The Stanley Kubrick Stare
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As you all, I have longed to see the mugshot of the great dissembler. What I imagined was that it would be posted on billboards across the country by people who share our collective sigh, that we would see thousands of bumper stickers mocking and deriding the man we so despise.
Instead he has managed to shape and appropriate the image as a badge of honor, even started fundraising with it within 24 hours of his humiliating ordeal. Apparently after rehearsing for days, he has produced a Stanley Kubrick horror image, promising revenge of an unspecific kind — but we get it: if he were elected he would turn this country upside down, and target hundred, thousands of his growing list of presumed enemies.
So now we have a meme with two opposite meanings, one where it symbolizes the ultimate justice, a sign that our system works in the end, even if it seems to grind like a hand-operated coffee mill, and one where it symbolizes a system of law enforcement that is used by the government arbitrarily, as a weapon against political opponents.
The confusion created by a meme with two opposite meanings among two crowds with opposite agendas and philosophies would be interesting as a premise for a piece of fiction or a play — a Shakespearean comedy in the making — if it were not so frightening, a sign that this country is irretrievably split and lost.
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[featured image is from The Telegraph 8/25/2023]
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