I’m not talking about the company formerly known as Facebook. I’m talking about the actual noncommercial sense of “meta,” which is basically self-reference. You have to be careful about letting self-reference tie your thinking up in knots. It gets complicated very quickly.
The traitors and dragons (in the sense Tolkien used the term) attempting to destroy the US know that. Some of them know it intellectually, and some, like the orange baby, just know it viscerally. They use that complication against us in messages that are nonsense if you think about them — but you’re not supposed to think about them. You’re supposed to react only viscerally. I think this is entirely due to the orange baby, to which the rest of them either feel, or just show, utter obeisance.
That difference between feeling and just showing obeisance is important. Some of the traitors lack the intellectual horsepower and are just following their leader. Because that’s what they do; it may be all they can do. Those are the ones who feel obeisance. The other ones, who are smart, at least in a vile, amoral, feral way, are making a show of obeisance to further their own ends.
Here’s an example (just the most recent, most ludicrous one). Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, is not a stupid man. His performances for the orange baby are usually applying rhetorical bronzer to make it appear some insane, cruel, vindictive antic has some semblance of logic. He often uses self-referential complication to do this. (He doesn’t have many other tricks; he’s smart but not that smart). This latest one is a beaut. He claims the orange baby gets to have its way by declaring an emergency. Why? Because although it’s plainly evident there is no emergency, Bessent’s spin is that there is an emergency. What could it be? Why, avoiding the emergency that doesn’t exist, of course!
I like to think that there was a time, not that long ago, that anybody trying this stunt on national media would have received an immediate laugh right in their face. And that no public servant would even try anything like that. Maybe I’m naive and that time didn’t exist. It certainly isn’t the present. Just another way the present kinda sucks.
