Alternative realities
Things Trump's inauguration made me think about.
It’s fair to say that though I consume a lot of American media and culture, I follow U.S. news news only to the extent that Instagram draws my attention to them—which is not inconsequential. One day, I woke up, started my usual doomscrolling, and there it was: Trump had won his second attempt at the presidency, and there was his re-inauguration.
The first thing I saw were two candid stories from Washington Post reporter Emily Davies, which still live on X. In one of them she captured a staffer asking George W. Bush, “Are you going to behave?” and Obama sneaking up cheekily from behind, quipping, “Nope.” In a following video, picking up on the same thread, Davies asked Obama as he was walking past, “Did you behave, sir?” And he said, impishly, “Just barely.”
This made me think: Is this how we have to cover news now, to feed attention to the formal news reports, if it even does? No judgement, I follow Emily Davies because I like how she uses Instagram to pull back the curtain a little on how journalism is done; and these Obama interactions were what made me continue, that morning, to scroll on to find out more about the inauguration. I found them quite delicious and funny, sent them on to friends. But I do also have some misgivings about this sort of instant, candid coverage appearing more in mainstream journalism, I guess because it feels a little like gossip.
And yet, maybe this moment demands it? As the hypocrisies of those in power have been more clearly revealed to us, particularly through the lens of Israel and Palestine, we are hungry for a glimpse of what they are really like, what they actually do and say and, yes, what they joke about, beyond the official veneer we’re presented with. But to what extent can finding and highlighting these more informal moments, especially the funny ones, make light of dire events, make them something to sigh but giggle about? At the same time, isn’t our knee-jerk response to absurdity simply to laugh? To be sure, the comedians were among the first I looked to for their take on Trump’s inauguration.
Later, I saw that Singapore’s national broadsheet The Straits Times had collected Davies’ videos in an Instagram reel titled “Things that made us go 👀 during Trump’s inauguration”, along with other videos—incorrectly crediting both videos to other people.
I’ve noticed more news media doing this on their Instagram accounts since Israel began their relentless, indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza—the reposting or repacking of clips with hardly any context given, nor any credit to the original sources of the footage so you can try to suss them out for veracity or reliability; and as we saw with The Straits Times reel, credit, even if given, could also be given erroneously. I think its smart, perhaps even necessary, for media organizations and journalists to pick up some of the tools from the digital content creator’s handbook—for one: why let someone else explain your article for you in a ‘hey, real talk’ reel if you can do it yourself (even if that doesn’t guarantee your audience will go on to read your article)—but this reposting without context is one thing I think they should try to refrain from.
Unless, perhaps, it feels really urgent, if it’ll do more good than bad—though even that can be a tough call to make. I do think that Gaza is perhaps an exception, because mainstream media coverage has been so one-sided and no foreign journalists have been allowed to enter Gaza (Palestinian journalists are indispensable, yes, but the prohibition of foreign journalists in Gaza is still inexcusable), so any information that circulates out of the cracks is better than nothing at all, even if they are not easily verifiable, especially when they are reposted over and over and the trail to their original source is lost. There is still a need to show the crimes Israel—with the help of governments that arm it without reservation—is committing against the Palestinian people in order to put further pressure on the powers that be to call for a ceasefire. Even if certain incidents are not always verifiable, it’s impossible to deny the bigger picture, especially given the Israeli government has made its intentions explicit.
The most jarring thing I found about Trump’s inauguration ceremony was how his audience gave him a standing ovation when he said he would rename the Gulf of Mexico the ‘Gulf of America’ and how they cheered when he signed a slew of executive orders—including: to withdraw from the Paris agreement and the World Health Organization, which will have consequences for the world.
The surreality forces you to seriously question: What if we are entering a world in which the majority thinks that it is right to preemptively kill children, to denigrate darker-skinned peoples, to champion certain groups simply because they are rich? Arguably, we’ve already entered that world, but what if laws explicitly bend that way too, when such things are considered right? What an upside-down world. Suddenly, you, with your compassion, your attempt to be humane, would be the one in the wrong, you would be the one acting illegally, when all you want to do is act with sympathy and kindness and justice—values that feel like common sense. The reactions of Trump and his posse to the bishop spouting mere kindness was instructive, calling her ‘extreme’ and ‘out of line’, as well as unprofessional and mentally ill (can’t find the source for this now). All this makes me thankful that here in Malaysia we still have some semblance of a shared reality, that though our society, too, has deep schisms they are not yet so impossible to negotiate. But I do worry that what’s unfolding in the U.S. will give permission to those elsewhere who delight and gain in sowing division as well.
Speaking of which: Elon Musk’s Nazi salute. When I first saw it, I thought what Jon Stewart, jokingly, thought: Wait, maybe he was just doing that “dabbing” thing teenagers do? Because, hey, some of us tend to judge what others say or do in the best faith possible, while they don’t necessarily do the same for us. In this case, I wasn’t necessarily even trying to see it in good-faith terms, but more in practical terms. I was thinking: I know he’s rich and entitled, but doing a Nazi salute would surely be too tone-deaf, too risky? He might hold Nazi sentiments, but surely he won’t show it? There is still a difference between thinking and feeling something, and actually doing it, right? But no, Musk performed the salute twice; he has lent his support to the AfD in Germany. He knows what he is doing. Yes, he is also awkward as hell, but you can be both awkward and corrupt.
I can’t help but feel that this tendency in the ‘reasonable’ among us to want to read people in good faith is leading to a breakdown in general communication. When Trump spoke of setting up an “External Revenue Board”, no one quite knew what he meant; he probably didn’t even know what he meant. But if you’re the media and you want to have any news to write about at all, you have to read what he said in good faith—to assume he maybe meant the next most logical thing he didn’t mean—in order to engage with it, to even have something to engage with. The New York Times here, for example, because otherwise it would have to dump down the conversation and do away with its measured tone entirely and then what would it be left with?
One of the things W.C. and I went back and forth on when we heard Trump won was how we would have voted if we were faced with a similar predicament, considering what’s still going on in Gaza.
I thought I would probably still have voted for Biden/Harris, if only to stave off a Trump victory, because a Trump victory would mean that conditions would deteriorate even further, and more quickly, for Palestinians, because Trump would have even fewer reservations than the Democrats in power. I thought that the fate of Palestinians under both presidencies would still lead to the same outcome, just that one would feel even less constrained by humanitarian norms (even if they have already broken down) and so accelerate the killings of Palestinians. My thought was simply: a Biden/Harris win would at least buy Palestinians a little more time, compared to a Trump win. It’s a very pessimistic view of the world, to be sure, but I was trying to put myself in the shoes of a Palestinian in Gaza, living from moment to moment under Israeli bombardment. I thought I would just want to live a little longer, in whatever way I could. I thought it would be egotistical not to vote for Biden/Harris simply because one couldn’t stomach voting for them. It shouldn’t be about what you thought your vote would say about you, but how it would actually affect Palestinians.
W.C., on the other hand, said he would find it difficult to vote for the Biden/Harris administration after all it had done, and not done. What’s more, he thought that what Biden/Harris was already doing, or allowing Israel to do, to Palestinians was far from ‘a lesser evil’, and he did not want to be forever held hostage by the status quo, by thinking, Well, it could be worse. The hypocrisy of those in power is enraging, and maybe we need someone who looks and speaks like the villain they are to ambush us out of our complacency. Maybe, without such a villain, we would simply submit to the appearance of order, and nothing would change. Maybe voters need to vote with their hearts, even if that means voting for an independent candidate with no chance of winning an immediate election, because it takes years, decades, to build new alternative parties, and how will they ever have a chance if people never vote for them?
This hypocrisy exhibited by the Democrats in the U.S. is something Jon Stewart and AOC touched on in their postmortem chat together. (Honestly, it’s so worth a watch! I’m glad these two people exist in the world.) Stewart spoke about being struck by the ‘decorum’ the Democrats clung to when Trump won, despite their earlier ‘apocalyptic messaging’ about him being a fascist, which would make people think, was all that just marketing? Surely there must be some middle ground between storming the Capitol and ‘Would you like Oolong?’ For example, what AOC did: she sat out Trump’s inauguration. Unlike the former U.S. presidents who seemed to be trying to give off the vibe that they were being forced to play nice by virtue of being former office holders, but hey, look, they aren’t taking this all that seriously—which, I think, might have the effect of suggesting to the rest of us that we shouldn’t, also, take this all that seriously, that the only recourse is to inhabit a resigned but jovial, winking cynicism. However, Stewart makes the point, with which I concur, that in the face of a wrecking ball like Trump, this preservation of decorum just looks like submission. As AOC put it, this is what valuing order over valuing justice looks like.
Everyone in the world is growing more and more cynical about how power works, how the system is rigged so there is often no recourse to equality or justice, and as such, the clear hypocrisies of those who purport to be the good ones are a useful thing for bad actors to exploit. Trump, at least, some might say, doesn’t pretend to be virtuous. AOC, herself a Democrat, is clear-eyed about her own party’s failings in this regard: how they also take big money but think that money only corrupts Republicans, how members of Congress engage in insider trading despite clear conflicts of interests. On her part, AOC says she doesn’t accept any money from lobbyists, that the average campaign donation she receives is USD21. She is under no pressure to meet with lobbyists, she states categorically, because everyday Americans support her.
Which, makes me think: More and more, I think it’s worth being very clear what principles you stand for in a sea of people who just go along with the flow, who go along with the least offensive of everything. It seems counterintuitive, but perhaps by being particular about your affinities, you garner more supporters, because that makes it easier for people to find you? You’re less interchangeable?
In an Insta live AOC did after Trump won, she offered something I found hopeful and actionable, and applicable to so many issues, in this current moment when the world is on fire. To boost morale, she emphasised the importance of not giving up hope for a better world, of continuously asserting what we believe in, so that those who need it most don’t feel alone:
“Sometimes, what we are able to do is very limited. But even at times when our hands are tied, one of the most enormously powerful things we can do is keep the light on, keep the candle on. […]
It’s important that we continue to signal to one another what we believe, because if we get quiet, if we feel like we’re just going to sit back, then everyone around us is going to think that everyone has given up.”
No manner what kind of person you are, whether you’re more comfortable with a brasher or quieter approach, whether you’re an activist or a writer or not even any kind of public-facing person, signalling is doable in so many little ways.
Yell or whisper, keep the light on 🕯️
E.