Since fascists are historically awful at creating culture, they must appropriate, steal, and dominate to feed their delusional myth of supremacy.
Right-wing firebrand Rush Limbaugh was a failed sportscaster. Conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck always wanted to be a radio host and performer. Ben Shapiro couldn’t make it as a screenwriter. Michael Knowles could only hack it as a student actor portraying a horny gay man in search of sex.
Conservative heroes are mostly the products of exaggerations, lies, and the whitewashing of history.
John Wayne was an actor portraying a character. In reality, he was an injured athlete who stumbled into a Hollywood career. Ronald Reagan was an actor who used his celebrity to get into politics. Donald Trump is a failed businessman who outsourced the authorship of “The Art of the Deal” to create the narrative that he was some brilliant master of economics. In reality, he has multiple bankruptcies and doesn’t understand how tariffs work. Without “The Apprentice,” he’d never ascend to the White House, where his current Administration is populated by the world’s most mediocre white men who are thoroughly unqualified for their positions.
They are all fragile men protected and insulated by their wealth, whiteness, and celebrity. As such, they need a rigged, isolated system - without competition - that allows them to fail up thanks to the promotion of lies, propaganda, and disinformation that shields them from uncomfortable truths.
This explains why Trump is badgering the Smithsonian to remove an exhibit that includes him as an impeached President. This explains why they are removing qualified people of color and replacing them with mediocre whites, such as Pete Hegseth and Sean Duffy. This explains why they’re banning books and trying to dismantle public schools. This explains why Donald Trump has taken over the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors and decided to host the event himself and help choose the recipients, which now include Sylvester Stallone and George Strait.
The truth is men like Trump and his MAGA cult can’t make it in the real world based on merit and equal competition. They need to rig the system. They must feed themselves, and the rest of us, comforting lies and propaganda instead.
Well, Danielle and I aren’t here for the bullshit.
In this mid-week Democracy-Ish check-in, we go hard in the paint and talk about our experiences as people of color who have had to work twice as hard to go half as far as a mediocre white MAGA man.
Give us a watch!
Thank you God, Cash Flow Collective, Debbie Hupp, Caroline Grevelle, Leah Anderson, and many others for tuning into my live video with Danielle Moodie! Join me for my next live video in the app.
