U.S. President Donald Trump dramatically escalated his administration’s conflict with Illinois’ top Democratic elected officials this week.
First he deployed hundreds of National Guard troops (some from Texas) to Chicago, Illinois. Then he called for the arrest of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Both Illinois officials responded defiantly on social media, as seen below.
Trump is also threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act.
He’s already issued the alarming National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 as reported by Ken Klippenstein.
My question is: Are any of these people serious?
Trump is clearly intent on making an authoritarian power grab and is likely trying to bait political opponents into Quixotic acts of resistance.
ICE agents in Illinois have been caught committing “jackbootery” as NC posted on Tuesday.
The Democrats seem oblivious to the nature of kinetic reality and incapable of going beyond ineffectual rhetoric and lawsuits, so far.
The legal angle is egregiously pointless and impotent given the corrupt courts in the Trump 2.0 era.
But what if things escalate out of anyone’s control?
What if Trump or the Democrats “ work themselves into a shoot?”
A work is everything that happens within the fictional world of wrestling. Everything you see on TV during a WWE show is a work and, with the advent of social media, more and more of what fans read from wrestlers on Twitter or Instagram is also a work. The thing about a work is that the goal is to elicit a response from the audience. When a wrestler is “working” in the ring they want the live audience to cheer them if they are a “babyface,” or good guy, and boo them if they are a heel.
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A “shoot” is something real or legitimate. It breaks the fictional world of the work. It’s something not part of the show or part of the character.
…wrestling fans want to get worked. Since the 1990s, most wrestling fans know that the WWE is scripted entertainment and that the performers in the ring are working together to tell a story through their matches. In short, we all know it’s a work. This has made it a lot harder for wrestlers and wrestling companies to work the fans and get the responses they want from them. The companies need those responses because it’s the emotional response and enjoyment of getting caught up in the show, in the work, that makes fans spend money. Getting worked is also the fun part of wrestling for fans. They want to get sucked into the fictional world of the show. Wrestling companies need to work the fans and the fans want to be worked.
American political partisans want to get worked.
We want to take our minds off the enshittification of our shared reality by imagining that we are on the verge of a definitive national political cataclysm, but the reality is no one living has any idea what such a thing would entail.
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