3 days ago
Watch this gripping new America show
Almost all of what we know as 'America' comes from media - movies, shows, news, pop culture, etc - and our visitations to that country. This idea and experience of America has been curated for decades, making it the alluring byword for not just 'land of milk and honey' prosperity but also 'land of the free' democracy. So, when gashes on the canvas of this pretty picture appear - as they have over the last few days, with America's president sending almost 5,000 military personnel to LA to quell protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids there - we sit up and watch a different American show. The protests, clampdowns and demagoguery are more 'West-South Asian' to our eyes, with lathi-charges replaced by baton blows. This picture sits odd with our Netflix-CNBC-Google diet.
With his gung-ho Mar-a-Lago non-passive-aggressive policy actions, Trump 2.0 is bringing to the surface - and to our screens - an America that has been lying beyond suburban white picket fences and Napa Valley that we are more directly or indirectly familiar with. We have seen such ruptures before: 1992 LA race riots, 2020 nationwide riots following (race-related) police brutality, 2021 storming of US Capitol.... But in the larger scheme of things, these were 'incidents' of 'civil unrest'.
America under Trump 2.0 seems to be painting a different mural, where the Wall St-Hollywood-Silicon Valley complex of Big Mac-Big FX-Big Tech is colliding with a seedier, entropic landscape. California governor Gavin Newsom and Donald Trump engaged in what has 'civil war' spray-painted all over it, seems like an opening chapter of something longer-lasting. What we could be witnessing is a new exaggerated image of America joining an older exaggerated image of America.
