Donald Trump - MAGAtwat news and discussion

[Coffeecup]

He probably spent 20 hours rehearsing his mugshot expression and now falls back into it whenever a formal photo is taken

Maybe wannabe dictator will plaster himself all over buildings in the US.

Second thoughts, a lot of guns in the US.

 

[moochedit]

Maybe wannabe dictator will plaster himself all over buildings in the US.

Statues on every street corner.

 

[hitmouse]

Big article on Trump and the spectacle from someone who was once in the Situationist International and King Mob:

T.J. Clark · A Brief Guide to Trump and the Spectacle

Trump has annihilated the idea of charisma. The new leader is not above us. He’s on the screen in our hands. We...

www.lrb.co.uk

paywall-busting version: https://archive.is/1XsN2

Define the society of the spectacle. Oh, come on – you know what it is. What do you want, a Helen Levitt street scene opposite a drone shot of children looking at their iPhones? The question is not what the spectacle consists of – the spectacle goes on making a spectacle of its least change of apparatus, the least descent down its ladder of conformity – but what in the long term it does, above all to the other term in the portmanteau. ‘Society’ – what’s that?

Part of Trump’s genius is that he knows, against much of the tide of the time, that an apocalyptic answer to the question just posed is wrong. The pedestrians on their iPhones may look like isolate, properly subservient individuals, carrying their commodity world with them, locked into TikTok immediacy. But they aren’t there yet. The spectacle is always hybrid, partly embroiled in the past – society lives on in it, feeding it lines, interfering with its vacuum pack. Look at the faces of the iPhone conversationalists, look at their hands, their arms. Fragments of face-to-faceness live on in them – indelibly, redundantly – as they launch their words into virtual space. They still have expressions. And they’re not even the set pouts and leers of selfie world. They look like real flowing unconscious embodiments of whatever’s being said, of what’s being imagined or anticipated as response. The speakers are still round the campfire.

Hence Trump’s old-fashionedness: his need for rallies and town halls, his belief in the importance of crowd sizes, his dance to the music (that gift to the comics), his tolerance of ‘summits’. Even the hours spent dreaming in front of Fox are nostalgic – he is scenting out the reaction of a virtual audience, sitting there in some ranch house in Grand Rapids or Duluth wondering what ‘woke’ means and how high you really can get on fentanyl...

The spectacle knows itself, after a fashion. It likes to nod and wink at its subjects, including those in on the joke. The fact that Trump is absurd is part of his mastery; the fact that he knows he is – knows what his absurdity is for – another...

When writing about Trump, there’s a question of distance. He gives every sign of being an odious human being, and he flaunts the odiousness, knowing that it maddens his opponents and electrifies his cult. What he did as president last time, and what he promises to do next, will cause misery for millions of people.

Isn’t writing obliged to answer the loathsomeness and cruelty with spleen? But isn’t that what Trump-fiction depends on? Go in close, grapple and smear, and one immediately feels Trump-fiction exulting in one’s distaste. He rides the late-night laughter. The things they say about me! His Arnold Palmer swells.

Is the answer analysis, then? A cooler tone. Is it possible to treat Trump as a political – a historical – occurrence? A ‘formation’, as we used to call it.

Supposing we take the whole form of politics and leadership described so far, including its ludicrous deficiencies and so far unanswerable strengths, as a phenomenon, an expression, of an empire in decline. In particular, of an empire whose immense superiority over its rivals in terms of military power, control of (most) dependencies, dictatorship of ‘innovation’, image of the good life, and sheer mind-boggling wealth, remains unquestioned, but depends now on an economic system that fails to satisfy its own ordinary middle (read, working) class.

Long article (just over 3500 words), but very worth reading if you're interested in that sort of thing.

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

Oh the wit that's been on display from some, absolutely hilario.

View attachment 454475

View attachment 454476

You from NW London?

 

[spring-peeper]

Trumps new portrait.

New portrait of Donald Trump released ahead of inauguration - and it has drawn comparisons to his mugshot

The US president-elect can be seen staring seriously into the camera in the new photo, with a slightly furrowed brow.

news.sky.com

 

[Ax^]

just change the background to a jail cell and we would be in the right timeline

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Trump inauguration moved indoors due to cold weather.

Donald Trump's inauguration moved indoors due to 'dangerous' cold

The last president to be sworn-in indoors was Ronald Reagan in 1985, when cold weather also plagued the US Capitol.

www.bbc.com

I was hoping they'd leave it outside and do a "William Henry Harrison." Harrison was our shortest serving president. His inauguration was so cold and wet many people stayed away. He however, delivered a two-hour speech in the cold and rain, and followed that up with an exhausting tour to prove what a manly man he was. Somewhere in the middle he got sick but kept pushing himself. He died a month after his inauguration.

 

[Santino]

I was hoping they'd leave it outside and do a "William Henry Harrison." Harrison was our shortest serving president. His inauguration was so cold and wet many people stayed away. He however, delivered a two-hour speech in the cold and rain, and followed that up with an exhausting tour to prove what a manly man he was. Somewhere in the middle he got sick but kept pushing himself. He died a month after his inauguration.

We know this thanks to The Simpsons