Politics as Trade Show

One booth agnostically chock-a-block with the next --

The @benshapiro vs @cenkuygur debate has been moved to Civic Auditorium due to the sheer size of the crowd. #Politicon2017 pic.twitter.com/I1GWbSYzI7

— Politicon (@Politicon) July 31, 2017

-- as long as it draws a crowd.

One huckster as useful as the next --

Mainstream pundits always portray "bridging the political divide" as the ultimate virtue. Well, there was a time when when we had real political unity. Right after 9/11. The nation came together to support George W. Bush and it was a huge fucking disaster. pic.twitter.com/TS4UFKudVa

— Frank Conniff (@FrankConniff) September 3, 2018

-- as long as the rubes are moved to drop their nickles in the box.

One product display as successful as the next --

Precisely. David Remnick, there is no question you can ask him that will elicit an answer I could possibly care to hear. You are being used, @NewYorker. You are Bannon's chump. This is not journalism. I am disappointed. You should be ashamed. https://t.co/P9GJvSaXNA

— Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) September 3, 2018

-- as long as it draws eyeballs.

Whether you're selling fizzy, irony-laced, Both Siderist snake-oil sody-pop to bean-bag chair rebels with too much loose cash and too little sense --

...
The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts and Reason lives up to its ironic title. The freshly published polemic is co-authored by the hosts—Felix Biederman, Matt Christman, Brendan James, Will Menaker and Virgil Texas—of the socialist, satirical podcast Chapo Trap House. The podcast rakes in six figures a month from more than 20,000 Patreon subscribers. It built its following on withering takedowns of insufficiently leftist liberals who serve up “thin, flavorless gruel” in the dying news media.

The book, which aims to expand the reach of “the Chapo Way,” begins with a self-consciously over-the-top sales pitch. By imbibing the authors’ words, “you’ll become an initiate in the Chapo Mindset and take control of the neurons that govern your weak, fragile emotions.” Apparently, we should take our “Ironic Left” cult leaders seriously, but not always literally.

Yet by the end of the book, it’s hard to escape the nagging feeling that Chapo—the podcast and the book—is, at bottom, an actual, unironic infomercial scheme. They make bank by selling you a candy-coated version of socialism, one that may offend real socialists even more than liberal gruel-peddlers like myself...

-- or you're selling credulous Liberals their own words back to them for $20 a shot tarted up as Breathless Never Trumper Epiphany --

-- never doubt this is about money.

Pure and simple.

And while anyone is free to blow their allowance on all-syrup Super Squishies, Toothless-Joe Bubble Gum and Rub-On tattoos --

-- consider a couple of things.

First, don't mistake frantic last-days-of-the-Wiemar-Republic ideological club-hopping for activism.

And, second, once the bender ends and the brutal hangover drags you back to terra firma, don't expect anything out in the Real World to have actually changed other than a few more hucksters got a little richer at your expense.

Behold, a Tip Jar!