{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "All this stuff about pop culture and war and politics, like the Russian ripped!Bernie ads and the video games from Osama bin...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/169096646133/", "html": "

deusvulture:

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All this stuff about pop culture and war and politics, like the Russian ripped!Bernie ads and the video games from Osama bin Laden\u2019s compound and so forth, are sort of residually funny

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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.

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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

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and Bill Clinton smoked pot but didn\u2019t inhale, even though everyone inhaled, because if you inhale you\u2019re in.

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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

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

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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.

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that\u2019s not a joke, even though it takes the form of setup, punchline. the internet makes everything flat

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

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and imagining we\u2019re back in Philadelphia. 1776. when illiterate farmhands could spit through the windows in Independence Hall

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and they knew: Ben Franklin\u2019s just like us. Poor Richard. When Nixon went on Laugh-In it was like a joke \u2013 two universes meeting, glancingly, for an instant. but now we remember

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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.

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

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

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just like Osama playing Counter-Strike

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and getting noscoped.

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easy.

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"}