| Amazing stuff from whoever staged Friday’s Trump-Putin summit: elaborate visuals, military flyovers, backdrop signs framing the whole thing for anyone who might not have been caught up on what two of the world’s most powerful men were doing in Alaska: “Pursuing Peace.” Hours of talks inside, assurances of “great progress” outside, and … that was that. No questions, even. Always leave ’em wanting more.
Earlier in the week, the American president’s performance in his federal takeover of Washington’s police force had comparable aspects: dramatic announcements, National Guard deployments, press-conference slogans: “This is Liberation Day in D.C.!”—never mind what the crime statistics said. Seems there’s a lot of stagecraft going on these days.
Which might strike you as a curious approach to statecraft—or at least one that’s curiously particular to Donald Trump … and recognizably exasperating to his many haters.
But it’s not so uncommon. About 9,500 kilometers northeast of Washington, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu framed his decision to occupy Gaza City—announced earlier this month with a symbolic October 7 deadline—as a means to “end the war speedily,” while avoiding specifics about what an end to the war will mean … or how occupying Gaza City will bring it about. Around 5,000 kilometers east-southeast of Jerusalem, Bangladesh’s post-revolutionary leadership and its supporters are performing democratic resistance in victory, while using the same autocratic judicial theatrics—bogus charges, dramatic arrests, arbitrary nonsense—as the regime they overthrew.
Neither is it so new. You don’t have to buy into the whole critical apparatus of Guy Debord’s 1967 book, The Society of the Spectacle, to find something there in its insight into how, in the contemporary world, images and representations so easily and thoroughly replace the reality they’re supposed to depict. It’s become a central part of how power operates—less with leaders spinning actions, more with actions intended to generate images. And so it’s always worth keeping an eye out for, regardless of our political allegiances.
—John Jamesen Gould |
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