Define Winning

A key phase of legitimation crisis

I’m starting to think legitimation crisis can never really be thwarted, because it’s a kind of divine intervention.

Never forget that communist regimes historically were quite successful with propaganda and their brainwashing of the public. Narratives were almost never challenged, even if people privately didn’t believe them, they were largely unable to share and commiserate. Today, for the moment, we have a much different situation where tyrants are not trending toward success and legacy media could probably be dissolved entirely with almost no objection or negative impact to the social order.

I didn’t quite grasp it until this morning, but the recent debate laid it out in black and white. Media screaming at the top of their lungs about what a historic win it is for Harris, and yet the people just… don’t agree for some reason.

Rent’s still too high. Shut the f up b. Your lady may look nice but we ain’t buying it

You find yourself questioning what a debate actually is, the real purpose or objective. Your mind reels while the person talking straight is “losing,” and the one smirking like a Disney character delivering rehearsed platitudes and known hoaxes with the aim of providing clips for TikTok is “winning.”

While pundits tell you what they would have done, what they’d have liked to see, what line would have been really effective… it occurs to me these people are in a bubble with their information, opinions and theories… while the common American citizen is somehow in a much better position to understand literally everything that’s taking place today. They know deep down this whole game along with the sportscasters isn’t real anymore, and so they’re losing interest. It’s a feel thing, and so you can’t “debunk” it by telling them the groceries are affordable or that crime is down. They know the game sucks, it’s boring.

In fact “Don’t hate the player, hate the game” was always the worst way to think about it. This mentality excused everyone involved, it normalized being awful, because what’s the difference, it’s all a show anyway.

That routine works until you can’t afford to eat, and you actually have a 2nd Amendment that gives you the kind of confidence no people under a communist regime ever had.

Trump is kryptonite to the Superman of entrenched corruption and lies; no matter how you wish he’d get more “skilled” at this politics thing, no matter how many opportunities he misses to deliver that big zinger or calm explanation, no matter how you’d like him to participate in these “institutional traditions,” he just won’t, and (counterintuitively) it’s why they can’t beat him.

(It’s why big fans of these institutions like Conservative Inc. are some of his worst enemies.)

His entire persona is antithetical to it, and his popularity stems directly from what is either a refusal or inability to play the game.

Legitimation crisis is the phenomena resulting from the end of the old world. Authority, credential, traditional means of measuring worth, status, competence, reproducibility, all these forms of crisis can now fall under one larger umbrella. Now you’re seeing it in things like debates, where it’s as clear as it could ever be that even the way we measure “winning” is eroding. We’re done with the old ways, because they don’t feel real anymore.

We’re saddled with more pressing real-world issues every day. So we’re not interested in this hoax, it’s not even fun to watch anymore. We’re not even fans of the individual players, because they’re as fake as the game.

It may be inevitable, but this is not to say that legitimation crisis is easy or even a desirable outcome. After all, if the game is fake, how do you actually win?

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