Eyes and Ears

what you see versus what you're told, and the resulting trajectory of perception

As Joe Biden just reminded us, white supremacy is the gravest threat that America faces.

Of course, Donald Trump’s army of insurrectionists is the terrifying face of that violent movement, much as a gang of far-right truckers terrorized Ottawa. They threaten to sow terror and discord across the country, creating chaos, misery, and the decline of freedom. For example, here they are recently blocking ambulances and bringing traffic to a halt in a major American city:

Now do you see how dangerous and disruptive Trump is? It’s like the summer of 2020 again, when Trump’s, uh, you know, when there were a lot of big…fires. In a lot of cities. So. Trump Trump Trump Hitler Hitler Hitler! Be very threatened by that!

Matthew Graves, the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, announced last week that the DOJ will be ramping up thousands more J6 prosecutions during the election year, transitioning to an investigative and prosecutorial focus on people who were at the Capitol on the day of the deadly insurrection but didn’t enter the building or commit acts of violence. It’s literally planned to be a year of somber-sounding legal drama over trespassing, like the Stasi but with Yakety Sax playing as they raid homes. Gestapo as farce. Ve vould like to ask you a few kvestions, but first, watch how many FBI agents can spill out of a single car.

The news media will cover the hell out of those prosecutorial waves: 100 MORE ARRESTED OVER ATTACK ON CAPITOL. You’ll see J6 — sorry, you’ll see THE DEADLY INSURRECTION!!!! — over and over and over and over, on the news and in campaign ads and in social media. They’ll wind up the mighty Wurlitzer to make a bunch of trespassing misdemeanors sound ominous.

If you missed this discussion, look at what I just said about Democratic Party messaging and the simple enough to not require commas signals that they’re going to be using, with aggressive repetition, to pound fear into everyone around you. This is the menu for 2024:

• Deadly insurrection

• Cops who died because of January 6

• White supremacy

• Hitler

• Fascism

• Trump’s dictatorship

And so on, every single day. If you can get the copyright on the phrase threat of dictatorship, NPR will make you a billionaire by September.

As all of that happens, we’re also going to relive some version of the summer of 2020. The first day of California’s legislative session was shut down, this year, by a pro-Hamas mob that stormed the state Assembly and took it over, but that’s for sure not insurrection.

The California Democratic Party was also deliciously not-insurrectioned by its own Red Guards, in December, when the annual party convention shut down and gave up as it was taken over.

So imagine a driver, stuck in a six-hour traffic jam, staring at thousands of Palestinian flags as a mob takes over a freeway this summer and traps him in place. Picture him watching the frantic ambulance crew just ahead trying to figure out a way to get their dying patient to the hospital as the mob shuts down traffic in the city and police stand down or slow-walk a response. (Or adopt the Canadian model and cater the protest.) He’ll be listening to NPR, and they’ll be warning him, darkly, about Trump and the threat of white supremacy and insurrection. Does he notice?

The “mainstream,” the party-media-academia monolith, has been living in the fantasy of policed narratives and cancellation and “disinformation experts” so long and so hard that they no longer see how far they’ve wandered away from reality. They’ll spend 2024 urgently and insistently telling a dramatic story that won’t match anything that any living human being can see right in front of them. Ruth Ben-Ghiat will fund her lake house this year.

“All the corn is dead! Every ear is shriveled! Every stalk is blackened and wasted! The soil is barren!” the announcer screams over the loudspeaker as the crowd wanders through a lush cornfield bursting with ripe, heavy ears of fragrant corn. This is the entire year to come.

Listen to Joe Biden scream about white supremacy and Orange Hitler while you watch a mob in keffiyehs tear your city apart.

Your eyes and ears will tell completely different stories. So:

• The divergence between symbol deployment and stuff in the street is going to become a political Grand Canyon, impossible to not see.

• The people screaming the manufactured fear narrative about Trump and Hitler and insurrection won’t allow themselves to notice, and will respond to the failure of their message by shouting it louder.

That’s the cycle. The absurdity is going to make Ionesco look like Steinbeck, and this might be the year to read The March of Folly for homework. I don’t know what tangible outcomes that absurdity chasm will deliver, but this is the year the loss of trust becomes inescapably obvious. This is my bet for 2024:

Barring a miracle, the brokenness of American political culture will become very clear, to a significant majority of functioning adults, and the schism between institutions and people will be irreparable.

I should mention that I mean this as good news.