As I’ve written before, dark ages are defined by the unreliability of their records; if records are sporadic, contradictory, or questionable, historians cannot be sure what really happened in the period (hence “dark”). One of the major factors in the dark age we’re entering now is computer-generated imagery and text spewed out at a rate that will soon rival or surpass actual information from this era, but another is 1984-esque rewriting of history by political regimes and their servant media. The Trump regime is actively engaged in this practice, but even its opponents are attempting to sow confusion in service to their agenda, especially to mask their part in bringing the regime to power.
Case in point, this recent tweet attacking a Trump talking point, which quotes a Washington Post story whose headline intentionally attempts to mislead readers about the point’s origin. “300,000 missing children” is indeed a “ginned-up figure”, but it isn’t from “the 2024 campaign”. It’s from a shitty sociology paper from 2001 which was distorted and quoted endlessly by politicians and media, including the Post, for two decades to justify attacks on sex workers. The entire US political establishment from Bush II to Obama to Trump to Biden was happy to use these imaginary “300,000 children” as cudgels to attack female independence, young people’s autonomy, and immigration; to justify swollen police budgets and increased surveillance and censorship; and as an all-purpose excuse for state violence on every level from the municipal to the international. For 14 years, all any cop or politician had to do was vomit the phrase “sex trafficking”, accompanied by disgusting wanking fantasies, onto the upturned, open-mouthed faces of the moronic masses in order to get them to allow themselves to be violated and oppressed even further. Both “sides” of the kindergarten “political spectrum” participated equally in this evil fantasy, until it began to mutate into “QAnon” and Trumpists won control of it. Then and ONLY then did “progressives” and Democrats suddenly start calling this toxic narrative that they themselves built half of, a “right-wing conspiracy theory“. And now they’re trying to fight a monster of their own creation, a monster which has spawned the ICE atrocities you now see and the swelling tide of internet censorship. If you ever retweeted a stupid meme about 13-year-olds, donated to a “rescue” organization, watched panicmongering shows and movies about brave heroes “rescuing” vegetable-like “victims” from mustache-twirling “pimps”, or otherwise supported the panic, you are partly responsible for Trumpism. Look at the pogroms against migrants, the demolition of the internet, the wreckage of the US scientific and medical establishment, and the warmongering and rampant insanity spewing forth from Washington daily, and think to yourself, “And I helped!” Good job, America!
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