the fact that pins down the Republican horizon… “It’s all about the Show.” I mean, Trump and the Republicans had to live out my theory, and they’ve been gross about it.
“We’re over here just grinding away on banger memes, dude,” a “senior White House official” tells Politico. Another “senior White House official” discloses, “Over a four-day period, the videos that we put out had over 3 billion impressions.” Trump, long a noisemaker on social media, is ready for this new media era, as is his team. For what that’s worth.
“Polls show that a lot of young people are actually somewhat supportive of this war and our goal is to deliver content to them,” says the senior official who was talking about impressions. One likes “actually somewhat supportive.” Politico says that, overall, “56 percent of Americans—and 63 percent of independent voters—disapprove of Trump’s handling of Iran” if you go by a new YouGov poll. Next to war deaths and gasoline prices, the three billion impressions can do only so much.
The senior official scoffs at critics of the slam-bang, rock ‘n’ roll, war-derived light show that the Trump White House is putting on social media. “Like what is ‘war communications’?” the official asks. “What the former Bush people say? Well, if you want to talk about war communication under the Bush era—not great. ‘Mission Accomplished’? It’s just a different time. It’s a different audience.” But “Mission Accomplished” was fine: the message came across fantastic. The problem was the Iraq War. The person seems to think we won’t notice as much, which is a familiar feeling.
NFL tackles, baseball home runs, clips from Gladiator and Iron Man, Grand Theft Auto—one video shows “legendary bowler Pete Weber landing a strike using computer-generated bowling pins to represent Iran’s military—all to a Lynyrd Skynyrd soundtrack.” That’ll get their minds off Epstein. Politico makes the White House videos sound high turbo, or jagged, or something. Someone once said that Love, Actually is more about infatuation than love. The Trump House fixates on the military equivalent.
There’s a rush to seeing things blow up because you’re up here and they’re down there. That’s the part of war that Donald Trump loves; he figures it’s glorious, and if it’s glorious it must be conclusive. On his screen he sees giant flames, toppling buildings, tiny Iranians, and he keeps waiting for dumb, everyday, military reality to catch up with his screen reality. Meanwhile facts take place that shouldn’t and he has to vamp: saying he’s won, it isn’t over, the allies have to pitch in, we don’t need them, and so forth.
Trump started a war because it looked pretty and now he doesn’t know what to do. Twenty years after the depths of our dumbest and second-longest war, the Republicans still haven’t learned. Like the party old guard, the new guard’s hypnotized by its own shiny objects. Even more so, because the objects keep getting brighter and the people keep getting dimmer.