The Fall of Soygon

"to speak through the masks"

All credit to Internet rando Paul for the headline.

Minneapolis is [Current Thing], and a significant part of the population is for that. Standard reference, insert own text:

BLACK LIVES MATTER FREE PALESTINE NEW PROGRAM LOADING.

The point of the performance is the performance, like art that exists only to comment on the meaning of art. They’re borrowing: “Hence, once again, pastiche: in a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through the masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum.”

I’m briefly on the road in California, and watched television news last night. A protest in Fresno stood up to those bastards from ICE, who embody American imperialism and also something that George Orwell told us, details unclear. But then, almost inevitably, a protester told the television camera that he also marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday, and now he’s protesting again against the Trump administration and all its enablers, “who are trying to take our country away from us.”

Of course, something something Selma something something. “Selma envy,” the performative seeking, the wish to be a soldier in a great cause: insert great cause here. George Wallace was apparently also opposed to widespread Somali social welfare fraud, the great beating heart of the Civil Rights Movement. All causes are the same cause. “I’m against this situation that is happening,” the protesters explain. Arresting someone who has a deportation order is functionally identical to beating people who march against segregation, because in a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles. Monday, rage in the streets, Tuesday, rage in the streets, Wednesday, rage in the streets….

The Minneapolis circle jerk is producing endless video of middle-aged white leftist women doing THE SAME performance, endlessly, like there are a thousand pieces of footage that all show the same moment with different faces. Here, go watch one. Come back when you’re done.

How was it?

The footage almost always captures people taking footage. Nearly everyone having spontaneous eruptions of righteous rage has their phones out recording their descent into an emotional state of horror and fury. “I’m going to sob uncontrollably as soon as I hit this ‘record’ button.” Reminder of what this same phenomenon looked like in 2020, with a screen being recorded on a screen:

This week, smart people are engaging this noise, writing (for example) detailed breakdowns of the Renee Good shooting that focus on factual details: Well, see, right here she turns the steering wheel, and watch as the wheels spin, and….

There’s no point in doing this. The performance doesn’t respond to it, but the performers take pleasure and validation from the appearance of opposition, which manifests the terrifying Nazi counterattack they already invented in their minds, making them precisely the Righteous Warriors™ they sought to be, up against the existential struggle they fantasize. Note that when ICE/BLM/Free Palestine protesters get peppersprayed, someone in the group always starts shouting, “MEDIC! MEDIC!” — really, go watch this — like they’re in the rice paddies with Walter Sobchak. See the recent discussion at Bad Cattitude of the “externalized identity state.” It’s roleplay, consciously produced for screens by people who live on screens, as image and mimicry. There’s no debate. There can’t be. Just let it pass. Next week will bring a new cause, producing RAGE IN THE STREETS, and let’s go ahead and ignore that one, too.

What is this cycle building? What can it possibly build? What does it make, and what does Minneapolis look like in ten years if it locks in this constant recurrence of performative conflict and destruction? How many normals will wish to go on living there, or running businesses there?

“Tell Me How This Ends.” Unless it doesn’t, and it’s just a loop.