{"id":78848,"date":"2022-12-23T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-23T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=78848"},"modified":"2022-12-22T20:38:26","modified_gmt":"2022-12-23T01:38:26","slug":"never-ever-be-the-first-to-stop-clapping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2022\/12\/23\/never-ever-be-the-first-to-stop-clapping\/","title":{"rendered":"Never, ever be the first to stop clapping"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Bray<\/a> on the echoes of Soviet-era mandatory celebrations expected of US elected politicians during a speech by Comrade Stalin to the Politburo<\/strike><\/font> state visit by the President of Ukraine<\/font>:<\/p>\n

I hesitate to say any of this, because it’s December 22 and none of us should be thinking about the grotesqueries of the political and media classes, but it’s been a busy week for them. I started writing here a little more than a year ago, and have argued since the beginning that our notional leadership classes have developed a set of ritual behaviors that are entirely<\/em> severed from any form of reality you’ll ever see in your own daily life. (Dana Loesch<\/a>: “You can’t run a country you’ve never been to.”)<\/p>\n

And so here’s one of the least subtle court eunuchs with a message about ritual obedience:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I wish I could replicate the awkward burst of nervous laughter that came out of me at the moment that I saw this message. The policing of performative applause in a formal political setting is so obviously a theme of totalitarian societies<\/a> that … well, that Chief Eunuch Michael Beschloss can be counted on to not notice what he’s just done. I didn’t get a harumph outta that guy, he said, from deep inside a cloud of obtuse self-regard.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“They insist on inflicting on us such bloated theater & they seem not to know how false it all appears.” The Ukrainian president made it all the way to the Capitol in his combat fatigues<\/em>, doncha know, and was greeted with a rapturous standing ovation by members of Congress, seen here in this actual footage:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Are there any normal human beings who don\u2019t taste bile when they see this performance? And, Thomas Massie<\/a> and Rand Paul aside, are there any normal human beings left inside the Beltway? <\/p>\n

“Squee! Squee! Squee!” they explained, shaking their pom poms in a dignified ritual of state.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Bray on the echoes of Soviet-era mandatory celebrations expected of US elected politicians during a speech by Comrade Stalin to the Politburo state visit by the President of Ukraine: I hesitate to say any of this, because it’s December 22 and none of us should be thinking about the grotesqueries of the political and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,28,53,13],"tags":[698,269,553,726],"class_list":["post-78848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-congress","tag-propaganda","tag-senate","tag-ukraine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-kvK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78848"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78854,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78848\/revisions\/78854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}