Trump, that penguin, and the suicidal urge of American individualism

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The news, in brief …

• “US doesn’t gun down citizens”: Biden says ICE’s actions in Minnesota “betray our most basic values”

  The former president said "violence and terror have no place" in the United States. Read more.

• Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino demoted after Pretti killing

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• “Uncharted water”: Caribbean boat strike victims’ families sue US

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Make me smarter …

Why GOP voters still love ICE

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The WaddleAway movement …

The first thing you need to know about the penguin is that it’s dead. 

In a particularly poignant moment in Werner Herzog’s 2007 documentary “Encounters at the End of the World,” an Adelie penguin inexplicably breaks away from a busy feeding ground, turning away from the ocean to trudge toward the interior of Antarctica. Herzog’s narration lends the scene weight, using tricks he learned from trash, true crime television and the gravitas of a career spent examining hubris at uncomfortably close range. But in truth, the penguin was not an iconoclast. It was simply confused – later in the film, Herzog calls it “deranged” – and heading toward certain death.

Given the antisocial character of the entire MAGA movement, it’s no wonder its adherents have embraced the doomed penguin as a deluded shorthand for themselves. As Donald Trump alienates many U.S. allies through his quixotic quest to control Greenland, his marketing department has incorporated the long-deceased bird into official dispatches. This culminated with a Department of Homeland Security fancam that equated the penguin’s death drive with American individualism. The clip cuts from Herzog’s penguin to images of Donald Trump and then DHS agents, in an attempt to sell ICE raids as the latest incarnation of America’s frontier spirit.

It’s all so silly. Penguins, like people, are social animals. The ones who try to set off entirely on their own may find the joys of a solitary life, but only briefly. This is doubly true of Americans, citizens of a country that provides for so few of their needs and wants that the president made global trade deficits the centerpiece of his second term — before forgetting about them again. Despite its national mythology, this country would not survive as we know it by going its own way.  

Perhaps the best counterpoint to the suicidal-penguin MAGA memers can be found staring down ICE agents wherever they appear. Joe Biden lauded Minnesotans as the best of us in a recent statement about the Trump administration’s terrorizing of Minneapolis. For once, I don’t disagree with the oldest member of the Democratic Party old guard. If we’re to have a future, it won’t be as 400 million rugged individuals. The conservative fantasy of life on the ice will lead to nothing but death.

What do you think? Do conservatives actually want the future they claim to want? Are we all being dragged into our dead penguin era? Sound off in the comments.

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Before you go …

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