Noisy hiding places

A constant blogging problem is the volume of media noise skewing all mainstream public debates. So much so that it is quite a stretch to call them debates. Or indeed public. As if the TV is on 24/7 blasting out government inspired exhortations to emote, give, give, give and suck up the guilt anyway.

Political narratives have major weaknesses, but the sheer volume of media noise appears to hide those weaknesses from enough people to sway the debate one way and only one way. But this aspect of it is quite weird - like hide and seek with children. Most people can be persuaded to pretend they don’t quite know where the weaknesses are hiding.

Weaknesses have to be hidden by noise to give the narrative some traction, but once hidden and once traction is achieved, most people don’t look for them anyway. The weakness isn’t hiding behind the curtains even though I can see its little feet peeping out. Oh yes it is. Oh no it isn’t. This is the weirdly infantile aspect of it.

An obvious place to hide narrative weaknesses is orthodoxy - which is where compliant experts come in. Not impenetrable technical orthodoxy, but more distracting media noise with plausible technical overtones. Mainstream media are good at creating an endless clamour of orthodox noise. Celebrities are attracted to the resulting echo chamber and away it goes. All of which makes it much easier to concoct a tangle of specious supporting arguments.

For example, it has always been obvious that the coronavirus pandemic isn’t remotely on a par with the Black Death. Its more serious effects are strongly skewed towards the elderly and the medically vulnerable and from an early stages that was always a solid indication of how to tackle it most effectively.

We were never all in it together but policy says we are. This fundamental weakness with pandemic policy was always obvious, yet in a sense the weakness was hidden in plain view. Hidden in the endless beat of orthodox noise.

The Joe Biden debacle is equally obvious. He is a major disaster on at least four counts - his dubious election, his incompetence, his miserable choice of vice president and now Afghanistan. Yet the orthodox noise from Afghanistan seems to hide as much as it exposes. On and on and on - treat Biden as the real deal – on and on and on. Amazingly, the Biden disaster is still partly hidden by media noise. Not very well hidden it has to be admitted. He is a special case.

Climate change is an example where the orthodox noise has been going on for decades yet the weaknesses are obvious enough even without technical analysis. This one has been going on for so long that the noise itself is a weakness to those who listen. The loons who shout about it are a weakness. The stunts and demonstrations are weaknesses. The costs and defects of sustainable energy are weaknesses. Yet for too many the noise hides it all.