Good morning!
Welcome to Issue 32.4 of Digestable, your daily mouthful of real things happening in the world, minus alarmist pandemic news.
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Today’s news, fermented:
Embarrassingly, even though I read the news all. the. time, it was only a few weeks ago that I finally learned what QAnon was, beyond seeing it in headlines. I asked my partner, who has working knowledge of almost everything I could ask a question about, and he gave me the basics.
I left our conversation thinking, ok cool, here’s a nutso conspiracy theory, people on the internet are obsessed with it, that’s bad, moving on.
Then, Popular Information (“a newsletter about politics for people who give a damn,” which I highly recommend!) showed up in my inbox today with the subject line “GOPQ” and this lede:
“The Republican Party is increasingly dominated by adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory — the belief that top Democratic officials and celebrities are Satan-worshipers running a secret child sex trafficking ring.
A poll by Morning Consult earlier this month found that nearly 40% of Republicans who have heard of QAnon believe the theory is at least somewhat accurate.”
I mean, good grief. This is like Pizzagate times a million; it is so far from fact that it’s hard to even identify where the divergence from reality began.
One of the things that I think we’ve all normalized by now, despite many warnings not to, is the prevalence of public figures openly denying the truth. The advent of “fake news” shook the American people, and yet here we are, seven months deep into a pandemic that the president says he ‘knew about all along’ and then deliberately downplayed (also known as ‘lying’) the potential impacts of the virus.
Ohhhh truthhhhhh! Where are youuuuuuuuu?
I’ve been listening to The Last Archive, a podcast hosted by historian Jill Lepore. In the first season, she explores the question: who killed truth? Although I’m not sure I agree with everything she concludes, the show’s examination of pivotal moments of normalizing untruth give some context to where we’re at now.
It’s hard to quantify the loss of the last four years—lives, health, livelihoods, dignity, ecosystems, budgets, forward momentum. But one of the biggest conceptual losses in US political discourse is that the truth itself seems to have become partisan, along with all the news that reports on said truth.
This all came to mind because I got a request from a reader: “I’d love to hear more on the subject of ‘Biden sucks, vote Biden.’” That made me laugh and then, like so often after laughing these days, feel an overwhelming sense of existential dread.
So I’m going to spend a bit of time exploring what we stand to win, and get back, from a Biden administration. Yes, there are huge questions about a peaceful (or not) transfer of power, election fraud, so on—but as with all organizing, we have to envision and plan for a moment when we win, so we can actually move forward towards building the world we deserve.
Alongside looking at what we stand to win, it’s only fair to consider what we may lose.
To be crystal clear: I think everyone should vote for Joe Biden not because I like him or even think he’s going to be a good president, but because I think we have a fighting chance of taking responsibility for this country’s massive contribution to the climate crisis and using that old man as a pawn for getting what we really want (reparations, etc).
So, dearest readers, I need you! Over the next week, please send me any and all articles that examine something we either have to gain or lose from a Biden Administration. I’m looking for concrete stuff that will impact people’s lives, in the long or short term. Just respond to this or any other of my emails, whenever the mood strikes.
Here’s a fussed primate, channeling all of us.
*Hot Goss*
Brought to you by the superb Latifah Azlan.
I really did not want to write about the Rudy Giuliani story making the rounds this morning but the goss has been more tepid than hot lately so I guess I have no choice.
Some context: I've never watched Borat, the 2006 comedic mockumentary movie starring Sacha Baron Cohen that was quite a hit everywhere. The movie grossed $250 million worldwide and is Sacha Baron Cohen's most successful movie to date. The gist of it is that Borat is a fictitious journalist from Kazakhstan who comes to America and interacts with Americans in a variety of settings. Some people were in on the joke whereas others were genuinely hoodwinked by this character. The movie is essentially a long-form version of those Vitalyzd pranks you see on Youtube. It's not my cup of tea but it was a big enough hit that they're making a second Borat film now. And, well, enter Rudy Giuliani.
Rudy makes an appearance in the second movie in a compromising scene where he's got his hands down his pants in the presence of a woman who may or may not be presented as underage in the movie. Now, that description is bad enough on its own but keep in mind that the plot of the second Borat movie centers around Borat, now working on behalf of the Kazakh government, travelling to America to present bribes to various allies of D*nald Tr*mp in order to curry favor and keep his country in the good graces of the U.S. administration. All of it has naturally become quite the scandal and the photos from this particular scene have scarred me for life.
Again, the first Borat movie was HUGE. It became a cultural phenomenon and the movie is still referenced by many people today. I never watched it but I can describe to you how the character Borat himself looks like because he was everywhere in the late 2010s. All of this is to say that if you get conned by this very obviously fake person, then you kind of deserve it for being such a stupid and nasty pig. I'm not at all sympathetic that Rudy Giuliani was set up. And if THIS is what Sacha Baron freakin' Cohen managed to pull off, imagine what well-resourced intelligence agencies of other countries can accomplish.
The movie's coming out on Friday for those interested. I'll be skipping this one too but i'm sure the coverage will be widespread enough that I won't feel left out!