Shock and AWE

It’s a bit chilly in Minot, North Dakota tonight. The predicted overnight low temperature is -23 degrees Fahrenheit, which sounds unpleasant but does have some advantages. For one thing, it simplifies entering and exiting the house. There’s no mud to knock off your boots at minus twenty, and the snow is easily stomped off outside the door. There’s no need to back out of the house like a nervous hockey goalie or enter as if the door can open only wide enough to accommodate your body because Mother Nature is on guard at this open-concept cat prison. Any escapees will return in minutes, impenitent but more appreciative of their cat furniture, which is to say, all the furniture.

People also tend to stay inside in these temperatures, and that means a quieter day and an almost silent night. Outside of town and away from the highway on a frigid night, the only human sound is the snow crunching under your boots. The silence comforts. It clears out mental gunk just as the reduction in human commotion during pandemic lockdowns cleared the smog in Los Angeles and New Delhi. We are going to need that kind of cleansing quiet, because things are about to get needlessly noisy.

We can already see that the churlish all-caps tweets from the White House bathroom during Trump’s first term will be replaced by the same thing—the man is incapable of growth—on a different platform. These social media blatherings will be joined by the juvenile blurts of Elon Musk and look-at-me! posts by assorted hangers-on. In response, Republicans in Congress will change direction like a school of baitfish as they did December when an unelected billionaire tweeted his disapproval of a spending bill and a president-elect fell in line.

We will also see intra-MAGA grievances aired out on the internet. The recent inside squabble over H-1B visas was an early example of what these fights will look like, and it wasn’t pretty. Laura Loomer kicked things off on December 23rd with a tweet in response to Trump’s selection of venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan—an H-1B visa proponent—as his adviser on AI policy.

Loomer tweeted: "It's alarming to see the number of career leftists who are now being appointed to serve in Trump's admin when they share views that are in direct opposition to Trump's America First agenda."

Those agreeing with Loomer then expressed their views on social media, and Elon Musk responded to one of them on X:

“The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B.”

“Take a big step back and F--- YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”

First, America was strong—and great—long before SpaceX and Tesla came along. Second, “F--- YOURSELF in the face” is the kind of thing your most insufferable high school classmate posts while losing an argument on Facebook. It is not something you would hear from a grownup capable of making any part of our world more efficient. Apparently, Steve Bannon and I agree on this one thing, because Bannon shared a screenshot of the tweet in a post on GETTR and referred to Musk as “this toddler:”

Aside from the daily governance by social media post and bouts of expletive-laden MAGA infighting, some unexpected and probably violent things will happen, and we know how that will go: Some event will occur. A right-wing politician or media organization will mischaracterize the event and Trump will chime in based on that mischaracterization. His base will pick up the lie and hold on to it for dear life, even if the person or organization that originated the false claim issues a retraction. In fact, the truth will make them cling more strongly to the lie. They will want the lie to be true, and so—in their minds—it will become the truth.

The latest example of a lie becoming the truth began when Fox News erroneously reported that the pickup used in the New Year’s Eve attack in New Orleans had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border just two days earlier. To their credit, Fox News did issue a retraction and repeated it throughout the next day, but neither Trump nor his backers on social media were swayed. Trump added his usual like-nobody-has-ever-seen hyperbole, and his minions amplified it.

I’m not on X much these days, as it has become a troll-filled right-wing echo chamber, but I decided to point out misinformation in a tweet about the about the New Orleans attack. A right-wing troll replied with an illogical strawman argument claiming that I saw the attacker as an American patriot whose name was being dragged through the mud.

I should have expected no greater logic. What we can all expect is more of this self-sustaining shock and AWE (Assertions Without Evidence) circus. Expect a constant need to separate the noise from the signal and an occasional need to escape the noise altogether. We all could use a break from the clamor once in a while, preferably in a place where temperatures are in the mid-seventies.