With American election fever now at a deafening pitch, there’s something dizzying about stepping from one filter bubble to another and seeing how differently the same event can be treated. Yesterday, for instance, Donald Trump staged a photoshoot in a branded garbage collection truck, in response to Joe Biden calling his supporters “garbage”. This in turn was in response to a stand-up comic at Trump’s recent New York City rally describing Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage”.
The Independent reported the garbage truck stunt as a “total fail”. The New York Times employed the “editorialising by proxy” strategy beloved of officially-still-objective newsrooms such as the BBC, in which they don’t so much report the stunt as report the reactions of people who didn’t like the stunt, so as to criticise it while preserving the appearance of merely reporting the news. Meanwhile, Trump-backing billionaire Elon Musk deemed it “genius-level trolling”, and the New York Post called it “a big, beautiful MAGA garbage truck”.
To say that I’ve been able to follow this story at all, despite having no direct stake in the US election, is an admission that I spend way too much time on the internet. But as such I have come to appreciate the power of a well-judged meme. And on this front Trump has consistently been head and shoulders above his opponents.
The visual of Trump in a hi-vis vest, behind the wheel of a Trump-branded garbage truck (bin lorry, in English), carries potent connotations. Momentarily, the former president became the working man, doing the smelly, arduous but socially indispensable work of collecting everyone’s rubbish. He became the practical man, doing tangible work in the real world. It is difficult to think of another politician capable of such a stunt — not even Trump’s own running mate J.D. Vance.
I’ve argued elsewhere that postmodern politics retrieves “representation” in a more medieval than liberal-democratic sense. And from this perspective, we can read Trump’s “garbage” stunt as representing — in archetype, if not yet in policy — a swathe of the American electorate that in recent decades has been largely abandoned by the Left which once voiced its interests.
Embodying archetypes in this way is a gift, not a learned achievement. Garbage Trump is only the latest in a string of memetically potent Trumpian images and utterances. When he visited a McDonald’s, made some fries and “served” from the drive-thru window, his enemies protested that it was all staged. But it made little difference, because the resulting images were simply too symbolically dense for such details to matter.
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SubscribeI watched the video of the garbage truck and the follow-on rally where Trump told the story of why he was appearing in a hi-vis jacket. https://youtu.be/aowTnlSylRE
It struck me that he told the story in a similar way to how Elvis Presley interacted with an audience. Engaging with the audience, speaking with pauses, sharing his story with them in a relatable way. Getting his points across.
No wonder the Democrats are panicking.
Have you considered seeking mental health assistance?
CS suggesting mentalhealth treatment. Now *that* is funny.
He/she may think you’re serious.
As usual, the leftists can’t hide their genocidal hatred for those who disagree with them. ‘Garbage’…you have to work hard, flipping and convoluting in spasmodic absurdities, to pretend such language is not genocidal.
It’s not enough to troll them back, we have to take them seriously. The body count in the 20th century proves the leftist mind is
one of the most genocidal in all of human history.How do you feel about Trump paraphrasing his German hero with the “poisoning the blood of the nation” stuff? You cool with that? Because calling someone garbage is way worse than that, right?!?!
Context, numbskull.
Trump is playing these old school media dinosaurs like a Yehudi Menuhin. Their self-important huffing and puffing completely misses the point which just adds to the effect.
We live in some late stage of democracy in the West, maybe not the last stage but there is not much is left to dumb down.
“there is not much is left to dumb down”
You certainly have the right candidate to finish the job.
CS all you ever do on here is ad hominem responses.
I guess it’s late stage Champagne Socialism?
Perhaps the author is also speech writer for the VP. This essay contains a great deal of word salad filler. The bottom line: Wonderful Puerto Rico does, in fact, have a garbage problem. Democrats, in fact, have called Republicans dangerous tyrants since the Reagan era. Now democrats have cranked it up to 11 and as Lee Siegel wrote here just last week, democrats think Trump is worse than Hitler and his followers are garbage.
The level of dog whistling for violence is working. Trump has had 2 murder attempts, one mere inches from success. The stories of biolence against Americans,daring to wear Trump gear are numerous. In 2020 a random teen was murdered by some Biden supporter because he looked like a Trump supporter.
What do the democrats do? Triple down, intensify their poorly veiled threats against Americans. What has Trump done? Stuck to his job of winning this coming Tuesday.
I proudly stand as deplorable garbage with Trump. It is far better than being one of the despicable irrational cowardly haters.
He’s certainly a clown.
President of the United States? Ah, I think not…
Ah… you hope not. But will never understand why.
No, you will never understand anything.
CS is losing his,endearing mask and his teeth are showing. He smells defeat. The cognitive dissonance must be getting to him.