absolutely fascinated by this image (posted by the most powerful man in the world no less) as an aesthetic object; obviously absolutely dripping in christian symbolism; trump as christ, simultaneously offensive and exhilarating for a certain type of american christian; an impossibly large flag, very american, i love it; fireworks in the day time because why not; russian on the hat of the old man gi; i dislike the two eagles, for true symbol-historicity it should be a single, double-headed eagle; who is the man the trump-christ is healing? is it the pope? is it american greatness? is it sleepy joe biden?; is that the power rangers in the sky? is it voltron? is it masterchief?; why are they portrayed as angels? are they dead? does the archangel michael now carry a flaming ar-15?; now you may be thinking, but mr rothwell, this just ai slop, why are you analysing the sickly secretion of a machine that has no aesthetic taste, has no aesthetic intention, that just oozes a strange frankenstein-glomp of motifs, ill-conceived symbology, poorly mishmashed concepts?; ah, i tell you, don’t be so quick to dismiss it; someone within the administration created this image with intent; they typed up some ghoulish prompt; they looked at the sickly pool regurgitated out by the machine with admiration, blissfully unaware of the centuries of artistic history it tries and fails to ape; they thought it job well done; this monstrous image will serve the purpose; they posted it for a throbbing mob of dribbling sycophants, gleefully applauding its nonsense; for here we have the kernel of populist politics in its purest form; we are in a post-truth, post-literate society; soon all we’ll have to communicate is images like this; the truth value matters little; the legibility matters little; it just needs to appear as if it conveys something; the ambiguity, the uncanny-valleyness, the slopness is the point; overwhelm the information networks with slop; slop in the internet; slop in your eyeballs; slop clogging up your neurones; who can think clearly when the whole system is clogged up with slop; this is the purest politics in the 21st century; its eerily sticky and slimy collages of nonsense, vaguely groping at some point, some history, some idea; but there is none; it’s a rubbery stem cell of political ideology; it means whatever the viewer wants it to mean, which is nothing; it’s the shattering of sense-making altogether; it’s the balkanisation of meaning into ever smaller parts until we all inhabit entirely different planets; it’s genius; it’s how you win in this information environment; the future belongs to people who understand this; the future belongs to those who best weaponise slop