they’re both. they’re trolling us, and they’re deadly serious. it’s the “haha jk unless” approach to manifesting Overton window shifts with irony, aka meme magic.

my comment here analyzes it more: https://lemmy.ml/comment/17320556

definitely not playing it down. the whole point of meme magic is that it shifts the Overton window so bills like these can actually pass. it’s a kind of “irony laundering.” they “troll” the Left, the Left raises alarm, the Right keks and calls us hysterical, the Center sees us as crying wolf and tunes us out. the Right pushes the “troll” legislation as far as they can because “it’s just a prank bro,” until we’re weakened enough they can actually pass it.

it’s like how the Right goads us into calling them “fascists” because they’re literally being fascists, the Right gaslights saying we’re always calling everyone “fascists,” until fascism reenters the Overton window because the Center thinks “fascism” doesn’t mean anything anymore.

honestly, the Left should have used this kind of meme magic back when Republicans were calling centrist Dems Socialists. if we’d used this strategy as well as the Right did we could be executing Billionaires by now.

it’s legislative shitposting/meme magic. one of them gets an idea for the meme: adding “Trump Derangement Syndrome” as a mental illness to troll the libs. it provokes a reaction in us, because it’s 2025 and for all we know the damn thing might pass at the rate the fascists are consuming the state, and the Republicans’ base feeds off of our panic and grief, fueling their schadenfreude. Republican voters are the real trolls; these legislators are just their proxies.

basically, this is the meme magic formula that took 4chan from “ironic” Nazi trolls to an outright fascist resurgence across the West, that took Trump from a meme candidate to the Oval Office, that took the 51st State rhetoric from obvious hyperbole to deadly serious. it’s “just a joke” when you’re defending it, it’s “just trolling” when you’re pushing it through, and it’s “owning the libs” when you’re executing on it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Newsom pulls a Tulsi Gabbard and switches sides. He had Charlie Kirk (of TPUSA) on his podcast where he “completely aligned” with him on trans rights (i.e. eradicating us), then had Steve Bannon on. That’s a bit much even for the Liz Cheney flank of the DNC.

I suspect Newsom doesn’t see any future for his party, and is bailing out instead.