Living With the Shameless Shitposter

Rinse. Repeat.

(image framing credit: Arise News)

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Presidencies have historically been geared toward legacies built on bumpersticker phrasing, the kind of monikers that serve as potent information shortcuts for distilling proposed or established greatness—either by historians or presidents themselves—deserved or not.

Lincoln is still frequently called The Great Emancipator for his role in the abolition of slavery. Teddy Roosevelt is The Trust Buster for aggressively going after corporate monopolies. His fifth cousin FDR is The New Deal President for sweeping legislation that transformed the country in the midst of the Great Depression. Reagan is The Great Communicator for his effectiveness in shaping public opinion.

Donald Trump is probably best captured as The Shameless Shitposter, a presidency built on relentlessly engaging in bad faith as part of an overall strategy to flood the national discourse with statements or announcements that are intentionally divisive, cruel, controversial, absurd, inaccurate, and otherwise childish — all to serve as acid tests that reaffirm and consolidate his power in the face of a cowardly political world.

The term “shitposting” was formerly a Very Online thing but has been in mainstream usage for about a decade now, typically describing online content that’s intentionally controversial, more often than not bigoted and inaccurate in nature.

Once relegated to the margins in places like the extremist website 4chan, shitposting has now become the central engine around which the American political conversation revolves, with Donald Trump being its greatest champion, always seeking to distract and dominate every news cycle, always intending to neutralize good faith in pursuit of shielding from accountability his relentless dream of fascism.

In the past three days, alone, Trump has thrown numerous flaming-bags-of-shit at the press and the public, certainly aiming to distract but also designing to assert his central role in American life (and on the global stage) and maintaining the control he wields over the rightwing.

Yesterday, we got a two-fer with prisons and foreign films.

First was his order to re-open Alcatraz—the infamous federal penitentiary just offshore from San Francisco that’s been closed since the early ‘60s—in order to house “America’s most ruthless and violent offenders” in his words. He’s serious about the order, of course, but the actual motivation is to steal headlines and stir shit.

Then came his order to put a 100 percent tariff on films produced outside of the United States, which is half-serious: yes, he’ll probably seek to do this, but it’s primarily more xenophobic nonsense to, again, needlessly stir shit and rally his base.

But it was on Friday when he committed arguably the most openly-transparent act of trolling he’s done yet: he posted an AI-generated image of himself dressed as the pope, not two weeks after the death of Francis and only days before the College of Cardinals will gather in the Sistine Chapel to elect the next pontiff.

It is, of course, sacrilegious and insulting and bizarre and wholly sophomoric and needlessly divisive while the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics are still in mourning, but it’s also meant to be a distraction and it’s meant to crowd out other news stories and it’s meant to signal to even his most conservative Catholic supporters:

I am always in control and always the first priority and not even the most sacred aspects of your faith should ever come before me.

And then, the process begins…

The dominoes quickly fall, as they always do, starting with legacy press, who do some sorta-kinda pushback with shyly-critical coverage but not so critical that their access to the notoriously punitive Trump World is threatened.

For example, The New York Times somewhat attempted to contextualize why the pic is insulting to Catholics, especially during a period of mourning, but mostly framed it as an ill-timed “joke” that didn’t land well.

What exactly the “joke” is here hasn’t been sufficiently explained by anyone in legacy political media, nor whether this is yet another indicator that the sitting U.S. president is openly compromising America’s standing in the world with blatantly childish antics, nor whether his intention behind the image isn’t, in fact, meant to be a “joke” at all but an intentional act of dictatorial intimidation.

While legacy media weakly challenges the latest shitposting, Democratic lawmakers try to go on the attack, but understanding their messaging will only go so far with reluctant media outlets, their response amounts to little more than a news cycle or two of condemnation — and rarely from top leadership, who may or may not attempt to describe it as a distraction from issues affecting the American people.

Republican lawmakers and conservative influencers mostly encourage the playground bullshit, either because they genuinely find it amusing and/or effective, or they, too, are weak-willed and scared of alienating Trump and his base, so fearful are they of becoming his next target.

And thus, Trump’s latest act of trolling the world generates the distracting outrage and intimidation he clearly sought and then quickly fades from view.

By the time a new pope has been elected—I would guess by Friday evening at the very latest—this incident will mostly be forgotten and then almost completely forgotten, taking its place in the mountain of anecdotes of Trump’s toddler antics, occasionally making an appearance in future political commentary on Trump being a toddler.

Rinse. Repeat.

Imagine if all of these professionals truly understood the moment we’re in and worked together to bring accountability and yet… no dice.

Even now, eight years into Trump’s festering psyche being smeared across the character of the country, there are invariably political pundits—and not all of them rightwing—who cheaply try to frame his “communications style” as an act of genius political strategy.

You see, it’s much easier to claim Trump is just outsmarting everyone else. He just knows how to play the game, these pundits say. His understanding of America’s pulse is more attuned or he’s such a bold risk-taker or he’s willing to be grizzled and unpolished in a world of inauthentic, elitist preening.

This is all bullshit, of course. It’s not that Trump is smarter; it’s that he’s truly shameless to a degree that would be unthinkable or impossible to everyone else, and he can get away with it because all other political actors—from lawmakers to journalists to pundits—are too afraid of what they might lose by challenging him.

Legacy media could band together and hold Trump and his administration accountable, but that would mean the loss of access.

Republican lawmakers could do the same, but that would mean they’re next on his list.

Democratic lawmakers would love to do the same, but most are too busy being voluntarily rendered helpless by focus group restraints from a legacy consultant class that’s urged them to offer inoffensive pablum weakly gesturing toward kitchen table issues in the same boring way that’s won some elections, sure, but also, in recent years, has lost substantial confidence from voters whom, understandably, largely see them as weak when compared to Trump’s Strong Man Schtick.

And, of course, everyone is afraid of potential political violence from Trump’s base.

Rinse. Repeat.

The cliched excuse for not holding Trump accountable comes fast and without a hint of shame: his antics are a distraction, and we shouldn’t take the bait. This is a distraction from that, and that is a distraction from this.

Everything he does is a distraction from everything else he does.

Anything that any given political actor doesn’t want to confront can be swept under the rug by simply stating it’s a distraction from more important things, even if those implied more important things become the next target of his shitposting, and then, those, too, are distractions themselves from other more important things.

Keep it vague as possible, keep your head down, and hope this all goes away and the pendulum somehow swings back against Trump, though few with substantial power and influence seem to be able to explain who exactly is charged with ensuring the pendulum does get pushed back.

When Trump shitposts, the professional political class now publicly shrug and privately hope that time will heal all and someone else—anyone else—will finally step up and be the hero, and meanwhile, the public gets the message that Trump is still in control and beyond accountability.

Our politics have become a world of the formerly aspiring—who read about heroes growing up and thought they could someday be heroes—but few want to actually do the hard and necessary and sacrificial work it takes to be heroes.

The vast majority of political actors—lawmakers and journalists and pundits alike—are hoping the tipping point will come when Trump has finally worn out his long-decaying welcome and accountability will descend from the heavens in the form of enough brave people who have had enough.

But few want to actually be brave.

So, The Shameless Shitposter continues to openly mock them.

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