The Unchecked Libidinal Energy of Politics: A Review of Nancy Mace’s Twitter Account

review #03

No longer are we living in the age of movies, music, literature, and fashion—we’re well and truly in the Digital Age. In the spirit of that claim, I’ve decided to start running reviews of Internet-native media: podcasts, social media personalities, short-form videos, video essays, blogs, and more.

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It took politicians a long time to learn how to use Twitter. At first, the most obvious way to use it was to issue bog-standard proclamations on recent policies, repeat talking points, and denounce your opponents in boringly obvious terms. Up until Trump, basically all politicians used it this way. Now, a new pioneer sets forth and a new continent swims into her ken. I am referring, of course, to the libidinally charged Twitter account of congresswoman Nancy Mace (R. South Carolina).

Mace is undoubtedly publicity-savvy. She has a knack for getting more press than the average congressperson, sometimes unintentionally. For instance, appearing at the National Prayer Breakfast, she stated that she God-fearingly skipped sex with her fiancé that morning because of the pressing and more sacred business occasioned by the breakfast. People mocked her for it, but, in a way, it was an intuitive publicity coup—a beguiling frisson provoked by this conjunction of Christian piety and premarital sexuality.

Mace has taken the same capacity to jolt her audience to Twitter, as captured by her recent interactions with anonymous Twitter user, Jarvis:

As you can see, Mace posted an AI-generated image of herself in the role of Uma Thurman’s character, “The Bride,” from Kill Bill. To which Jarvis responded, “I want you to cut my arms off.” Mace further replied, “You’re out of control,” accompanied by a laughing and crying emoji. This was by no means the end of Mace’s flirtatious exchanges with this high follower-count anon:

And again:

After reading this exchange and smiling at the spectacle of Jarvis boldly shooting his shot, I naturally wondered if Mace was married. (You just reflexively assume that Southern Republican congresswomen are all married.) But, no, she’s not. The engagement is no longer in effect, and she is now one of congress’s most eligible bachelorettes.

This stuck with me because it occurred the same week that congressman Dan Crenshaw called some Twitter users “fucking incels” after they accused him of pushing for an unnecessary pay raise. These twin interactions broke down borders between the electorate and their representatives in an unprecedented way. You can flirt directly with your congresswoman. You can fantasize about her wielding a katana or killing you. And she will respond. Alternately, your representative can accuse you of never getting laid. Between the lust Mace evoked and the rage Crenshaw expressed, we see the future shape of politics taking form.

Politics is inherently libidinal. It conjures up fantasy and desire, directing them towards a specific end. As improbable as it may seem, the creation of social security and the interstate highway system rest, ultimately, on a seething reservoir of barely checked sexual energy. As Mussolini famously observed, “The crowd is like a woman,” and the art of the pick-up-artist and the art of the politician are essentially the same.

Lyndon Baines Johnson, as much of a ladies man as he was a natural politician, remarked on how beholding a crowd of supporters, he wanted to touch them, draw near them, hug them. He wanted to meld his organism with the collective whole and represent it, almost in a deeply biological way. Trump, while too much of a germophobe to fantasize about this more literal melding, is similarly a master channeler of the collective Id and libido. For instance, when Trump talks about Justin Trudeau’s real father being Fidel Castro, he’s not only making fun of Trudeau—he is conjuring vistas of sensual delight in which Trudeau’s “very wild and beautiful” mother, Margaret, partied with the Rolling Stones in the liberated and Dionysian 1970s. Libidinal energies always hover in the background.

Mace, I think, has found the right formula for how to wield libido online politically. Her Twitter content teases and, indeed, titillates in a distinctly online manner without going too far. It walks right up to the line. One turn of the screw further, and Mace would be in trouble. She intuits that what a lot of rightwing men want isn’t a submissive tradwife so much as an Amazon, one who promises transfiguration through mutilation (metaphorically).

It may seem curious that a rightwing congresswoman should inhabit this role. The idea of being an Amazon seems, at least on the surface, feminist-coded. But it is of the Paglian disposition, which has been out of fashion on the left for a long time. The Amazon violates boundaries, rather than policing her own. She is a transgressive figure, and transgression, in the present dispensation, is typically rightwing.

One could compare Mace with AOC in this regard. AOC has spoken about the trauma she allegedly experienced after the January 6^th Capitol Hill intrusion. By her own account, there was an element of sexual terror in her experience. She was further traumatized after Republican congressman Paul Gosar tweeted out a video clip in which an anime character bearing AOC’s face was murdered by a sword-wielding anime character bearing Gosar’s face. When a certain man watches the video of AOC denouncing Gosar, something “pings” deep in his brain. He gets carried back to kindergarten, with the teacher asking him what exactly he thought he was doing when he made this mess. He likes it.

But those who don’t like it naturally gravitate towards Mace. Mace is wielding the sword—famously a symbol of phallic force and violence. She is cutting people into pieces. Again, AOC is policing boundaries, but Mace is violating them.

As for the actual political content of Mace’s Twitter, it’s pretty much what you would expect from an aggressive Republican congressperson. This week she was sparring with AOC about deporting illegal immigrants who have been convicted of pedophilia. But this review is concerned more with the formal aspects, if you will, of Mace’s Twitter account. The packaging, the presentation.

What does all this mean for politics? I’m not sure. It depends on the policies such forthrightly libidinal forces are harnessed to promote. In this regard, I think Mace’s forward-thinking Twitter tactics are in advance of her actual policies. If she could advance some bold ideas on par with buying Greenland, she might be able to really shake things up (and I say this from a politically neutral perspective, merely calling balls and strikes).

For this reason, I give Nancy Mace’s Twitter account three and a half decidedly non-partisan stars. One star was withheld because of the need for bolder policy proposals, while an additional half star was withheld due to the so-called “damage to the dignity of the office” that goes along with posting sexy AI-generated photos of yourself (not that I care! But I think it’s worth at least nodding to this rational objection). But the three and a half stars Mace does retain for her intrepid next gen publicity efforts are fully merited.