Been thinking a lot about Ben Franklin's stupid fur hat. Why did he wear this hat? Basically to show off how "American" he was while in France. He didn't normally dress like that. It's a stupid costume.

Ben Franklin was a successful businessman, author, and intellectual, and a state diplomat in Paris to ask for aid. He *dressed up* as a frontiersman (in a cheap/plain suit and that ridiculous hat) to show how American!!! he was.

Did Franklin live on the frontier? Uh, no. Did he wander around Philadelphia dressed like this? Also no (until after this trip when the affectation became part of his signature style). This isn't who Franklin *was* in society or culture, it was a very calculated performance.

Why am I thinking about Franklin's stupid fur hat? Well ... https://gothamist.com/news/trump-fur-ever-costumed-capitol-rioter-son-brooklyn-supreme-court-judge

The people dressed in furs or tactical gear or whatever breaching the U.S. capitol in an act of sedition are invoking VERY particular aesthetic and visual traditions. Is this a stupid coup? Yes, we're living through a stupid coup: https://indica.medium.com/i-lived-through-a-coup-america-is-having-one-now-437934b1dac3

But something can be stupid AND calculated at the same time. The visual rhetoric, the costuming, the violence that's both playful and real? This is a game and a performance. Do any of these people cruise around in furs normally? I'm leaning towards no!

But, they're wearing fur for a reason -- likely reasons not much removed from Franklin's. This is an effort to show how rugged, how American, how manly they are (sources that indicate Franklin stuck with the hat because eh thought it impressed Parisian prostitutes).

There's an aesthetic to this stupid coup, and it's historically specific and tied to American nationalist myth (myth in the Barthes sense).

ALSO like, while I'm ranting: The Boston Tea Party and MANY OTHER early U.S. political actions involved white people dressing up as cartoons of American Indians to allegedly obscure their identity.

But, there's also a highly ritualized aspect to all of this. These aren't uniforms, of course, but they ARE costumes. You know how you behave with better manners when you feel like you're dressed fancy? This is an invocation of the opposite of that.

All of this is calculated and deliberate. It might look stupid. Ignore that; it's unhelpful. What's important is what is being invoked, why, and to what ends. What's being invoked is violence and white nationalism because that's the goal.