Mint Quick Edit | White House video of chained deportees hits a new low
Summary
- Posted by the White House, the clip apparently aims to evoke an autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), but its cling-clang sound of shackles makes us wonder where the US is headed.
Some stuff on social media is too disturbing to be put down to just a strange sense of humour. Take a recent video clip titled “ASMR: Illegal Deportation Flight," a 41-second recording posted by the White House on its Instagram and X accounts. It depicts US deportees being patted down, shackled and boarded on a plane. But the point of it, as the title suggests, is the soundtrack—the heavy cling-clang of chains, in all its jarring menace.
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ASMR is short for autonomous sensory meridian response, a sensation evoked by audio or visual stimuli that typically starts on one’s scalp and goes down the spine. It can be induced by a whisper, for example, and its tingling can soothe nerves, as many ASMR videos online promise.
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So, did the White House expect to send a frisson around America with the sight and sound of illegal immigrants being sent home like dangerous criminals? Whatever the motive, it marks a new low for a country that once posed as a land of liberty.
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The irony of this may seem like a trivial matter in the larger scheme of world affairs, but as the late American writer Neil Postman warned, a population absorbed by trivia could find itself at risk of “culture-death".
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