Too Soon to Know: The Spectacle in Practice

So you thought the spectacle was just smoke and mirrors? Is that why you’re shocked? You didn’t think I would do anything? How can I have allowed something as boring as a tariff war to take over your screens, after only a few weeks of excitement – suddenly it’s talking heads, eager economists, graphs and percentage points, ten-year Treasuries, ‘the end of Atlanticism’ … Wake me when it’s over.

I’m sorry, but there’s much more boredom to come. Put the reins of state in the spectacle’s hands, and the horses are soon in control of their rider. I don’t like it any more than you do. (Il rêve d’échafauds en fumant son houka.) Up at the top we have to be seen to be making a difference – moving the levers of state, they say, or better, pretending to break them. (As if we came in with the least intention of extracting the state from subsidy-and-bailout-world – that’s the gated community we made our bucks in – or from the military-industrial-entertainment complex, In Whom Do We Trust. A few millions for malarial children, that’s where we’ll make the cut.) What are states supposed to do, then? (Yawn) Oh yes … Make war, make peace, punish and pardon, run empires, extract fealty and homage, humiliate clients that aren’t properly grateful. I’ll do all that (yawn), but how do I make a spectacle of it?

It all started so well. Remember Zelensky sweating in his flak jacket under the lights … Remember the toady shouting ‘Do you own a suit?’ … Remember me conjuring the ghost of Putin – ‘he went through a hell of a lot with me’ – sending the Think Tanks running for their safe rooms. Remember Gaza … Nobody does any more. They don’t see any difference between me and Biden on this one … What’s a guy to do these days to stir up a bit of outrage? Aren’t my bombs big enough? What’s the health of the state if no one notices its massacres?

They were good, those first four weeks, but I knew there was something the matter. I was getting meta too much of the time. I could feel the spectacle needing encouragement, somehow … needing reassurance. ‘This is going to be great television. I will say that.’ (I guess I was feeling high for a moment. Offering up the media crowd the vulgar theory of spectacle.) ‘We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal. And I don’t want to be cute. I don’t want to be a wise guy, but … the Riviera of the Middle East.’ (What was I saying? I don’t want to be a wise guy! How the hell was that supposed to go down in the Panhandle?)

I could feel the sickness coming on me. ‘The responsibilities of statesmanship …’ Trade deficits. Back-channel negotiations. Senators from Missouri. You don’t want to know. Whatever happened to retribution? (That was fun for a while. Like letting Los Angeles burn.) Where are the cringing vice-chancellors when you need them? Why don’t I get to see Sidney and Rudy any more, spin a few yarns? Weren’t we going to invade Greenland? Can’t some handsome Italian take another potshot? They’re supposed to hate me out there. Isn’t this America?

I’m living it, and it’s horrible, I can tell you … The spectacle becoming a state.