Welcome to the BS Olympics: JD Vance, America’s Myth Machine, and the Great Truth Implosion

6 min readMay 6, 2025

There’s a new circus in town, and no, it’s not the one with elephants — unless you count the GOP. It’s the Trump 2025 Cabinet meeting, where JD Vance strutted in with the swagger of a man who just discovered mirrors and declared war on them. His speech? A masterclass in narrative flatulence — loud, pungent, and meant to distract you while the country gets mugged behind the bleachers.

But peel back the surface, and you’ll find more than bluster. You’ll see a deliberate authoritarian semiotics — a strategy to replace law with will, truth with vibes, and policy with pantomime. What Vance delivered wasn’t a speech. It was a blueprint for how to break democracy with a grin and a catchphrase.

Let’s break it down.

🧠 Militarism Without a War: The Imaginary Draft of Imaginary Men

Vance told us military recruitment is “surging.” Reality, however, disagrees. The U.S. military missed its recruitment goals in recent years across nearly every branch. The crisis is ongoing. But in the Trump-Vance theater of meaning, data is just scenery. The military isn’t a functional force — it’s a mythological relic, invoked to cosplay strength while sidestepping actual governance.

As the JSTOR article “Uncivil-Military Relations” notes, the Trump movement’s engagement with the armed forces is largely symbolic — evocative, not operational. The Army becomes a cultural fetish, a totem for nationalist masculinity, not an institution to be resourced or repaired.

This is what political theorist Jacques Ellul warned about: propaganda that bypasses intellect and goes straight for identity. Vance isn’t proposing solutions. He’s lighting incense at the altar of an imaginary Sparta and calling it a jobs program.

⚖️ Deportation as Spectacle: When Breaking the Law Is the Point

Then comes the punchline: bragging about illegally deporting an alleged MS-13 member, even after a court ordered otherwise. This isn’t immigration policy. It’s executive performance art, where breaking the law becomes the point — not the problem.

Carl Schmitt, the father of modern authoritarian theory, called this the “state of exception”: the sovereign suspends the law to affirm their supremacy. In Vance’s framework, legality is weakness and illegality is patriotic flexing.

In reality, the deportation was later deemed unlawful. But the point wasn’t rule of law — it was rule of optics. The message? “We don’t answer to courts. We are the court now.”

When a government brags about sidestepping due process to score rhetorical points, it’s not enforcing order. It’s advertising its capacity for impunity.

🎭 Narrative Judo: Punch Yourself, Blame the Mirror

Then Vance goes full performance art, accusing the media of ignoring “real” stories while inventing fake outrage. This is classic narrative judo: accuse your opponent of what you’re doing until the room spins and no one knows which way is up.

Philosopher Cory Wimberly, in Propaganda and the Politics of Ressentiment, explains how modern propaganda isn’t about truth or lies — it’s about emotional alignment. If you’re angry at the same thing I’m angry at, we’re on the same team — facts be damned.

Vance weaponizes this with precision. You say he’s lying? He calls it patriotism. You bring data? He drowns it in grievance. The goal isn’t persuasion — it’s semantic erosion. Truth doesn’t fail. It becomes irrelevant.

🧨 Citizenship as Loyalty Oath: No Rights, Just Ratings

Let’s talk about what this narrative architecture actually builds: a citizenship that’s conditional, performative, and revocable.

In the Vance-Trump model:

Citizenship is a vibe check.
Dissent is betrayal.
Rights are optional features — like leather seats on a used Dodge Charger.

This isn’t democracy. It’s patriotism as branding, where you earn your civic identity through applause volume and loyalty to a single man.

What we’re witnessing isn’t a return to fascism — it’s its rebranding. Autocracy in a bomber jacket. The Constitution still gets screen time, but its meaning has been dubbed over with the audio from a Fox News segment.

🔮 Myth-Making for Meatheads: The Propaganda Machine Reloaded

So let’s review:

Military failure? Call it a patriotic renaissance.
Lawbreaking? Reframe it as sovereignty.
Criticism? Label it as sabotage.
Truth? Redefine it as treason.

This isn’t governance — it’s semiotic sabotage. A full-spectrum assault on meaning, dressed up in flag pins and Facebook memes. Think of it as a propaganda machine that doesn’t just lie — it erases the difference between truth and lie entirely.

It’s Umberto Eco’s warning about “Ur-Fascism”: a cult of tradition, a fear of difference, and a contempt for intellectual complexity — all sold with a side of fake populism and real authoritarian creep.

📢 The Real Crisis? Meaning Itself.

What JD Vance unleashed at that Cabinet meeting wasn’t just stupidity. It was a strategic demonstration of narrative power — a signal to the movement: “We don’t need coherence. We need control.”

The lies aren’t failing — they’re succeeding because they’re lies. They demoralize, disorient, and replace shared reality with tribal hallucination.

This is not a speech. It’s a manual for post-truth governance. And if we treat it like bad-faith politics or cable news fodder, we’re already playing the role they’ve scripted for us.

So yeah. JD Vance didn’t just gaslight the room. He handed out matches. And in 2025, fire sells.

You’re not just being lied to.

You’re being reprogrammed.

And the only firewall left is your ability to recognize it.

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