Maybe it’s just as well that Charles C. W. Cooke’s “The ‘Taylor Swift Psyop’ Freaks Need to Go Outside” (accompanied by another unflattering photo of Miss Swift; is there some agency that distributes those?) is hidden behind National Review’s pay wall. He does rather overanalyze a phenomenon that deserves nothing more than a loud guffaw. Nonetheless, this paragraph is worth quoting:
As an immigrant, I am accustomed to hearing discussions of the United States that bear no resemblance to America as it actually exists. Turn on a political talk show in England, France, or Germany, and, when the topic turns to the U.S., you’ll be treated to a cartoonized fantasy straight from the uncanny valley – recognizable in outline, but alien in every key detail. And so it is with the MAGA grifter class, which, despite its purported hatred of American progressivism, has at long last become every bit as disconnected from the worldview of the average American as the denizens of Netroots Nations, the Squad, and MSNBC. Populism, by definition, is supposed to be popular. More than a decade into their project, America’s most prominent populists are yet to work that out.
This one, too:
In a free country, it is not incumbent upon anyone to acquiesce to the majority’s view simply because it is held by the majority. But, in the game of democratic politics, it sure as hell helps to understand what normal people believe. For years, I have wondered whether the country’s most fanatical progressives have any idea how they sound to normal ears. Now, I must ask the same of our most fanatical conservatives. The internet is a collation mechanism: However esoteric one’s views, one can usually convince an audience of some type – perhaps even a large audience – to discover and come to you. The real world operates differently. Online, one can say that Taylor Swift is a “Deep State psyop” and prompt a million Lost Boys to clap their hands in glee. At a bar, a baseball game, a kids’ Christmas concert, or a church, such declarations would yield embarrassed confusion, the sound of feet slowly shuffling away, and a hasty investigation into the availability of straitjackets. There is nothing conservative, populist, patriotic, or authentic about frivolous lunacy; it is as toxic when it comes from the right as when it comes from the left. To point at a television in the presence of the normal person and say, “see that Taylor Swift, she’s a Defense Department spy,” is to disqualify yourself from consideration.
Let me add that I remain befuddled as to what the Taylor Swift “psyop” is trying to accomplish. A Venn diagram of NFL fans and Swift fans can have only the thinnest slice of overlap. One might as well recruit Barry Manilow to sway college students to support Donald Trump.
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