Our new architecture of campy imperialism

One of the defining aspects of the second Trump presidency is the way it operates simultaneously on two tracks, one real and the other closer to cosplay. It’s fair to say, for example, that the administration’s takeover of Venezuela is an example of a rebooted American imperialism and, at the same time, a sort of hamfisted performance of colonial swashbuckling, cynical to the point of nihilism and manufactured for social media. The same could be said of the criminal charges brought in the U.S. courts against Nicolás Maduro: While they have kicked a genuine legal machinery into gear, an equally important goal for the administration is of course a show trial of the most cartoonish variety.

What matters in all of this is less diplomacy or democracy promotion (as if!) than a particularly warped kind of spectacle shaped especially for terminally online and easily distracted eyeballs. As Elizabeth Lopatto and Sarah Jeong put it in a terrific Verge essay this week, “The Trump administration is behaving like gambling addicts chasing clout in an attention economy. Venezuela is a fucking meme stock.”