Note On "America Turns 250"
A few liner notes to Ford Fischer/News2Share's mini-doc on a month of demonstrations
Longtime Racket partners News2Share and Ford Fischer put together an excellent and even-handed 18-minute “Activism Uncensored” reel on a fraught month of celebrations, counter-celebrations, and counter-counter-celebrations, all surrounding America’s 250th birthday. The piece speaks for itself, but I was struck by a few things.
Activism, Uncensored from the beginning has captured scenes of almost-violence and violence, as the Trump era traveled a path of seemingly worsening division. Over the course of the last ten years protest has become a mini-industry and it’s often hard to sort out who’s sincere, who’s cosplaying, who’s profiteering, and so on. Ford has done a lot of prior work on the Patriot Front and for those wondering, his depiction of them as a real white nationalist group is grounded in that research. Some of the anti-Trump protesters also seem over-the-top; a pre-flag-burning scuffle in Philadelphia just after the 15-minute mark recalls the jiggling boobs/nun-battles-Hare Krishna chaos scene from Airplane! Ford and his crew have gotten so good at picking up the odd, sometimes comic details in these episodes that it can be easy to forget that street weirdness of any political stripe now often finds purchase at the ballot box. What looks like a WWE version of politics has become our actual politics.
Ford asks, “What is a patriot?” I’ll take the argument itself as the most reassuring sign on America’s 250th birthday. In any case, it’s an excellent report, and I just wanted to commend the News2Share crew for chasing after these images, which may someday be iconic.
I love this line: "what looks like a WWE version of politics has become our actual politics."
We all get it. It's unfortunate but true.
BUT... It's not a symptom of division, it's the output of an attention economy that pays in engagement, not sincerity. The algorithm doesn't care if the flag burner or the counter-protester actually believes it.
It only cares if the clip is loud enough to travel.
Same mechanism runs the two-party system underneath it: both sides sell the same two-column con, promises they know they won't keep, dressed up in reasons that don't hold. Wrote up the receipts here if you want the full breakdown:
https://uncomfortable.rxansmithmedia.com/p/winning-arguments-losing-america
Matt, would you say more about the Patriot Front? I’m suspicious since no media will even try to interview or connect with them. We hear different things from SPLC (so suspicious) and then from MSM but I’m still trying to understand what’s behind them and whether they are the ones we saw marching with masks on their faces over the weekend or whether it was a con job. MSM doesn’t help by just throwing accusations rather than the work they do covering other protests. Thanks for your help.