I'm Tired of the Police-ification of Color

Thankfully we have made it to Friday. Welcome to the first weekly recap of the year, and the first one behind the paywall.

What I'm thinking about today: I had originally planned to write about how George W. Bush's presidency laid the groundwork for the authoritarianism of the Trump regime, but I think that is a piece that I do not want paywalled. So today, I want to talk about color, or rather, the lack of color in American society.

This is an idea I've been thinking about for a long time, but it jumped to the top of my mind this morning when I caught wind of the leaked away kit design for the US Men's National Soccer Team. Instead of the traditional blue, we have this ugly charcoal color with lighter gray stars motif.

The design is allegedly a call back to the incredible home 1994 away kit featuring denim blue and streaky stars. That shirt is iconic and will never be beaten in my opinion for a USA jersey design.

This new design looks like someone took the thin blue line flag and turned it into a soccer shirt. Or, perhaps even more on the nose, this shirt looks like if riot police body armor was made into a soccer shirt.

You can't convince me that this design wouldn't look better in a bright blue or even the traditional navy blue of the past. Even more worryingly, this design is fully in line with the "police-ification" of traditional Americana over recent years.

When I was a kid, most police wore a light blue uniform, or sometimes a khaki or white uniform. Now they wear black, or super dark navy blue, or whatever other evil hue they can find. Their riot gear is all black. The aforementioned thin blue line flag eschews subtlety and drains the color completely out of the flag, presenting the nation as divided between Black and white, with only a blue stripe (the police) standing in between.

The underlying message is a klaxon call.

America's art already suffers from a bleeding out of color. I remember watching Game of Thrones and getting furious at all the black and brown color schemes. The middle ages the show is supposed to represent are fucking BRIGHT. Bright colors were a status symbol.

More recently you can look at the early trailer for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. The ancient times portrayed were colorful as hell. Armor was bronze and painted with bright colors. And no, there were no plastic Batman-surplus helmets back then, what the hell?

In olden times, black was a supremely expensive color to have on clothes, because of the labor and extensive dyes needed to produce it back then. Commoners weren't going around in black. It's absurd that a force like GOT's Night's Watch would be able to afford to wear all black all the time. But then again, that's a fantasy show and I guess they can do what they want.

Getting back specifically to the blacking out of the good old red, white, and blue of Americana, you see this police-ification also in the evolution of Captain America's uniform in the MCU. In the first CA movie, Cap wears a bright blue costume, with audacious red and white trim.

But by Avengers: Endgame, Cap's costume is muted to the point that it is nearly just shades of gray. It looks eerily similar to the new USMNT shirt.

I know this is such a little thing but I reject these fascist aesthetics with all my heart and building the America many of us on the left dream of will involve pushing back on this in some form and returning to a world of color again.

What I've been watching: I'm obsessed with Heated Rivalry like everyone else. I didn't think I would be into it because I'm wary of MM romance in general. I have trauma from years of society telling me I shouldn't be trans and should instead "just be a gay man" but this show seriously hit home for me.

The portrayal of the closet especially resonated with me as someone who didn't build up the courage to come out until I was 34. I will be writing more extensively about this in a piece for The Flytrap coming later this month, so stay tuned!

What I've been working on: It's been a relatively light week for me personally. We've recorded the first episode of the year of Cancel Me, Daddy and it will be out next Thursday.

Other than that, there were the two newsletter pieces from earlier this week:

-On Monday I wrote about how my generation was lost to forever wars and Trump is threatening more forever wars for Gen Z

-On Wednesday I called for Grok to be banned for its new image generation system that can undress any woman or child's photo on the internet. This has quickly become the second most read piece on this newsletter.

Lastly, I just wanted to quickly mention that I'm in the early stages of writing a novel. I can't share any other details now and I have no idea if it will turn into anything published, but it's nice to be able to just say that I'm working on a book.

Thank you all for reading! I'm very nervous about paywalling this but I love you all. Thank you for continuing to support my work and career!