The Darth Pope of Alcatraz
I haven’t read the book, but I assume Ancient History: 4500 BCE to 500 CE Essentials by Gordon Patterson may skip some parts of that 5000 year time frame.
The White House posting a photo of muscular Trump holding a lightsaber1 and announcing that Alcatraz2 will reopen as a prison on the same day are both so odd that I don't have a solid thought to express about either. The Trump administration has made things so strange and convoluted that it is hard to explain what they are doing, and it is monotonous to listen to such explanations.
To make this article readable I will use footnotes to contextualize claims that otherwise seem fake.
From News To History
Journalism intends to report facts. How facts build on one another is eventually lost in contemporaneous reporting. Over enough reports, details have to be skipped to focus on simple, digestible stories; e.g., a judge may be corrupt, the corrupt judge reportedly had a history of racism, and the corrupt, racist judge has been pardoned are many stories told over time. When each is supposed to be 400 to 900 words of essential context, each piece of journalism is an incomplete archive for posterity.
Longer essays, academic articles, books, documentaries and compilations of events are created through the ages. When the dust settles, eventually, the historians turn all these materials into distillations, the essential text that kids read in school, and the audio books that jacked nerds listen to at the gym; and parts are inevitably forgotten.
I haven’t read the book, but I assume Ancient History: 4500 BCE to 500 CE Essentials by Gordon Patterson may skip some things from that 5000 year time frame. When Trump is recorded in the historical chronicles, things too will be forgotten, and the full oddness of Trump will be lost.
When history books are published mentioning Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a man the Trump administration has been ordered to return to the US following his deportation against a court order, to what I will call a concentration camp3, in El Salvador what will they leave out? They will probably skip margarita gate4, and Trump arguing a photo annotation was a tattoo5. The more weird, and convoluted the Trump administration makes things, the harder it is to tell the story.
Deliberate Not Strategic
A certain type of person wants to have chaos, because they can use disorder to reshape narratives. Most such people are not strategists, they are not playing a long game or 4D chess. Nevertheless, they make the truth complex, and when the truth is made complex, they sell a simple explanation.
For a narrative to catch on it must be repeated a lot, but the propaganda playbook doesn’t require total consistency. The Trump administration, like other governments who leveraged propaganda in the past is spewing a firehose of falsehoods that are themselves contradictory. A single catchy lie compared to truth is caught more easily than when it is compared to dozens of conflicting statements that obscure the truth.
Branding, and public relations are persuasive. None of us have time or brain power to research everything, so a simple well told narrative is easy to accept. Particularly when finding the truth required pouring over volumes of news reports, public statements, and legal filings like a hagiographer of reprobates.
From the perspective of hiding the truth even exposed lies are helpful. Brandolini's law, states that The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it. When a world leader tells a lie, those who care for truth work to debunk the lie.
If that leader lies all the time with little or no consistency the waters are muddied. It’s a Lernaean Hydra effect when someone (with distribution) lies it must be debunked. It creates an asymmetry in game play, where the leader can lie, get debunked, lie and say they never said the first lie, while telling a new lie, requiring fact checkers to call out, the first lie, the lie about telling the lie, and the new lie. It’s all exhausting.
When this is mixed with weird headline grabbing actions like the president sharing an AI generated image of themselves as the pope.6 Drawing first reporting, and later think pieces, denouncements, and reporting on the denouncements; A truly flooded zone.
On May 4th, 2025, The White House posted on Instagram, X and Facebook an AI-generated image of President Donald Trump for Star Wars Day. For those unaware, red lightsabers are for the bad guys in Star Wars.
The caption read,
“Happy May the 4th to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting so hard to bring Sith Lords, Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, & well known MS-13 Gang Members, back into our Galaxy. You’re not the Rebellion—you’re the Empire.
May the 4th be with you.”
On May 4th, 2025, President Donald Trump announced his intention to reopen Alcatraz as a federal prison. The former maximum-security prison closed on March 21, 1963, "because the institution was too expensive to continue operating," according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons at the time. Currently Alcatraz is a national park and tourist destination however, the Prisons Director, William K. Marshall III said his agency will “pursue all avenues” to implement the reopening.
The Center for Terrorism Confinement, the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) in Tecoluca, El Salvador where Abrego Garcia and many others have been sent by the US government meets the definition of concentration camp.
a place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Concentration camp. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved May 6, 2024, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/concentration%20camp
According to Juanita Goebertus the Director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch CECOT subjects detainees to mistreatment including torture, incommunicado, severe violations of due process and other inhumane conditions, such as lack of access to adequate healthcare and food.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador to investigate the wrongful deportation of Abrego Garcia, but accused President Nayib Bukele of orchestrating a "margarita-gate" setup by posting a photo of their April 17, 2025 meeting with apparent margarita glasses, which Van Hollen claims were placed on the table by officials and untouched by either of them.
During an interview with ABC News, Donald Trump insisted that an edited image of Abrego Garcia showing the letters "MS-13" superimposed onto his knuckle tattoos, was authentic, despite evidence indicating the image was altered. Trump claimed Garcia's tattoos, including a marijuana leaf, smiley face, cross, and skull, were clear indicators of gang affiliation, directly contradicting ABC's Terry Moran, who stated the "MS-13" lettering was Photoshopped.
The below closeup image of the hand of Abrego Garcia taken on April 17, 2025 during a meeting with Sen. Chris Van Hollen and posted on X by El Salvador's president Nayib Bukele shows no MS-13 text tattoo.
President Donald Trump posted this AI-generated photo of himself dressed as the pope on X (Twitter) as Catholics worldwide are in mourning for the death of Pope Francis.