I have tried to conceal my political opinions in my columns, but not anymore. It’s time to talk Wu-Tang.
No, I’m not referring to some extremist group that takes its name from the iconic 1990s hip-hop group. I’m talking about how the rise of ironic political disengagement—embodied in a $35 Wu-Tang lawn sign—is killing America.
This fall, when I walked through the preppy suburbs of my hometown Pelham, N.Y., and Brookline, Mass., I expected to see plenty of political signs for both Harris and Trump. Instead, the most common “political” sign I saw was intentionally, ironically misleading: It wields the blue and white stars and the sharp contours of a typical presidential political sign, but instead of endorsing a candidate it reads “Presidents Are Temporary, Wu-Tang is Forever.”
When I saw the first sign like this, I smiled at the silly, ironic reference to a politically irrelevant music group. When I passed by a second, identical sign, the smile fell from my face. By the time I saw my third sign, I was getting pretty worried.
“This is bizarre,” I thought to myself. These towns were affluent enough to afford being sincerely politically engaged. How could a mediocre, millennial-core meme about a 32-year-old hip-hop group represent the dominant ideology of the “political class”?
This experience cemented a dark belief of mine: No matter your class, color, or creed, it is so much harder and lamer to care about mainstream American politics now than it was in 2016.
It’s important (and a little funny) to note that I was only 13 years old when Trump was elected to his first term. But even then, I remember a sense that the media presented us with crisis after crisis that did not meaningfully affect most people’s lives.
Nowadays, the controversies of that era have the salience of tissue paper. Remember the Trump-Russia Mueller probe? The Ukraine phone call that incited Trump’s first impeachment? The risky killing of Qasem Soleimani? I wouldn’t blame you if the answer was no.
None of these events changed the fact that, for most of Trump’s first term, the economy was doing well, the government wasn’t about to blow up, and the average person did not feel the need to care about politics. One could find much more satisfaction from the real world or the internet than from the first page of The Washington Post.
This all changed, of course, during COVID-19. Suddenly, the real world was dead, and we were all confronted with a decision: Do we actually read the Post, or do we plunge further into the internet? Most people chose the latter.
Ever since the pandemic gently eased millions into screen addictions, internet culture has actively discouraged sincerity, emotional investment, and sustained attention in politics. Why process distressing headlines about our republic’s demise when you can numb yourself with a 20-second, avant-garde loop of the latest catchphrase taking TikTok by storm?
Sure, some people think the internet can be a politically empowering tool that can expose faults in mainstream narratives and connect political dissidents together. But, when sincere calls-to-action lie on the same infinite scroll machine as serotonergic cat memes, dopaminergic thirst traps, and various other bite-sized distractions, it tends to lose in the “algorithm.” Thus, most of the internet “activism” that survives ends up imitating other viral content—it is punchy, vapid, and rarely moves beyond “slacktivism.”
To rephrase (and steal from an older piece of mine), if everything is a crisis, then nothing is. You might as well just scroll. From there, it’s easy to indulge in retail therapy disguised as ironic cultural commentary. This phenomenon explains how the $35 Wu-Tang political signs have spread to the manufactured lawns of Brookline.
And this, my dear readers, is where I will finally actually reveal my politics.
At least … one … American political party has picked up on ironic, internet-fueled political apathy and exploited it to dangerous effect. For those paying attention, current events have been utterly unprecedented—and those involved are betting that not enough people will care to stop their bad-faith campaign of democratic backsliding.
But that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? See the words I’m using to describe it all: “unprecedented,” “bad-faith,” “democratic backsliding.” To anyone scanning news articles online since 2016, these words clearly come off as academic, elitist—and overused. They mean nothing anymore. When everything is unprecedented, nothing is.
In today’s world, malicious politicians know that not enough people will rip off their Wu-Tang lawn signs to stand for something. Please prove me—and them—wrong.
Anyway, wanna see this video of a guy plunging his face in Saratoga water? What about this cute horse with dwarfism? How about this hilarious lawn sign I saw on Facebook Marketplace? Pretty cool, right?
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