{"id":9178,"date":"2020-05-19T11:40:38","date_gmt":"2020-05-19T16:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/?p=9178"},"modified":"2024-05-19T01:16:33","modified_gmt":"2024-05-19T01:16:33","slug":"trump-eating-poison-is-a-sacrament-of-charismatic-escalation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/trump-eating-poison-is-a-sacrament-of-charismatic-escalation\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Eating Poison is a Sacrament of Charismatic Escalation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>A short opinion piece:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a mistake to think that Trump taking hydroxychloroquine is merely a sign of stupidity, anti-science narcissism, or a red flag for flogging something he can profit from in some way. It&#8217;s likely all of these things, yes, but I believe there&#8217;s something deeper going on.<\/p>\n<p>Remember when he stared directly at the eclipse? Also a moment of stupidity, the machismo of a ten year-old, and a big F-U to so-called &#8220;experts&#8221;. He shows the same face in relation to the legal system when he fantasizes about gunning people down on 5th Avenue with impunity.<\/p>\n<p>But when he challenges the *actual sun*, i.e., the source of all power on earth, he&#8217;s putting something at stake that his draft-deferring, germophobic soul rarely risks: his body. He&#8217;s showing off to his base, yes, but he&#8217;s doing it by showing them he has skin in the game. That his body is tougher than the game.<\/p>\n<p>How much more extreme is it to take a medication that is both unrecommended by &#8220;experts&#8221;, and that has become an article of faith for those believing in his leadership? If he survives (if he took it at all), he gets to say:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The experts are so very wrong, they called the cure a poison. Sad!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But the unspoken somatic implication of this is:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I am so immensely sure of myself, and my body is so excellently powerful, I can magically turn what &#8220;experts&#8221; call poison (which it may actually be, I dunno) into medicine. Great!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s a kind of ultimate charismatic act: he&#8217;s digesting a symbol of his own insanity in order to become stronger.<\/p>\n<p>If he could stage it, he&#8217;d walk on water.<\/p>\n<p>Another indication of the increasingly shamanic or alchemical construction of Trump&#8217;s body is his refusal to wear a mask. I don&#8217;t believe it&#8217;s just vanity. It&#8217;s not just disbelief in the science, or a sense of libertarian entitlement.<\/p>\n<p>I believe it may go farther than this: towards the conviction that his exhalation is righteous. If it makes some people sick, it would make the right people sick. Everyone else will feel its warm, moist blessing.<\/p>\n<p>Back to pills though: IMO there&#8217;s a connection here between Trump&#8217;s pills and Elon Musk and Ivanka tweeting about taking the red pill.<\/p>\n<p>Forgetting the MRA and 4chan connections for a moment: like hydroxychloroquine, the red pill is positioned as a dangerous but necessary challenge for the <em>\u00dcbermensch<\/em> to digest and transform. It&#8217;s a spiritual dare.<\/p>\n<p>So now we have charismatic men, surrounded by enablers, cosplaying as divinities and avatars, consuming poison for personal enlightenment, and to show the people that they too can be magical.<\/p>\n<p>Sad!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A short opinion piece: It&#8217;s a mistake to think that Trump taking hydroxychloroquine is merely a sign of stupidity, anti-science narcissism, or a red flag for<span class=\"excerpt-hellip\"> [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[516,21,85,684,88,66],"tags":[706,707,708,709],"class_list":["post-9178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alt-right","category-articles","category-charismatic-abuse","category-covid-19","category-cult-dynamics","category-politics","tag-donald-trump","tag-elon-musk","tag-hydroxychloroquine","tag-ivanka-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}