When I pitched this piece, we hadn’t yet endured the supremely terrifying stupidity of the gentleman who brought a gun to a D.C. area pizza shop thanks to a baseless conspiracy surrounding John Podesta, other Clinton staffers, and a D.C. eatery. But, even in the face of near tragedy, it is worth looking at the various outbursts from Trump supporters, ranging from the scary to the hilarious. The combination of fake news—which you need to know how to spot—and amoral conservative click-machines have brought both dangerous and absurd stories to life in ways that are so surreal they wouldn’t even make it into the final draft of a Kurt Vonnegut or Don DeLillo novel.
We now live in a post-truth world, sure. But, we also live in a post-satire, post-irony world, where self-styled patriots can be coerced into doing things that are incredibly, pointlessly stupid due to the media blinders they’ve carefully built for themselves. This warped worldview is all fun and games until someone gets hurt while they wait for their medium supreme pizza and breadsticks.
