“Just a bunch of people having fun watching cars burn.” At this point, you’ve seen the viral clips, the rage bait, the hysterical celebrity reels : a little less than a week ago, fury over ICE raids in Los Angeles rapidly evolved from a standard normie protest into “unrest,” which is the centrist euphemism for looting, arson, and small scale riots. Now, as a hot summer weekend looms before us, this “unrest” is slowly spreading through Portland, Seattle, New York City, and Chicago, where legions of unemployed activists are agitating for another summer 2020. The President, his team, and his allies are lockstep calling it an insurrection (it’s not). The Democrats are calling it a peaceful movement (it’s not). The rioters are accusing ICE of carrying out illegal deportations (they’re not). Curiously, stupidly, gloriously, Katy Perry is involved, and a new origin myth for California has emerged, as waifish, homicidal librarian-looking white girls scream “from Mexico, to Gaza, globalize the intifada” — these are not illegal immigrants, we are told. In fact, they are not even immigrants. Mexicans have always been here speaking broken English, and selling tamales in the park to their oppressed white rulers. In fact, they built Los Angeles, which we stole. West Hollywood is basically Gaza, when you think about it. Free Mexico!

As predicted, the scale of our internet in the age of media fragmentation has given way not only to a totally alternate sense of our present, but of our past, as Americans increasingly no longer agree on the absolute basics of who they are and where they came from, let alone on where we should be going. Obviously, the emaciated Seattle youth screaming “Allahu Akbar” Wednesday night as the streets burned is beyond reach, but there has probably always been an emaciated Seattle youth screaming “Allahu Akbar” as the streets burned. It’s the drugs up north, I think. It’s the weather, maybe. Much more troubling are the major media figures and politicians defending the emaciated Seattle youth’s behavior, or even funding it, which signals a truly different set of values than my own. Less a difference of opinion, more a battle of ideologies, and no room in this country for both of us.

But before we swallow that blackest of black pills, it’s worth acknowledging the spectacular LARP of what we’re watching. Because in the 2020s, there’s always this annoying question of what the hell is even real.