Philosophy Now Forum

Letter to the Editor I will never submit, 3/19/2020:

Dear Editor: the other day I offered a rather clumsy fusion of apocalyptic narratives, what is happening in America as concerns panic shopping, and how the “grinding down of the machine” (of Capitalism, that is (seems to set it off. I had also associated it with the right-wing survivalist mentality.

And I would note two things I I have observed as of late. For one, I talked to a girl that works at the store I frequent daily and, while talking to her about the craziness going on around her because of panic shopping, had relayed to me a theory (or rather a conspiracy theory (that she had heard that argued that all this was happening because it was an election year.

But even more telling here is what has been reported in mainstream news: a sudden run on gun shops for bullets. I mean what else could this be but right-wing conspiracy theorists reading more into this than what is actually happening: the apocalyptic fantasy (that similar to the basement overmen who think their selves ready for action in a Mad Maxian post apocalypse (that these red-pill morons seem to embrace.

At the same time, you can’t help worry that these buffoons will create a self fulfilling prophecy via political expressions such as Trump or Boris Johnson.

Letter to the Editor I Would Never Submit 4/11/2020:

Dear Editor: I have recently been listening to the audio book for James Poniewozik’s Audience of One: Television, Donald Trump, and the Politics of Illusion. And it’s a book I would highly recommend in that it is an articulation on something that has been hinted at in mainstream news circles but never truly crystallized: the fact the Trump is mainly engaging in a kind of performance art. And Poniewozik offers a detailed history of media in order to support this.

The thing we all need to understand about Trump is that he is basically the Madonna of politics and business. A big fan of TV, he has (basically since the 70’s) developed himself as a brand. He has always worked from a strategy of selling himself as a brand in order to sell his business while selling his business in order to sell himself as a brand. He is the perfect Baudrillardian simulacrum.

And I believe that the UK may be dealing with the same dynamic with Boris Johnson. What he reminds me of is an episode of the Netflix series Black Mirror (which started as a BBC series, BTW (in which an obnoxious cartoon character runs for Prime Minister and actually succeeds. And we see a similar dynamic at work in Italy in which a populist ex-comedian was voted into high office.

That said, the silver lining here is that our greatest fear, that people like Trump or Johnson may choose to not leave office even after being voted out, may be over-exaggerated. Yeah: they might put on a performance of rejecting the election results as a kind of encore on the way out. But it may well be that by then they’ll be more than ready to move on to the next performance, the next way of selling their brand.

It's a good job you won't be sending that letter, because you would be laughed at for not understanding the difference between a president and a prime minister. There has never been the vaguest hint that Bojo could refuse to leave office, prime ministers don't have enough personal power to refuse that sort of thing. It's not even very likely that he will retain that office long enough to lose it via an election.

And Black Mirror wasn't BBC by the way.