Author Viet Thanh Nguyen on ICE Raids, "Apocalypse Now" & Gaza
Just days after President Trump threatened to wage war on the city of Chicago, ICE launched what it called "Operation Midway Blitz," and President Trump claimed the city was "about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR" — a reference to his order to rename the Department of Defense. On Monday, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to resume indiscriminate immigration raids in Los Angeles. "Donald Trump is targeting Los Angeles and California because this is a city and a state in which multiculturalism and ethnic diversity have worked," says Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author. He also discusses Trump's use of the term "Chipocalypse Now," a reference to the epic Vietnam War film _Apocalypse Now_, and discusses how his Vietnamese heritage led him to support Palestinian liberation. "I identified strongly with the plight of Palestinians, because one of the first things that one of the Israeli ministers said after October 7 was that they were fighting human animals — by which he meant Palestinians — and that idea of reducing other people to being less than human is one of the key narrative acts that justifies genocide," he says.
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American society has been largely conditioned if not psychologically reinforced to value style over substance via commercialization of our society.
The main purpose in American capitalism is to sell, not inform or enlighten, no matter the means of communication: whether it be publishing, radio, music, movies, T.V. or the Internet.
The primary promotion is emotion; because that's what sells much more often than reason.
The GOP at least since the days of Reagan recognized this and their primary market since has been the incurious thinkers, people; who paid more attention to how something made them feel versus the actual underlying message. That's why Reagan used Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" song as an anthem despite the lyrics of the underlying message being about the tragedy of that war and it's aftermath on the participants because the song was mismatched to some rocking music, so on the surface it sounded upbeat and pro-war.
The same thing with *rump's usage of the Apocalypse Now scene which basically just shows some pretty explosions; sort of like the Fourth of July in the background and a macho voice proclaiming victory! He's aiming at non-thinking emotion to sell his product; which is basically targeting the incurious thinkers to focus on the tree, and not the forest.
If *rump had used the quote "I love the smell of Napalm in the morning" tied to this image, most people would've been repulsed, and he knows this.
The Terror of War, June 8, 1972: Kim Phúc, center, running down a road naked near Trảng Bàng after a South Vietnam Air Force napalm attack.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phan_Thi_Kim_Phuc