Whole lotta distractin’ goin’ on
Republicans swarmed FKA Twitter on Thursday to advertise that they’d never performed work so working-class as serving customers in a restaurant. That’s not how they saw it, mind you.
Dozens of faux-outraged Republicans reposted the “8647” seashell photo that former FBI director James Comey posted to Twitter and quickly took down. They needed a distraction from, among other failures, grocery prices that their liege lord failed to bring down as promised on Day One of his second term.
Voters have noticed, Consumer confidence has dropped for four consecutive months (The Hill):
“Tariffs were spontaneously mentioned by nearly three-quarters of consumers, up from almost 60 percent in April,” Surveys of Consumers director Joanne Hsu said in her analysis of the findings. “Uncertainty over trade policy continues to dominate consumers’ thinking about the economy.”
Comey, who’s always presented as Dudley Do-Right, naively failed to anticipate the firestorm he’d ignite when he posted the beach photo with the caption “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.” For Trump’s MAGA defenders, it was a gift.
Prominent Republicans immediately called for Comey’s arrest, insisting that 8647 was an obvious threat either to kill Donald Trump and/or to incite his assassination. The number “86,” they insisted meant to kill someone. Comey must be investigated for issuing a threat against El Presidente’s life!
Listen, I worked in a restaurant for six or seven years. It’s restaurant code for “we’re all out of” a menu item or “toss out” that lettuce, it’s going brown. Not that the above everymen and women among the GOP Ivy League elite would know that. Nor even the party of billionaires’ lesser lights.
It was a convenient distraction from Trump’s jumbo-jet sized corruption, from his administration’s immigrant policies suffering a string of losses in court, and from the unfavorable reception U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer got at the Supreme Court on Thursday morning.
Patented rightwing hissy fit. But you know, if The Morality Players seriously thought the photo would inspire people to violence against Trump, and if they chewed through their lips fretting over his safety, they wouldn’t keep reposting the damned photo now, would they?
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi “Cosplayer” Noem at least didn’t repost the image (that I saw). Nor did Speaker Mike Johnson. They piled on with restraint.
What the episode reminded me of was the old pass-it-on spam emails my dad and his friends (yours too?) passed around before social media:
Pass-it-on spams don’t ask people to write their congressman or senator. They don’t ask people to get involved in or contribute to a political campaign. Or even to make a simple phone call. No. Once you’ve had your daily dose of in-box outrage, conservative reader, all these propaganda pieces ask is that you “pass it on” to everyone you know. So now that you’re good and angry — and if you’re a Real American™ — you’ll share it with all your friends so they’ll get and stay angry too.
The GOP tweet-swarm on Thursday was just a MAGA-era version of those old emails. Not meant to defuse anger but to inflame it. Be sure you don’t bottle that faux outrage and sell it to school kids.
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