What are we doing?
This is really all I have to say about the Trump administration’s plan—decision? infernal covenant?—to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan later this year. It will be the first ever government-sanctioned snuff film in American history. Of course I am against it. Is arguing about the subject worthwhile? It seems to me like something about which it is not even possible to argue.
Maybe “arguing” is not the sort of thing you can do in a situation like this. Maybe instead we can talk. By “we” I mean anyone reading this who disagrees with what I feel comfortable calling my snap judgement. I certainly have some questions.
For example: Do you like snuff films? Do you like the idea of them, or of being the kind of person who does? Do you know anybody else who enjoys watching people get killed? Do you like them?
Do you think it will be edifying? Do you intend to watch it alone or with your family? Do you know where you will be watching, and on what device—is it a living room-eighty-three-inch Samsung-5.1 surround (do you think the White House will provide a full surround feed or just stereo? and what about the video quality?) kids-on-the-couch sort of viewing experience, or does some other “fine and private place” (an abattoir, a garbage pile, a toilet seat) suggest itself as a better venue for watching it on your smartphone or tablet?
Do you plan to have something to eat or drink while you watch? Do you think an apple would be an appropriate snack to accompany your enjoyment—if that is the right word—of a video of a criminal in a wheelchair being gunned down? Do you think that watching these proceedings live will impress you with the power of our armed forces, the impartiality of our legal system, the transcendent nature of divine justice?
Do you think that decades from now you and your fellow badauds will fondly recall everything about the day—the color of your pants, for example; the smell of the autumn air; the sounds of geese honking obliviously somewhere in the distance—you voluntarily watched a real-live version of a Seventies dystopian Stephen King novel; or do you already suspect that it is going to be one of those things that somehow doesn’t quite live up to the hype?
Do you think you will tell other people—members of the, I hope, vast non-snuff film viewing public, that is—that you watched it? Do you think that your spouse, your children, your neighbors, your colleagues, your dentist the next time you stop in for a filling, your parish priest on the way out of Sunday Mass is going to ask you whether you happened to “catch” the shooting the other day, as if it were Monday Night Football? Do you think they will find your affirmative reply impressive, that they will congratulate you on your tough-mindedness, your no-bullshit personality, your moral clarity? Do you think it is worth coming up with some kind of stock response to someone—a child, for example—who has seen the video inadvertently and finds it distressing? Do you think such people deserve scorn?
I could keep multiplying these questions. But what would be the point? We could talk about all sorts of things. I could do a potted Baudrillardian routine if you want. I could talk to you all about how hyperpolitics has entered its next phase and I could try to manufacture some new ad hoc conceptual vocabulary for making sense of it. I could tell you what I think of Peter Hegseth, the tattooed stultus whose idea this seems to have been. I could say that he is a vulgarian, a swine, an ape, a manchild, an adulterer (like many self-styled defenders of “Western civilization” these days, he is on his third wife), a vicious twisted bigot, and so on. I could say more about his appearance (how his hair looks like frosting) or his background; I could try to wrap my head around the idea of a person who is friendly with Doug Wilson also publicly supporting the Crusades, or rather whatever his cartoonish idea of that intermittent series of conflicts might be (can you imagine?). I could confess my longstanding suspicion that he reads with his mouth open and urinates sitting down while watching clips of himself on his iPhone and that his top-secret code name in his Signal group chat is either “Dwight” or “Valentino” and that on at least one occasion he has used this messaging service to send pictures of his genitals (one hopes inadvertently) to N.A.T.O. counterparts, Israeli intelligence agents, his colleague Scott Bessent (whose reply would have been withering), or all three.
But I don’t want to talk about Hegseth. I don’t want to talk about the antichrist junta in the White House. I certainly don’t want to argue about any of these things. What would be the use? I’ll just repeat my question from above: What are we doing?
The answer, of course, is that we are releasing a snuff film, during the first week of Advent.
