Anti-Comedy

Look, maybe Elon Musk really doesn't know. The fact that his repeated raised-right-arm gesture toward the crowd at a political rally in an arena has been so positively received by vile Christian Nationalist white supremacy groups is maybe an unfortunate coincidence that he now feels chastened and/or slightly embarrassed by. But if we know anything about Elon Musk, it's that "chastened" isn't something he has either the inclination or even perhaps the capacity to publicly express, so instead we get the typical messaging, that of a thirteen year old in 2005, minus the wit. It was a response so fumbling and artless, even the Anti-Defamation League refused to provide further cover.

Whatever his intentions may or may not have been,* the responses have been pretty boring. Really, Elise Stefanik says it didn't even actually happen? I'm almost more angry at the motivation to ask the question in the first place. "Get them on the record," OK, fine, but to what end anymore? I mean, if we're letting the guy openly doing Nazi salutes skate, what is going to be the socio-political fallout for someone else saying it wasn't that big of a deal? They get to be the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., that's what.

And that's where I'm at with all this, now. I've lost the capacity to be surprised. "Outrage" no longer even fits as an appropriate response. The second inauguration of Donald Trump, which I've seen pictures of but very purposely did not watch, looked appropriately small and grim, with corporate VIPs lined up dutifully genuflect and the rabid root-level supporters left ignored, outside, literally in the cold, their usefulness at an end for a lame duck president who needs zero more votes the rest of his life. A past version of me would have shook his sanctimonious head with incredulity and mild disgust. He might have even used the word "sheeple" in a sentence, to my retroactive shame. But the main feature of a status quo is its banality.

Resistance was the watchword of the first go-round, but this time it feels more like endurance. Part of that is probably spurred by the fact that I live (on the far edge of, away from the epicenter, but in the same danger zone) in a greater metropolitan area undergoing its largest natural disaster in its history that is only currently getting worse. It's sobering and clarifying to realize there are immediate priorities that need our attention (and money and supply donations). I remember the noise of the first Trump administration, like a sack full of old pans and kettle-bell weights falling down a flight of stairs exactly four years long. And just like then, there will be real harm and consequences to the executive branch of the government only operating on a scale of response with INDIFFERENT on one end and HOSTILE on the other, but most of what comes out of the noise remains noise. Knowing what to ignore sometimes takes a whole disaster.

I'd like to get all metaphorical and poetic here and point out that we just have to hold on until the rain finally arrives, but everyone out here knows that just means now we have to look out for mudslides as well. But that's how it'll work: one disaster at a time.

---

*I'm definitely not in the camp trying to justify something he did not just twice, but emphatically bordering on violence, as some kind of unfortunate bummer of a coincidence. Go through any white dude's online history and you will find some period of time when they were trying out "extreme" personas because they didn't yet understand how humor and/or social norms fully worked. This Edgy Era is no excuse for dropping an N-bomb at someone because they beat you in a round of Mortal Combat X, but it's easy to go "well, that person is obviously an idiot I can now block forever." The difference is Elon Musk is well past 17, is about to have an office in the West Wing and very specifically you are not allowed to block him.