The Non-United States
Last weekend after Saturday Night Live, country singer Morgan Wallen stormed off the stage to his private jet to declare on social media that he was running back “to God’s country,” because he apparently couldn’t stand being onstage with the Academy Award-winning Best Actress and a famously liberal, diverse cast. The aftermath continued on social media this week as these two strongholds in our country argued: the racist, homophobic Christian Nationalist Fox News crowd running the White House, thinking it’s cool to blast classified bomb-dropping plans on texting apps, bring measles back, invade Canada and Greenland and let an unelected billionaire destroy our entire system of government, versus intelligent people.
Trump has divided America with his hateful speech against anyone who doesn’t share his beliefs. What is that exactly? His stated White House agenda is one thing, but every day it gets piled on with new initiatives, from taking over the Kennedy Center and whitewashing the federal government while lying about doing it to obliterating the Department of Education and wiping out USAID so that tens of thousands of children around the world are starving.
Annexing Canada, creating tariffs that make it unaffordable to buy a new car, and causing the world’s children to starve and die weren’t campaign promises, those are all part of the great bait and switch that happen when you elect someone who promised to be a dictator on day one. This is what the people who stayed home on Election Day brought us. We can’t blame Trump voters because assumingly they got what they voted for—though it wasn’t the landslide or mandate they claim; the 1.5 percent popular vote victory is one of the smallest ever, and there are plenty of news stories lately about all the buyer’s remorse voters have about the mistake they made in voting for Trump .
On the official White House page, Propaganda Barbie pumps out fluff about “the Golden Age of America” and how Trump is “delivering transformative wins.” Karoline with at least one K is up there with her Christian Nationalist cross hosting the “MAGA minute” spinning lies and misinformation that the mainstream media is too chickenshit to correct for the most part because they’re scared to lose their press credential access to the White House.
So what’s often referred to as the “low information voter,” the people on Facebook who post shit about how Vitamin A prevents measles outbreaks, making kids sick from too much Vitamin A while we’re having the first measles outbreak since it was eradicated after our country implemented the measles vaccine, sees only misinformation handed to them on a MAGA platter. Confirmation bias on the right has become a billionaire-fueled lie factory and because of the media control, information is the currency and many citizens who don’t take the time to research a claim they see on Youtube or Facebook think our country is “safer” and doing fine under the current regime.
Take the images of Ice Ice Barbie Kristi Noem at an El Salvador prison with her $50,000 Rolex and men who were imprisoned there without due process, heads shaved, shirts removed to show their tattoos in her latest political theatre cosplay. Human rights attorneys call the display “an example of the fear that Trump’s government wants to instill in immigrants,” but the White House uses the words like “in order to keep the American people safe,” while family members of those in the prison photo claim loved ones are being held captive without cause.
The news can be difficult to digest in these politically chaotic times, but it becomes almost impossible to consume in a world where there are polar opposite worlds of coverage and the truth lies probably mostly untold in a changing world.
—Follow Mary McCarthy on Bluesky and Instagram.