We're Suddenly Swimming in a Bloodbath of Nuance

And the only thing keeping us afloat is irony

One of the main tenets of the MAGA movement, as made popular by alt-right hobo cosplayer Steve Bannon, is to “flood the zone with shit”. This supposedly means throw as much information as possible out into the world, without regard to its truthfulness or relevance, and the population will eventually get worn down by the processing of it all to the point of acquiescence. In the midst of this chaos of media and information, the desired agenda can then be implemented.

This was a fairly new, mostly untested, concept in U.S. popular politics at the time that Donald Trump and the MAGA movement came onto the scene in 2015 and emerged as a serious presidential contender. Whether it truly works remains to be seen; sure, Trump did win in 2016, but then he lost in 2020, and MAGA Republicans have not performed well electorally since. But there’s certainly been an effect on the public, and politics have changed dramatically as a result of Trump and MAGA relentlessly exercising this strategy.

By definition, “flooding….with shit” would seem to imply that you want to mass produce as much “shit” (info) as possible in as short a time period as possible. Therefore, not a lot of time or energy would be spent parsing out the underlying supporting statistics of a statement, or the theoretical reasoning of a particular policy proposal. And even the phrase “policy proposal” is a slippery one in this context. Much of what Trump says in his rally speeches and interviews are just base desires of outcomes he’d like to see rather than a coherent governmental policy.

In other words, there was very little nuance to the information given by Trump and MAGA. It was just a flurry of words and emotions that has been wearing the public down, about half of whom want it to stop while the other half seeks it out. But any attempts to take the statements seriously and to discuss the practicality or specifics, or even basic legitimacy, of them is brushed aside and ridiculed, and a new trench is dug for the next round of flood waters to come crashing through.

Basically, nuance is not MAGA’s thing. It’s just “here’s what I think and feel, deal with it”.

And so the country has dealt with it, turning ourselves into knots trying to figure out what to make of this movement that is so foreign to our current sensibilities. How seriously should we take them? Is this statement a joke, or an attempt to “own the libs” or is it a real policy? How much is hyperbole, an actual call to action, or just silly locker room bluster? All of these questions have different answers all the time, and that seems to be the idea.

Now we are in a weird haze of presentation and analysis regarding Trump and MAGA, where the mainstream media picks and chooses what information makes it onto their platforms, with independent media on all parts of the political spectrum making their own micro-decisions. The result being that many of Trump’s outrageous statements and behavior are just ignored completely and a wide swath of the population isn’t even aware of much of them. In the meantime, it’s business as usual in their treatment of the normal-seeming Joe Biden and the Democrats; a bad sound byte will be amplified for them to their detriment. In this way, the “flooding” does. Many reprehensible statements and behaviors on the part of Trump are going unnoticed, as there’s simply so much of it to handle.

But every once in a while, something so jarring is said or done that it can’t be ignored, and the mainstream media is compelled to report on it. That’s what happened when Trump used the word “bloodbath” at a rally in Ohio last weekend, on Saturday, March 16. I’m not going to spend any time here giving my opinion on what he meant that the proper context of his use of the word. And I’m assuming that if you are reading this, you are probably an avid consumer of news and know the full statement, and the statements surrounding this statement, and have come to your own conclusions.

My point in writing this is to propose that it doesn’t matter what the context was. It doesn’t matter what the contours of the nuance of his language might possibly mean. After years of being told by MAGA “you don’t need to know context or analysis, just emotion and action, and, by the way, just give in to us while we exhaust you with our ‘shit’”, we’ve now learned to just take what they say at face value and deal with it.

What did they expect? This is who they are; this is who Trump is. As a result of the numbing of our consciousness, anything out of his mouth is now fair game to be taken in any context that anyone wants.

It is the height of irony that Joe Biden, who is a stutterer known for his embarrassing gaffes, is being pushed by many as a risky candidate for the Democrats, when Republicans have chosen Trump, who, while not a stutterer and—fairly or not—not known for his gaffes, is constantly having to be analyzed and explained so that his words are framed in the proper context, in order for him to appear presidential.

It is also the height of irony that now we need to focus on the nuance and proper context of his statements. You see, we should understand he was talking about sensible economic policy, not making a base emotional plea. It is interesting that anytime he says or does something questionable like this, and it gets criticized, suddenly nuance matters….a lot. It matters so much, that one must get to the verge of clairvoyance to understand the deep meaning behind his words.

Isn’t MAGA currently subjecting us to continuous simplistic propaganda regarding one of the most complex and nuanced issues of our time: immigration? They post pictures of undocumented immigrants that committed crimes to build up a sharp emotional response. Never mind the statistics and studies and show that all immigrants, whether here legally or illegally, actually commit crimes at lower rates than native-born people. Never mind that our immigration system is way underfunded, underequipped, and overstressed, a situation that can largely only be fixed by Congress agreeing to spend more money and resources for it to catch up. In this context, for MAGA, nuance is not important. But if Trump unsettles people by using the word “bloodbath”, by God, we all better understand the nuance with which he uttered this word.

Even if Trump has the most well-meaning intentions with what he says, many of his followers have already been proven to take his ambiguous statements as code for some kind of call to action. For God’s sake, the whole QAnon movement started with Trump saying, in what at the time seemed like an innocuous metaphor, that a “storm was coming”. When Trump said in a 2020 debate with Biden that the Proud Boys should “stand back and stand by”, did anyone really take that as a call to military readiness? Yes, actually, the Proud Boys did. And they, along with other militant groups, made plans for the overturning of the 2020 election on Jan 6, 2021. At the time, it seemed like a weird incoherent avoidance of the question he was asked. It didn’t seem like he intentionally was doing anything other than poorly improvising. But it turned out to be much more than that.

The fact is, when Trump makes a statement, no matter how unintentional or incoherent, some unstable people do listen and take action on it. This is why saying words like “bloodbath” are so problematic when he says them. The amount of energy MAGA is spending on social media trying to fight back on this criticism of Trump’s use of that word has been interestingly notable. For three days straight, MAGA accounts have been making unprompted posts trying to debunk this criticism and put the statement in context. To them, this is just one of many “hoaxes” regarding the former president. (It’s amazing how long this “hoax” list is at the moment, you’d think they’d catch on and say, “hmm, maybe this guy does have some baggage that is tough to work with”).

The Merriam-Webster definition of “bloodbath” has been posted, as has journalists’ frequent use of the word in news headlines and television broadcasts. Fair enough, but there is one major difference. None of these journalists has started a conspiratorial movement infiltrating our government or incited people to try and overthrow a presidential election. And all of the examples are using the word in a coherent fashion, in the proper context of the meaning, when used to describe economic pain. There was never any question at the time of how their words would be interpreted because it was used clearly, and the reporter had no history of cult followers behaving badly.

So, yes, now context and nuance doesn’t matter for most of us where Trump and MAGA is concerned, just like they wanted it from the beginning when they started “flooding the zone with shit”, and just like they want with their immigration “policies” now. The fact that they are on the defensive about Trump’s “bloodbath” statement more than usual is a good sign for the direction of our country. Nuance does apparently matter after all, even to them. The irony that MAGA suddenly wants us to understand the nuance is about as heavy is it can be, but despite that it is keeping us afloat in these confusing and chaotic floodwaters.