More Grotesqueries from the Trump Administration
Reveling in cruelty.
I opened up X to look for something I had saved about jobs, and was greeted with this (clip through if the embed does not work, as that has been hit or miss of late).
Like the “ASMR” video of sending people to CECOT, this is just a celebration of cruelty and an attempt to dehumanize illegal immigrants.
Not only do we know that a lot of people who are being shackled like this are not, in fact, the “worst of the worst,” but instead are mostly brown people who are in the country illegally but otherwise are law-abiding. These are grandmas, gardeners, Uber drivers, and the like.
Is it any wonder I had the reaction I had to Greg Bovino’s sartorial choices?
Celebrating the shackling of human beings is grotesque. Connecting it to a holiday that is about family, peace, and love (not to mention Jesus himself was an immigrant to Egypt in his youth) is off the charts.
Without getting into some parsing of what it means to be Christian, this is clearly a perversion of the spirit of the season.
This is evil right in front of our noses.
“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, screw them.”
Is it possible Trump is even more loathsome now than he was in his first term?
@CSK: He was restricted by grownups in term 1, term 2 is basically the “let Trump be Trump” era, and also the people around him are much, much worse. It’s not that he’s more loathsome now, they’ve just removed the guardrails that existed the first time around.
@CSK: He is. This is Trump surrounded by enablers and with no one to tell him “no.”
I saw a different, but similarly themed ad on YouTube just yesterday. I could not hit “skip” fast enough.
These are meant to scare people into leaving on their own, I think.
This is not new. All the way back in Gulf War I, I recall some magazine, I forget the name, very patriotic, bragging about the weapons available to the US forces, and filled with quotes on what fun it will be to kill Iraqis. This was during the buildup but before coalition forces started offensive operations.
That was over 30 years ago.
@Jen: @Steven L. Taylor:
You’re both right. I had forgotten that during Trump’s first term, he was restrained by competent people.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I don’t think this particular post came down to nobody telling Trump “no.” This was one of his lackey’s doing, though they may have been simply trying to run a thrill up Orange POTUS’ leg. Point being that the grotesqueries run deep beyond the titular head of the Trumpist movement.
@Scott F.: I was being simplistic, to be sure. But one of the things he was told “no” about, so to speak, in term 1 was putting people like this in charge of social media. That is: the personnel patterns this time are a function of no one responsible left.
Indeed. I have never suggested otherwise.
@Kathy: I would not defend such behavior, but I think this is worse because it is about domestic law enforcement and is aimed at getting the population to accept it all as normal.
There is some malignancy in the Trump Administration that isn’t satisfied with complete control of governance and any resulting political outcomes. They find it important, maybe even necessary, to corrupt the country culturally. The efforts on anti-DEI, the Kennedy Center take-over, the construction/destruction of DC landmarks, the insertion into the World Cup/NFL/Taylor Swift engagement, the Charlie Kirk respect policing, the cruel response to the murder of the Reiners, this latest perversion of the spirit and traditions of the holiday season – OMG the list goes on & on – these are all of a piece to remake the nation at a societal level.
I suspect they understand that if MAGA wants to prevail, the movement has to own the definition of what it is that makes America “Great.” That’s what the shattering of norms is all about. The abnormal becomes normal. That’s why the administration’s mouthpieces take such umbrage when their behaviors are called out as fascist or racist or tone deaf or cruel. “Oh no, our way is the American Way and it’s only radicals who hate America who say otherwise.”
Bottom line: if what makes America great is what is normal for American society today, what is there to “Make Great Again?”
@Steven L. Taylor:
Sure. I would just qualify, per my preceding comment, that those in the WH don’t see it that way. It’s not the absence of guardrails, but rather that existing guardrails are wrong and stupid, so the responsible thing to do is to blow them up for the greater good.
Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but I think it’s one thing to say Trump is less restrained by competent people than before. It’s another thing to say that the project has changed from the first Trump administration. Now, Trump has purposefully staffed his administration with people who have competencies suited for blowing up institutions, skirting or subverting the law, influencing media (both mass and social), and denying evidence based science. I believe what’s happening is the latter and that the latter is much more pernicious, because this is where irreparable damage that will outlive Trump will be done.
We’ve made enough progress over the last decades that even Trump. Miller, and their minions know there are some things they can’t say out loud. I think we all know what they mean by Great Again.
@Jay L. Gischer: It is probably morally acceptable to use an ad blocker on YouTube if they are going to be showing you ICE ads.
It is an ever escalating war between YouTube and ad blockers, and at times it’s almost as annoying as the ads, but beasts must be starved, etc. I hate hassle, so I didn’t bother until they started putting ads for TERFs and TERF-adjacent Nazis on queer creators, and it became clear that the entire ads system there was just a tool for harassment.
I have little doubt that the ICE ads are being used the same way.
@CSK: Trump is also just worse. Whether this is a sign of dementia, or whether he just read* a self-help book about how you need to “be yourself,” I don’t know.
*: obviously not literally read. Saw a Truth Social post by a MAHA influencer, possibly.
“Shitty people with shitty values.”
— Teve
Trump 2.0 = Internet trolls, grifters, ideologues, and power hungry shape-shifters bending over backwards to please their mad king. This was all foreseeable. Trump made it clear in 2024 that he wouldn’t enlist the aid of experienced, ethical and morally upright people if he got back to the White House. People who were lured to Trump 1.0 – the Rex Tillersons, John Kellys, and Jim Mattisons – were frustrated when they learned first hand that Trump is a dumb guy who thinks he is smart, and who is mentally incapable of learning. The people lured to Trump 2.0 – Miller, Vought, Vance, Bessent, et al. – LIKE the fact that Trump is a dumb guy who thinks he is smart and is incapable of learning. It suits their selfish, egotistical purposes.
@Scott F.:
Not maybe. They see it as existential. This has not been coded at all. This rhetoric has long been a part of the American Right.
It may wax and wane. It may be confined to the backwater much of the time. But it has, at times, gained currency with Right officials before retreating again. Now, it is the official GOP position.
Perhaps the biggest difference between now and past rightward lurches, is that Protestant religious institutions sorted along ideological lines concurrent with the geographical sorting of parties.
I also point to the importance of talk radio, especially in rural America. He may have been in SoCal, but read a little bit about Stephen Miller, if you can stomach it. He came about his ideology by listening to conservative radio, became a regular caller, and eventually a guest – all while he was a teenager.
Now, imagine being in a place that doesn’t have the variety of choices in radio entertainment. And the only talk broadcasts are either the dry journalism of NPR, Christian talk, or Limbaugh.
Yes, Fox News came along. But the style of their evening shows was developed on radio.
Make no mistake, the existential rhetoric has been there forever. Trump leveraged an existing population of lunatics that were already primed by years of cynics and blowhards to hate everyone not them.