#scenesfromaslowcivilwar — Public Fediverse posts

" Cole Allen was dangerous. “Cole Allen,” the political narrative, is dangerous, a tool with which MAGA polices its internal dissenters—”I bet Tucker would have cried”—and reinforces the implicit divinity of its primary ego. But not for long! Both will likely be mostly forgotten in days. Tomorrow King Charles is coming to America! Maybe Tuesday we’ll take Cuba. The Straits will be closed this Wednesday, but victory will be restored by Thursday evening. There’ll be more Epstein disclosures, or another kerfuffle with the pope, or just a new poll, and we’ll know finally and at last that Trump is “DONE.” We may not notice, as we post the “BREAKING” news, how all-caps have crept into our language. We won’t have time, because we have moved onto a new spectacle, or we will have tuned out from spectacle. (I think of a liberal friend who acknowledges he hasn’t read the news since the election because he just can’t, and a left colleague who boasts that he hasn’t because he can—ignore it all, that is.) It’s into this quickening current that both Cole Allens will disappear, along with our memory of a time when one did not have to debate how many assassination attempts the president had survived, or staged, whether it is three or four or five or even more, much like the unknowable number of wars he has ended."

--from "Cole Allen": On the already-fading meanings of Cole Allen, man, meme, prop, and spectacle, by Jeff Sharlet,
Apr 26, 2026

#Spectacle #USpol #SocietyOfTheSpectacle #ScenesFromASlowCivilWar

https://slowcivilwar.substack.com/p/cole-allen