so far, so good... so what?

Oh y'know, the White House—seat of the world's most powerful and dangerous government—is posting AI-composed 4chan Harambe memorials

Not only is Kars4kids not a charity for needy children, it's actually an organization with deep ties to Israel. Specifically it's linked to Oorah in Israel. If you're unfamiliar with Oorah the only thing you need to know about them is that they'll fund trips to Israel for youth groups/students looking to take a gap year in Israel and contribute to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

K4k sends 60% of the money they receive to Oorah and the rest goes back into marketing. They even spent like $20 million on real estate purchases in Israel.

But conceptually I see a lot of other connections too.

it kind of reminds me of how the nazis conceived of “degenerate art.” to the nazis, their vision of “good” art was art that promoted the most conventional, the most nostalgic, the most kitsch, the most neoclassical, the most conservative, the most comfortable. Thus, they despised modernist art from movements such as the impressionists and the expressionists, particularly work that depicted the horrors of war (rather than an uncomplicated view of war as an honorable enterprise) such as the work of Otto Dix. Obviously there was also a blunt, vulgar motive to simply discriminate against Jewish artists and anyone who was “influenced by Jewish or non-Aryan ideals” but there was also a formal artistic basis as well.

one could even say that the nazi party censored and burned avant-garde art as a grotesque act of “self-care.” I think there are conceptual echoes of that in every “why i left the left” thonkpiece. Or in the contemporary appropriation by reactionary white people of the term “Black Fatigue,” wherein racist white people complain they are “tired” of seeing and/or interacting with Black people.

Even though Walt Disney died decades ago, I think it’s still worth analyzing his idea of a completely curated amusement park that utterly immersed the guests in a cohesive pampered experience. That was, essentially, the idea that Walt was attempting to achieve when he opened Disney Land in 1955, and there has not, in my opinion, really been a coherent break from that goal after he died and after the construction of subsequent Disney theme parks. Workers have described disney parks as, essentially, high-control environments for them, with extremely strict standards for their behavior, language, and appearance, and Walt Disney World in Florida has a history of relying heavily on workers from economically oppressed backgrounds such as Haitian immigrants (especially for the worst jobs like custodial positions!), and the pay and benefits were always pretty bad.

But all of those very real issues with the working conditions are concealed to park visitors, so as not to break the illusion, the “disney magic.”