Although it’s by no means the most important story in the news, we couldn’t help noticing the latest brouhaha about “memes,” which is what they call those photo-shopped and pointedly political photomontages and videos that you encounter every time you venture onto the internet. The latest controversy concerns one that depicts President Donald Trump going on a bloody rampage in a “church of fake news” against against such political opponents as Democratic Rep. Maxine Walters and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and the late Republican Senator John McCain, as well as such media outlets as the Washington Post and the Cable News Network and the British Broadcasting System.
If it were meant as a satire of Trump’s violent rhetoric against his political enemies it probably would have gone unnoticed, but it’s clearly intended as a celebration and further provocation, and it got an enthusiastic response from the pro-Trump political convention at one of Trump’s golf resorts over the weekend. The White House has officially stated it didn’t hang anything to do with the showing, which is plausible, but Trump hasn’t yet “tweeted” a denunciation, and they don’t seem to mind if the video goes “viral.” Trump himself has “re-tweeted” video memes taken from his pro wrestling days showing him body-slamming a foe with the CNN logo superimposed on his head, as well as other “memes” showing him violently vanquishing foes, and judging by what shows up in our e-mail the Trump fans seem to love it.
Trump’s critics, especially those who see themselves being symbolically slaughtered on the “meme,” take a dimmer view of the “viral” video. Maybe they just can’t take a joke, or they’re the sorts of snowflakes who can dish out the heat but can’t take it, but we figure that maybe they’ve got a point. We have our own old-fashioned criticisms of everyone Trump is seen slaughtering in the “meme,” but in no case would we take it that far. We’d rather that our nation’s disputes be settled without any slaughter or body-slamming, symbolic or otherwise. If the damned Democrats prevail by such sissified rules, then so be it.
Our more up-to-date Republican friends should know that the damned Democrats are also pretty good at “meme” warfare, and oftentimes wittier. A Facebook friend recently posted a “meme” that showed Trump saying in a cartoon caption that “Sleepy Joe Biden is a poo poo pee pee caca faced loser,” juxtaposed against a photo of some teary-eyed rally fans saying “He’s just like Jesus,” which we had to admit was pretty darned funny. Those damned Democrats can be just as mean, too.
The video that sparked the current controversy was taken from the very violent and highly-profitable “Kingsmen” series of action-adventure movies, specifically from a scene that the depicts the putative hero slaughtering the members of a murderous cult’s services, and we once saw a “meme” that presented it unedited but out of context and celebrated the slaughter of evangelical Christians, which offended our evangelical sensibilities but got many “likes.” Even in their apolitical context the “Kingsmen” movies and the rest of the current bloody action-adventure genre have a corrosive effect on our culture, and we’re dispirited but not at all surprised that both sides of the political divide are affected.
It’s not the biggest story of the day, but is nonetheless well worth noting. These “memes” have supplanted the editorial cartoons of the Gutenberg age of mass media, which yielded an outsized influence on a too-busy-to-read public, and so far there’s no Thomas Nast to set a standard. So far, there are no standards at all.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 