You have to give it to the 47th president of the US — he, like a good carnival barker, sure knows how to rev up a crowd.
In case you missed Donald Trump’s inaugural address on Monday, fear not — it was little different in tone, content or reality from any of the tunes he’s been playing since he decided to run for office again.
The Capitol’s interior hasn’t been seen since that shirtless, horned “QAnon shaman” (who, by the way, screams he’s “GONNA BUY SOME MOTHA FU*KIN GUNS!!!, now that he’s been pardoned) stormed it on January 6 2021. It’s a good thing the building has such wonderful acoustics — for this, judging from the whoops from the gathered supplicants on Monday, is the finest echo chamber in the world.
So much for the experts who insisted Trump’s speech would be about “unity”. This is Unreality TV, where delusions run deep.
No surprise that the tech broligarchs — whose algorithm-driven swamps have helped deliver the world to a fresh hell — are smooching his ring. British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, getting off his plane from Munich on September 30 1938, waving a worthless piece of paper signed by Adolf Hitler and mumbling “peace in our time”, was less insane.
This is Unreality TV, where delusions run deep
The show felt like a combination of a state funeral and an episode of The Apprentice. There were choirs and revivalist preachers and US Marines presenting bayonet-tipped rifles to someone who once reportedly called the US’s war dead “suckers”, and Melania Trump in a hat so severe she looked like the baddie in a Western.
There were mumbled oaths to protect democracy and the constitution, whatever that is. There were promises of troops on the Mexican border, and of a new golden age whose glister, when all is said and done, is likely to be as real as the “gold” on the Trump Tower escalator. God help us all.
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