deusvulture:

All this stuff about pop culture and war and politics, like the Russian ripped!Bernie ads and the video games from Osama bin Laden’s compound and so forth, are sort of residually funny

because there was a time when the play-doh oozed up from the bottom and the bullets fell down from above, never the twain to meet. or so we imagine.

there was a time when we could imagine that we were all children, in an impenetrable paradise dome of colors and sensations, where jokes and parodies and droids and endless seas were ours, and the serious meeting rooms of endless war were theirs; and they could not understand us, because they were parents, and we were children

and Bill Clinton smoked pot but didn’t inhale, even though everyone inhaled, because if you inhale you’re in.

and the President had to be out. Because he could see all the way to Bosnia, where they were too poor to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. that is what we believed

but now they tweet from Syria, and when our beautiful missiles crashed into their airbase Jared Kushner was listening to Hamilton

do you think bin Laden ever picked up the controller? maybe he did. maybe he slid into the skin of an American Marine and blew holes in his own country. high score. high score.

that’s not a joke, even though it takes the form of setup, punchline. the internet makes everything flat

and we can imagine sitting in one of those cushy White House chairs and turning on Spotify and listening

and imagining we’re back in Philadelphia. 1776. when illiterate farmhands could spit through the windows in Independence Hall

and they knew: Ben Franklin’s just like us. Poor Richard. When Nixon went on Laugh-In it was like a joke – two universes meeting, glancingly, for an instant. but now we remember

and when the President tweets we cannot help but know that it is all one universe, easy, straight from Syria to Denver to Washington, D.C.

and there is no dome. it is all one piece; he just tweets from a more comfortable chair

and when the bombs fall on him, they fall on us

just like Osama playing Counter-Strike

and getting noscoped.

easy.