Politics As Pornography

It's the opposite of politics as usual.

If anyone thinks that the normal rules of politics still apply to the Republican Party, yesterday’s Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, and Trump’s behavior in the days immediately preceding it, should put that hypothesis to a long-overdue end. At this point in a presidential election, candidates are usually fighting for the persuadable voters, many of whom are in the middle of the political continuum. After tacking hard during the primaries to the extremes, they would be steering hard towards the middle in the general election. Trump and the people around him are doing the opposite of that.

So what are they doing? “Firing up their base” doesn’t quite capture the loathsomeness of what happened at Madison Square Garden yesterday, an orgy of nativism, racism, vulgarity, xenophobia, paranoia, and unadulterated hate. Bile spewed at Puerto Ricans (“A floating island of garbage”) , Latinos (“They don’t pull out, they come inside”), blacks (“carving watermelons”), non-white immigrants (“America is for Americans and Americans only”), Democrats (“They’re on the side of the terrorists,” “They’re full on to Marxism and socialism,” “They tried to kill him”), and Kamala Harris (“She is the devil,” “Samoan-Malaysian, low IQ”) is clearly not an appeal to moderate voters. It’s not messaging, it’s license.

The Madison Square Garden rally, along with Trump’s other events and interviews, are an encouragement to give voice to the audience’s darkest impulses. It’s not only permissible, but good to say these things. Go ahead and vomit up the worst forms of hatred, roll around in that sludge, and give a thumbs up to everyone else doing it. It’s also the primer coat for future layers of election denial, interference with the electoral process, threats against public officials, and political violence.

Anyone who hesitates calling this fascism is being deliberately dim. It’s the pure form of fascist content, of sentiment over reason, of demonology over dialogue. And it is the opposite of what you would expect a non-fascistic political party to be doing several days before an election.

It is also highly pornographic. I’m using that term in a non-sexual context, obviously, though there are clearly sexual and sexist overtones to what some in the MAGA crowd have been saying. Look only at Tucker Carlson’s eager fantasizing about America as a 15 year old girl who “needs” to be spanked for one example. For another, there’s Elon Musk’s PAC, which is now using the C-word to describe Kamala Harris. Instead, pornography in this context is something that takes a normal human impulse and strips it of its humanity. In pornography of the sexual sort, there is no love, no emotional context other than lust. Women are one-dimensional creatures capable only of endless, impersonal carnality and submission.

In political pornography, there is no principled disagreement, no compromise, no community beyond the clan. Just hatred. All the targets of hatred — immigrants, elected Democrats, trans people, non-subservient media, etc. etc. — are stripped of their humanity, turned into equally one-dimensional targets of dominance and subservience slash fiction. They have no souls, only bodies.

People can become addicted to pornography, which slowly replaces the normal, healthy architecture of emotional connections to fellow human beings with a darker, more solitary emotional framing. Hatred and outrage can be intoxicating, and like all drugs, require ever larger doses to reach the high that people seek. That also makes it unsurprising that the Trump campaign has reached this final destination in late October. The Pornographer In Chief, and all the other people who organized the Madison Square Rally, picked the speakers, reviewed what they were going to say, sequenced their appearances, and looked approvingly on the results, were putting on a particular show designed not for persuasion, but for a dark emotional release.

Only the most extreme cynics and nihilists can excuse the Madison Square Garden rally. Only someone who believes in a completely debased view of politics, or human nature for that matter, can say that a festival of hatred is just par for the course, nothing to worry about, or something “baked into” a candidate’s appeal. These are the real dead souls.

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Kingdaddy
About Kingdaddy
Kingdaddy returned to blogging after a long hiatus. For several years, he wrote about national security affairs at his blog, Arms and Influence, under the same pseudonym. He currently lives in Colorado, where he is still awestruck at all the natural beauty here. He has a Ph.D in political science, but nobody’s perfect.

Comments

  1. Not the IT Dept. says:

    Yeah, women just loooove being called the c-word. I called my wife over to the laptop where I was sitting and told her about the reference. She didn’t believe me. I had to show her your link. She’s speechless. This is one more thing I’m going to point out when I phone-bank. People need to know.

    12
  2. Slugger says:

    Arson at ballot drop boxes in Oregon, Washington, and Arizona is a heinous crime that is being encouraged by these verbal assaults.

    6
  3. alanstorm says:

    In political pornography, there is no principled disagreement, no compromise, no community beyond the clan. Just hatred.

    You just described the Democrats perfectly.

    1
  4. @alanstorm:

    You just described the Democrats perfectly.

    You mean like with the border security bill that Trump killed because he wanted the issue to campaign on?

    Your statement is demonstrably false and all you are doing to pledging your allegiance to Trump’s nihilism.

    You are also trying to change the subject–you are either hoping to ignore what happened at MSG yesterday, or you endorse it.

    Which is it?

    Let’s hear the positive argument in favor of what we just saw.

    28
  5. CSK says:

    Oh, guess what. According to Marc Caputo of http://www.thebulwark.com, Tony Hinchcliffe, the alleged comic, was all set to call Harris “a cunt” when the campaign asked him to remove that comment.

    The campaign staff also claimed he ad-libbed the jokes about Puerto Ricans, Blacks, et al.

    2
  6. Kathy says:

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    I’m going to change my usual advice to: please don’t engage the living brain dead.

    6
  7. Matt Bernius says:

    @CSK:

    The campaign staff also claimed he ad-libbed the jokes about Puerto Ricans, Blacks, et al.

    That’s a load of CYA horse shit. Everything is vetted ahead of time and approved. They don’t hire people who ad-lib at these events. He’s working from a vetted script on the teleprompter.

    Or if that was the case and he was so uncontrollable, then that’s still the campaign’s fault for not doing their due diligence and putting a known loose canon on stage.

    16
  8. Modulo Myself says:

    I’m taking perverse pleasure in reading the twitter feeds of guys like Jesse Singal and Conor Friedersdorf. They’ve buil their careers being annoying about trans people and free speech, and now they’re trying to say reasonable things about how terrible Trump is and it’s not going to well with their fans who signed up for the baby talk.

    And one thing about pornography. It’s Theater of the Obvious. Everyone knows what will happen to the guy fixing the cable. What Trump defenders embody are roles in the same performance. If there’s rage about he’s being treated by the left and the media, it’s porn rage on a porn set with porn actors and a porn denouement. It has nothing to do with actual existence.

    5
  9. @Kathy: I understand.

    I made a simple point and then asked what I ask from all of them: for a positive defense.

    4
  10. DAllenABQ says:

    Well said, Kingdaddy.

    2
  11. Kathy says:

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    It wasn’t a rebuke, so much as a way to comment around the troll.

    2
  12. Joe says:

    @Matt Bernius: So they either (a) knowingly or recklessly booked a rogue speaker for their important keynote event or (b) vetted the speech closely enough to catch the “c” word and decided the other material was acceptable. Having determined that maybe some of the other material was unacceptable, they distanced themselves from the PR comment, but not the other Hispanic and African American, Jewish garbage in the speech which, I must conclude, they find acceptable.

    5
  13. Matt Bernius says:

    @Joe:
    I think that is a completely defensible position to take and one that I subscribe to.

    The only reason that they are panicking on the Puerto Rico stuff is that it could have an impact in places like Florida.

    6
  14. Gustopher says:

    For another, there’s Elon Musk’s PAC, which is now using the C-word to describe Kamala Harris.

    I’m sure that they would claim it meant “communist”.

    Real genius Schrödinger Douchebags over there.

    2
  15. Scott F. says:

    @Kingdaddy

    Hatred and outrage can be intoxicating, and like all drugs, require ever larger doses to reach the high that people seek.

    Imagine for a moment the levels of hatred and outrage needed to sustain the highs of these people should Trump win next week. He’s going to need to keep the mob in line after it becomes clear to them that his tariffs & tax cuts won’t reduce the price of groceries.

    Is it that hard to imagine an invasion of Mexico (against drug cartels in premise)?

    4
  16. Mikey says:

    @alanstorm: “I know you are, but what am I?”

    What are you, four years old?

    4
  17. Mikey says:

    And it is the opposite of what you would expect a non-fascistic political party to be doing several days before an election.

    And, as Jamelle Bouie pointed out earlier today, it’s the opposite of what you’d expect a winning campaign to be doing.

    1
  18. al Ameda says:

    @alanstorm:
    In political pornography, there is no principled disagreement, no compromise, no community beyond the clan. Just hatred.

    You just described the Democrats perfectly.

    Here’s the very principled Republican discussion we’ve become accustomes to, as taken from the very serious and somber presidential debate forum:

    “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in,” Trump said. “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. This is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”

    8
  19. DK says:

    @Joe:

    Having determined that maybe some of the other material was unacceptable, they distanced themselves from the PR comment, but not the other Hispanic and African American, Jewish garbage

    Nor did the MAGA scampaign distance itself from the multiple other fascist bigots who spewed bile at Trump’s Nazi rally.

    It wasn’t just one joke, and it wasn’t just one guy. The whole event was a barrage of hate, bitterness, negativity, and extremism. A perfect representation of rapist Trump and his Republican Party.

    We saw, again, why Trump’s own people correctly identify him as America’s Hitler.

    6
  20. DK says:

    Uh oh, MAGA’s bots and trolls are panicking:

    “Use your brain, 8 days before an election, in a city with 1 million Puerto Ricans, with Kamala lagging, this fits right into the Kamala Harris & AOC playbook, and this comic is a liberal who would never support Trump. This was a racist plant from the Democrats.”

    Hehe.

    8
  21. Kevin says:

    @DK: well, that’s certainly a take.

    3
  22. Paine says:

    I don’t know… I’m getting the impression that they simply don’t care about public opinion at this point because they have plans in place to win the election regardless of the actual vote count. They aren’t acting like a campaign desperate for every last vote.

    5
  23. joe says:

    “You mean like with the border security bill that Trump killed because he wanted the issue to campaign on?”

    This is laughable. The chaos of the open border looks bad to the point where it might start hurting politically. So the Democrats passed an obviously fake ‘tough on the border’ bill, knowing that it would never pass. All so the media could tell their idiot supporters that Republicans are to blame. It doesn’t work on anyone outside your bubble.

    2
  24. DK says:

    @joe:

    So the Democrats passed an obviously fake ‘tough on the border’ bill, knowing that it would never pass.

    This bs only works on the types of America-hating rightwing lunatics at Traitor Trump’s Nazi rally last night.

    Here’s Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell admitting Trump Republicans killed the bipartisan border bill.

    Here’s Trump-supporting Oklahoma Republican senator James Lankford telling Fox News Trump Republicans killed the bipartisan border bill.

    Trump spent his whole presidency crying about immigration chaos, screaming about migrant caravans. Yet he was too busy passing tax cuts for billionaires, causing record job loss with his botched COVID response, and selling out the West to his master Putin to pass a border bill.

    McConnell deputized Lankford to negotiate a border bill. Biden and Democrats agreed to pass it. The Border Patrol endorsed it. Trump killed it.

    Dementia Don did nothing on immigration except loud noises, pieces of useless wall, and sabotage. While Harris is pushing
    plans to lower the cost of healthcare and housing, Trump has no record to run, and Americans despise his extremist Project 2025 agenda. So he’s rallying up violence with fascist hate instead.

    16
  25. gVOR10 says:

    @Paine: It can, more hopefully, be seen as a recognition their attempt to pick off a few Blacks and Latinos is failing and their base voter enthusiasm is off. It may be a calculation that pissing off the few minority votes they’re getting is a necessary trade off for jacking up their base turnout.

    2
  26. Franklin says:

    Well, someone’s bubble is lying to themselves. Because, you see, it was a bipartisan bill. Until a certain fuhrër told his weak-kneed minions to change their minds.

    7
  27. DK says:

    Trump’s Puerto Rico fallout is ‘spreading like wildfire’ in Pennsylvania (Politico)

    Evidence of the backlash was immediate on Monday: A nonpartisan Puerto Rican group drafted a letter urging its members to oppose Trump on election day. Other Puerto Rican voters were lighting up WhatsApp chats with reactions to the vulgar display… Some are planning to protest Trump’s rally Tuesday in Allentown, a majority-Latino city with one of the largest Puerto Rican populations in the state.

    And the arena Trump is speaking at is located in the middle of the city’s Puerto Rican neighborhood…

    “This was just like a gift from the gods,” said Victor Martinez, an Allentown resident who owns the Spanish language radio station La Mega, noting some Puerto Rican voters in the area have been on the fence about voting at all.

    “If we weren’t engaged before, we’re all paying attention now,” Martinez said. He added the morning radio show he hosts was chock-full of callers Monday sounding off on the Trump rally comments, including a Puerto Rican Trump supporter who is now telling people not to vote for the former president…

    Jimmy Zumba, a Latino GOP strategist based in the Lehigh Valley, called them “stupid comments,” that were clearly not based on the immigration and crime themes that Republicans have tried to hammer this cycle.

    “Obviously I would love to be talking about that, to be on the offense on that, but right now we’re on the defense trying to defend comments that are not from the campaign or President Trump,” Zumba said…

    …But many local Puerto Rican community members are unwilling to let go of the comments.

    Roberto L. Lugo, President of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the National Puerto Rican Agenda, said the nonpartisan group will be releasing a letter, shared exclusively with POLITICO, condemning the comments and urging Pennsylvania Puerto Ricans not to vote for Trump. Lugo, who was born in Puerto Rico and now lives in Philadelphia, said Pennsylvania Puerto Ricans are “really disturbed” over the comments.

    “I’m not a Republican, I’m not a Democrat, I’m independent,” Lugo said. “But at this point, it’s not about political, partisan issues. It is about the respect and honor our Puerto Ricans and Latinos deserved as citizens and legal residents of this country, that’s the issue.”

    “We held Trump and his campaign responsible for this disgraceful act,” he added…

    …Kenny Perez, an employee at Freddy and Tony’s, said in an interview at the restaurant on Monday that he’s often turned off by politics and normally doesn’t vote. But he condemned the Trump rally comments and said while he’s still deciding, this year, he thinks he’ll vote for Harris and “definitely not for Trump.”

    “I think he gave Kamala a boost,” Perez added.

    All Americans deserve better than America’s Hitler, Trump.

    4
  28. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @DK: Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!

    1
  29. Flat Earth Luddite says:
  30. @DK: I saw that defense–that because, allegedly Hinchcliffe and Bad Bunny have the same agent, it was all a Harris campaign dirty trick.

    But, as you note, the whole thing was awful. It wasn’t just this guy.

    1
  31. @joe: And yet, you can’t dispute the accuracy of the statement. Instead, it is what about something else.

    4
  32. @Paine: Part of it is that this is who they are. There is also the argument to be made that it is an appeal to the bro vote. He is doing incredibly well with non-college educated white males. There are a bunch of younger ones who don’t usually vote that he would like to motivate to the polls. So, appealing to grievance and being “edgy” is a strategy of sorts.

    It seems to work with our resident MAGA types.

    1
  33. joe says:

    “And yet, you can’t dispute the accuracy of the statement. Instead, it is what about something else.”

    Um, no. You’re confusing yourself.

    Democrats and “establishment” Republicans trying to pass either amnesty or a fake security bill is not new and entirely predictable if you actually understood politics. Conservatives have always rallied against this. Your lame spin that Trump only opposed it out of “nihilism,” or that conservatives only opposed it because Trump told us to is laughable.

    1
  34. Jack says:

    “So what are they doing? “Firing up their base” doesn’t quite capture the loathsomeness of what happened at Madison Square Garden yesterday, an orgy of nativism, racism, vulgarity, xenophobia, paranoia, and unadulterated hate.”

    Excellent and sober observations. And don’t forget, he is, literally, Hitler you know.

    1
  35. Jack says:

    PS

    You know, the immigration bill arguments revolve mostly around the true meaning of the so called 5000 limit. Given that Mayorkas routinely abdicates his responsibility and lies through his teeth what sane person would conclude that the 5000 provision, however interpreted, would be enforced? Opposition to the bill on the basis of Mayorkas’ deceit alone is warranted. Lucy, footballs etc…….

    Its a self inflicted wound, lefties.

    1
  36. DK says:

    @Jack:

    And don’t forget, he is, literally, Hitler you know.

    Yes we know. His running mate JD Vance told us long ago.

    4
  37. DK says:

    @Jack:

    Its a self inflicted wound, lefties

    Yes we know, incels. 78-year-old elderly rapist Trump damaged himself considerably by killing the Border Patrol endorsed bipartisan patrol border bill, after failing to pass any immigration legislation himself during his failed presidency.

    2
  38. DK says:

    @joe: Panicked spin that pro-Trump Oklahoma senator James Lankford isn’t conservative is obvious desperation.

    Deplorables have to lie about America’s Hitler killing Lankford’s Border Patrol endorsed bipartisan border bill, because Trump slaves must blindly make excuses for everything he says or does, like obedient little cucks.

    Conservatives supported the bill. Biden and Democrats got on board, because compromise is how serious adults govern.

    Unserious, childish, rightwing fascists rallied against the bill, because they hate America and only love Trump. Incels are not interested in governing, don’t care about immigration except to pimp the hate displayed this week at Trump’s Nazi rally.

    That’s why MAGA didn’t pass any border bill when Trump was president, and why they keep losing elections.

    3