Although I’ve been posting less often, it hasn’t really meant that I’m reading or writing less. Instead, my writing has stretched out over longer periods for the same amount of content, and my reading has been less of a direct pipeline to what shows up here. It’s been more time management than an actual change in my activity.
And the reason for that is that I’m currently between eye surgeries. Back in May, I visited the ophthalmologist where I learned that I had cataracts serious enough to require surgery. I’d originally hoped that I’d acted soon enough for summer procedures, but that proved not to be the case, so I’m now going under the knife (twice) during what’s an extraordinarily busy time at work. April remains in many ways the cruelest month, but for various reasons, early October and early March are close when it comes to unintentional cruelty. The six-week mark of the semester, just before midterms, attracts administrative deadlines like the proverbial flame attracts moths.
So it’s a particularly difficult time to struggle with my vision. Having undergone one procedure (with the second a week away) means that I’m now in the odd position of trying to see through two very different eyes. My left eye is much improved, enough so that looking through my glasses turns everything really blurred and cloudy. If I take off my glasses, though, the blur reverses: my left eye seems very clear, and my right becomes useless. On top of that, I’ve discovered (as many people have told me) that cataracts affect not only the sharpness of your vision, but the way that you perceive color.
I spent a few minutes with Photoshop to try and simulate the difference now that I experience between left eye without and right eye with glasses. The right side should be a little bit blurrier, I think, but I can’t really see well enough and close enough to get it more precise. This will give you some sense, though.
I was thinking today about the fact that I’m currently experiencing the literal condition of split or doubled vision when I’ve been writing on and off for the past couple of years about irony, the rhetorical trope that embodies that sort of doubling. Isn’t that ironic, don’t you think? (Not really—it’s maybe a little ironic if my own double vision were more permanently interfering with my ability to write about irony, but even then, it’d be a faint species of poetic justice.)
I was thinking about irony recently, given the gotcha energy that was circulating about JD Vance’s recent admission to CNN that he’s perfectly happy to invent stories (or distort them) to score political points:
If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” the Ohio senator said.
Now that’s what I recognize as irony. In fact, that intentional distinction between what’s real and what’s “true” is characteristic of TFG’s relationship with his base, as I talked about a while back. In that piece, I quoted an interview with Abraham Josephine Riesman, which is worth repeating in this context:
you operate from the assumption that everything you're seeing in the ring is fake, or at least most of it. And that's dangerous, because once you're assuming everything's fake, except for the things you want to believe are true, then you're just having a grab bag, personalized reality.
Although folks like Trump (and Vance) are dangerous enough themselves, the truly urgent problem is that they normalize the assumption that Riesman is talking about. They drag the level of discourse down with them, undermining the norms as they violate them. It’s the fable of the boy who cried wolf writ large: if we accustom ourselves to the idea that everyone lies, then when it comes time that we encounter (and act upon) the truth, we’re completely unprepared to do so.
If you want to see an example of this in action, look no further than the AI-generated imagery that’s been circulating on social media, as folks on the right have been creating photorealistic fakes and using them as a pretext to criticize what (by most accounts, including Republican mayors and governors) has been a pretty strong response by the Biden Administration and FEMA to the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. This isn’t the first time that this has happened, and it certainly won’t be the last, but what’s particularly demoralizing is how many across the Right are doubling down on the argument that “reality doesn’t matter” when it comes to the cynical scoring of political points (and social media clout).
[I’m not going to share any of the comments or images here, but Parker Molloy has an excellent roundup of some of them, including an absolutely laughable “picture” of TFG wading through thigh-high water to assist a responder.]
Social media platforms are already losing the battle against AI slop (if indeed they really have fought it, given how these images drive engagement). We are already being inundated by ads evangelizing AI-driven photo editing on our phones, encouraging us to gaslight our own memories when it comes to personal experiences. And “nudify apps” are scourging their way through our culture like an invasive species, making us more vulnerable to malware, ruining children’s lives, and devastating schools that are simply not prepared to handle this problem.
While one hallucinated picture of a fake girl and her fake puppy might seem like small potatoes in comparison, there’s a bright line connecting our increasing willingness to ignore reality entirely in favor of “emblematic” vibes fueled by AI fantasies. As Molloy notes, it does matter that these images are fake. If we expect the kind of response to disasters like Helene that these folks claim to want, then our leaders (regardless of party) need to be able to identify what’s really happening and to direct their resources accordingly. Flooding the zone with shit and slop not only doesn’t help—it actively subverts that process.
Well, that brief post that I’d planned about my cataracts took a sharp turn. I don’t know that I’ll have a chance to write again before my next procedure, but I’ll be back as soon as I can. Have a good week.
{Postscript: Several hours after I posted this, Heather Cox Richardson provided more analysis about how the “alternative facts” offered by TFG’s campaign constitutes “disinformation that has badly hampered recovery efforts” following Helene. It’s not just hyperactive, AI-gullible Twitter randos. The flood of shit comes from the top.]
Back in the day, actual revolutionaries had to actually take over the actual radio stations to seize the public imagination. Now we're REALLY getting scale.