Frau Schmerz And American Stasi -- Tom Sullivan

[erronis]

https://digbysblog.net/2025/03/28/frau-schmerz-and-american-stasi/

This is who we are now

As mentioned last week, tourism is a $2.3 trillion industry in this country, roughly 3 percent of GDP, with international visitors spending $155 billion into the economy each year. So with ICE snatching people off the street like Stasi in East Germany and detaining foreigners at U.S. airports, one might think it an inopportune time for Kristi Noem to produce an anti-U.S. tourism commercial.

Y’all don’t come!

But disincentivize U.S. tourism is just what the Homeland Security secretary did on Wednesday, filming in (of all places) an El Salvador gulag before a backdrop of prisoners reminiscent of Nazi concentration camp victims. And wearing, as the New York Post noted, a $60K Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch. If the point was for Frau Schmerz to get attention, she got attention. “Y’all don’t come!” was hardly the artistic choice the U.S. Travel Association might have made to entice foreign visitors to vacation here. But Schmerz-the-dog-shooter has other priorities.



Jeff Sharlet cautions that Noem’s Lara Croft, Tomb Raider look (sans twin automatics and ponytail) is intentional. It carries a certain kind of fascist sexy, “a kind of debased BDSM,” that’s a trap to spotlight because a certain rightwing man finds it seductive. (It’s not dissimilar to the retributive fantasies Donald Trump teased widely to regain the Oval Office.) My first impression was it’s a helluva way to sell a vacation at Disney World or in Las Vegas.

. . .

[enigmania]

1. We are the baddies.

[erronis]

2. Yes, unfortunately the bad actions by the few are spoiling the whole bushel.