God-tier wordplay. 🫡

(And yes, I am fully aware of the irony of citing Baudrillard in support of an argument like this, especially placing him on the same side as Jameson.)

That is an illusory happiness: its comforts and its solutions are ideological smoke and mirrors that merely help us tolerate a false world. It is not Trump that satire of this kind undermines - it is the possibility of a better one.

Image shows a paragraph from Fredric Jameson's "Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism." Text reads as follows: In this situation parody finds itself without a vocation; it has lived, and that strange new thing pastiche slowly comes to take its place. Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique, idiosyncratic style, the wearing of a linguistic mask, speech in a dead language. But it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without any of parody's ulterior motives, amputated of the satiric impulse, devoid of laughter and of any conviction that alongside the abnormal tongue you have momentarily borrowed, some healthy linguistic normality still exists. Pastiche is thus blank parody, a statue with blind eyeballs: it is to parody what that other interesting and historically original modern thing, the practice of a kind of blank irony, is to what Wayne Booth calls the "stable ironies" of the eighteenth century.

And so we laugh along when we watch the likes of Seth Myers (whose ever-present smirk and empty, soulless eyes always put me in mind of Jameson's comments on pastiche vs. parody), confident in our own superior intelligence, and reassured that Trump will be stopped by "reality."

It's not just that satire only attacks Trump at a surface, symbolic level, not the material impact of his actions; it's that it does so in the name of a pseudo-reality that is itself just simulation. It sees Trump as a mere aberration, not characteristic of late capitalism.

By implication, we just need the "adults" to come back: they can fix the system, restore order, bring back good times. (There's a nice irony in the fact that a two-time central banker was the one Western leader to acknowledge that the "rules-based" order was always fictitious.)

Satire lets us believe the problems are just with this administration: "Trump is an idiot. How could he not understand that tariffs would hurt the US economy? How could he not see that war on Iran would be a disaster? Let's laugh at his stupidity!"

Image of a page from Jean Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation." Text reads as follows: Thus, everywhere in Disneyland the objective profile of America, down to the morphology of individuals and of the crowd, is drawn. All its values are exalted by the miniature and the comic strip. Embalmed and pacified. Whence the possibility of an ideological analysis of Disneyland (L. Marin did it very well in Utopiques, jeux d'espace [Utopias, play of space]) : digest of the American way of life, panegyric of American values, idealized transposition of a contradictory reality. Certainly. But this masks something else and this "ideological" blanket functions as a cover for a simulation of the third order: Disneyland exists in order to hide that it is the "real" country, all of "real" America that is Disneyland (a bit like prisons are there to hide that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, that is carceral) . Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the America that surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal order and to the order of simulation.

Image of another page from Jean Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation." Text reads as follows: It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology) but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle. The imaginary of Disneyland is neither true nor false, it is a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate the fiction of the real in the opposite camp. Whence the debility of this imaginary, its infantile degeneration. This world wants to be childish in order to make us believe that the adults are elsewhere, in the "real" world, and to conceal the fact that true childishness is everywhere-that it is that of the adults themselves who come here to act the child in order to foster illusions as to their real childishness. Disneyland is not the only one, however. Enchanted Village, Magic Mountain, Marine World: Los Angeles is surrounded by these imaginary stations that feed reality, the energy of the real to a city whose mystery is precisely that of no longer being anything but a network of incessant, unreal circulation-a city of incredible proportions but without space, without dimension. As much as electrical and atomic power stations, as much as cinema studios, this city, which is no longer anything but an immense scenario and a perpetual pan shot, needs this old imaginary like a sympathetic nervous system made up of childhood signals and faked phantasms.

...but, like Baudrillard's simulation of the third order, that just serves to distract us from the absence of "reality" beneath. There are no adults elsewhere - the Starmers, Harrises, Schumers, and Macrons are just acting out an image of "adulthood," of responsible politics etc.

Image of a page from Jean Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation." Text reads as follows: THE HYPERREAL AND THE IMAGINARY Disneyland is a perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulacra. It is first of all a play of illusions and phantasms: the Pirates, the Frontier, the Future World, etc. This imaginary world is supposed to ensure the success of the operation. But what attracts the crowds the most is without a doubt the social microcosm, the religious, miniaturized pleasure of real America, of its constraints and joys. One parks outside and stands in line inside, one is altogether abandoned at the exit. The only phantasmagoria in this imaginary world lies in the tenderness and warmth of the crowd, and in the sufficient and excessive number of gadgets necessary to create the multitudinous effect. The contrast with the absolute solitude of the parking lot-a veritable concentration camp - is total. Or, rather: inside, a whole panoply of gadgets magnetizes the crowd in directed flows-outside, solitude is directed at a single gadget: the automobile. By an extraordinary coincidence (but this derives without a doubt from the enchantment inherent to this universe) , this frozen, childlike world is found to have been conceived and realized by a man who is himself now cryogenized: Walt Disney, who awaits his resurrection through an increase of 180 degrees centigrade.

Satire reassures us that we're smart enough to see through Trump's infantile posturing, or Hegseth's ludicrously-turbocharged image of masculinity: we laugh at the contradiction between their grandiose image and the pathetic reality beneath...

In this context, a lot of so-called satire serves to soothe the angst of a class that is (for now) largely insulated from the collapse of the liberal-capitalist by making us feel better - smarter, morally superior, more rational - than Trump and his followers.

Meanwhile, the centrist politicians who are supposed to resist this (including European leaders and the leadership of the Democrats in the US) display neither principles nor competence: they can't even claim to be good technocrats these days.

And that's without even starting on the domestic policies of the Trump administration, or their efforts to shut down the already-dysfunctional remnants of American democracy.

The US is claiming some right to kidnap or kill the leaders of states it arbitrarily decides are hostile - a precedent that might come back to haunt them, given that the US is clearly the biggest threat to global peace and order right now.

The President of the US appears to have the emotional maturity of a particularly obstreperous 11 year old, and threatens literal genocide over social media - while the Prime Minister of Israel is openly carrying it out in order to cling on to power.

‘Packaging evil into something funny’: is making fun of Trump now just ‘clownwashing’? As the president’s second term has wrought new horrors, comedians reflect on whether humor can still ‘deflate the strongman’s image’

This piece articulates something I've felt dimly for a while. It's starting to feel like satire is the opiate of the middle classes.

(I'm guilty of this too, chuckling at ultimately-impotent mockery of Trump et al.)

www.theguardian.com/culture/2026...

Holstein Park! Great memories.

Letter in vacuous management speak by university executives - may be real or may be ChatGPT

Letter in vacuous management speak by university executives - may be real or may be ChatGPT

One of these was an email sent out by the U of A executive today; the other was produced by ChatGPT with a prompt instructing it to generate a letter satirising corporatist language by academic management in the announcement of an appointment to a new position. Which is real?

One thing I have not been able to find out about the new Pope via social media is where exactly he is from. No one I know seems to have mentioned it!

I'd like to congratulate Duck Phillips on becoming the new Prime Minister of Canada.

DNC Aiming To Reconnect With Working-Class Americans With New ‘Hamilton’-Inspired Lena Dunham Web Series WASHINGTON—Saying the new effort would help them make critical inroads with low-income rural voters following a stunning election loss last week, the Democratic National Committee announced the launch...

DNC Aiming To Reconnect With Working-Class Americans With New ‘Hamilton’-Inspired Lena Dunham Web Series

Mark Carney looks like Duck Phillips tried to disguise himself by parting his hair on the other side.

Ken McElroy - Wikipedia

For some reason, the story of Ken McElroy is on my mind today.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McE...

I do not understand how anyone can take Latour seriously - especially if one has actually read any of the supposed targets of his hamfisted critiques.

South Korea Is Fighting for Democracy Again—And the World Needs to Know Last updated December 3, 10:09 AM South Korea Is Fighting for Democracy Again—And the World Needs to Know Heesoo Jang Assistant Professor of Media Law and Ethics Journalism Department, University of...

I was preparing to pitch an op-ed on the nationwide protests calling for President Yoon's resignation, aiming to provide global context amid the limited international coverage.

Given the urgency, I’m sharing it now. I didn’t expect events to escalate this quickly. #SouthKorea #Democracy

Wtf is happening in South Korea? Was there the slightest sign this would happen, or am I totally ignorant of world affairs?

I am perversely impressed by Heidegger's ability to turn Hölderlin into Rupi Kaur. He's like "Eat, Pray, Love" for the constipatedly self-important.

England's Euros performance parallels Labour's election victory. A leader without vision or charisma, lack of anything on the left wing, indifferent performances, winning due to weak opposition. It'll be complete if England win the final 3-0, all own goals by their opponents.

It's a scene from The wire where Frank sobatka says you see that bridge Nick and he points at the key bridge that just got destroyed: "You see that bridge Nick? It's one of them what do you call it a metaphor. It's like us sobotkas and our union and the whole working class in this country. It's going to last forever just like we are"

When I tell you I screamed