The following item has been appearing on countless blogs and Facebook pages around the universe: “Donald Trump has revealed the truth about the Republican Party.”
Trump stands accused of serving up a distillate of all that’s worst about current Republican attitudes and programs. (Many Democrats find this convenient, and really hope his party runs him for President.)
But I don’t believe we can blame Trump. It’s the thing on his head, its roots extending into his cerebral cortex, that’s calling the shots, and God only knows what its real agenda might be. In fact, I’m excited to report this as the first sighting in the wild of an actual physical manifestation of a meme. That’s right. Trump himself is only a vehicle for the self-propagation of an especially hairy meme pursuing as yet unknown ends.
“The human world is made of stories, not people,” the novelist David Mitchell has suggested. “The people the stories use to tell themselves are not to be blamed.” I find Mitchell quoted in a recent article by James Gleick.
For much more on “information” and the human condition, see The Information, Gleick’s latest book.
