Maybe high pressure lying was inevitable

Suppose we assume that the internet took off in terms of mass popularity about twenty years ago. It doesn’t matter how accurate that is, twenty years is near enough for a backward glance.

Until that time it was still possible for newspapers, radio and television to deceive the great mass of the public by omitting whatever information was deemed unsuitable for general consumption. Outright lies were not usually required when omitting key information or avoiding certain subjects was enough.

There were alternative sources of course. Small circulation publications such as Private Eye provided a cynical and satirical but limited alternative picture of current affairs. Mainstream satire may have told us that all was not well with the world, but generally only in a harmless and comical sense or one where more government was the implied solution.

Then the internet arrived.

It must have become obvious soon enough that lying by omission would eventually become problematic for mainstream media and the political classes. Not so much because lies could be challenged but because omissions could be filled in. Omissions could be anything from missing information to omitted uncertainties to alternative explanations. Too many alternative sources of information were flooding the online public space and the trend was bound to continue.

Yet since that time, lying by omission has remained the main approach to narrative control. It is easier than direct lying, less obviously culpable and numerous shades of crude titillation and celebrity irrelevance are easier to pass off as news to generally incurious audiences. But in an effort to keep lying by omission sustainable it has become necessary to counter those internet sources which fill in the omissions.

As a result, censorship, misinformation, smears and outright lying have become more important to mainstream media and the political classes. Necessarily so as governments and the media fail to deal with the issue by ramping up their integrity and transparency. Easily done but they don’t do it. One problem seems to be that they struggle to attract and keep people with integrity.

The coronavirus debacle tells us that lying by omission blended with outright lying works as an approach. Lies can be inconspicuously corrected later, but even so the approach probably does not work as well as simple omission did before the internet. For example, the ready availability of unofficial information tends to undermine the government position on almost any issue, taking with it any lingering faith in the integrity of the media and government experts.

In spite of intense coronavirus propaganda, its effectiveness is clearly crumbling in certain areas and the internet must be the main reason. In which case, future attempts to project a factually insecure narrative are just as likely to crumble when faced with alternative sources of information. Hence we see frantic attempts at censorship and equally frantic attempts to discredit unofficial sources of information and opinion.

It is as if the internet was bound to usher in high pressure lying to bolster an inherent weakness in lying by omission, especially within democratic societies. However the electronic age and push towards high pressure lying also opened up an opportunity. It slackened off the moral opprobrium of lying and allowed the creation of alternative realities orchestrated by money, technology and political ambitions.

High pressure lying and convincing alternative realities offer democratic elites the possibility of covert switching to totalitarian government while retaining democratic forms of political behaviour. The coronavirus mess offers us an obvious clue as to the future direction of official lies woven into new totalitarian realities. Health has turned out to be the Trojan horse by which high pressure lies and fake realities are inserted into the public domain. It will continue.

Spiderman doesn’t make sense but…

Popular culture brings us into close contact with all manner of scenarios which make no sense. Movies are full of them, from Spiderman to virtually all action movies, but what about scenarios outside popular culture? Climate change for example?

We could easily show how the orthodox climate narrative has been dragged into popular culture - it is more likely to be promoted by celebrities and pundits than scientists. Which is odd unless we assume that the point of dragging it into popular culture is to disguise the possibility that catastrophic climate scenarios do not make sense.

This is not quite the same as claiming that the science behind climate change scenarios is faulty, uncertain or unreliable. It a suggestion that the orthodox climate narrative does not make sense in much the same way that Spiderman does not make sense.

Suppose we look at it in a familiar enough way. We know that weather forecast reliability does not stretch much further than five days, yet climate forecasts are made for thirty years hence. It is easy enough to see that this may not make sense, just as Spiderman could not possibly eject an endless quantity of super strong, incredibly sticky webs from his wrists.

We easily imagine numerous scenarios which make no sense but we generally know them to be imaginary, just as Spiderman is imaginary. It’s a question of context, but manipulate the context for climate change and many people appear to be deceived. As if the familiar celebrity context mingled with a scientific context has allowed senseless imaginary scenarios to seem legitimate. As if the boundaries where we suspend our disbelief and where we don't have been blurred.

The problem is one Baruch Spinoza identified over three and a half centuries ago. We have a powerful ability to imagine scenarios which could not possibly be real. They violate natural laws, the facts of experience or both. Climate forecasting on a thirty year timescale is one of them.

Similarly one of the first political developments in the UK coronavirus debacle was to blur the line between celebrity and scientist by inviting scientists onto the stage. Drama and celebrity scientists were quickly woven into the overall narrative. Presumably for a reason.

Again we were confronted with imaginary pandemic scenarios we now know to have been dramatically exaggerated and based on inept epidemiological models. Maybe this comparison can be pushed too far, but it has a curious similarity with climate doom predictions. The context has been manipulated in a similar manner.

Bomber Biden - it didn't take long

Biden takes first military action with strike on Iran-backed militias

The US military has carried out an air strike targeting Iran-backed militias in Syria, in the first military action undertaken by the Biden administration.

The Pentagon said the strike was ordered in response to attacks against US and coalition personnel in Iraq.

The action destroyed "multiple facilities" used by Iranian-backed Iraqi militant groups, it said.

Militia officials said one person had been killed, while a war monitor reported at least 22 fatalities.

As many have said, covert opposition to and undermining of Donald Trump almost certainly came from those who make huge amounts of money from blowing up foreigners. It sounds as if Joe has dutifully pushed that particular button. 

Another Win For Team Boris

As we know, the UK roadmap which finally takes us out of the coronavirus debacle stipulates that nobody is allowed to be poorly during transition back to normality. The police have been given special powers to question those who break this rule by coughing, sneezing or looking generally manky without official authorisation.

Suppose someone breaks the rules and actually looks a bit off colour so to speak? Here’s where the remarkably quick political thinking came into play. In a stunning move which has Emmanuel Macron and all of the EU establishment fuming, Team Boris has purchased the entire world supply of Night Nurse, Lemsip, throat lozenges, Hall's Linctus and Vicks VapoRub.

These emergency symptom suppressants will allow the police to question anyone who coughs, sneezes or looks suspiciously iffy without an official excuse and log their reasons for breaking the rules. A team of expert hypochondriacs has been recruited to a special government task force to assist in these crucial investigations.

More on this story as it splutters along.

A Vast Indifference

Sometimes the natural world tells us it doesn’t care. It offers a powerful, daunting yet fascinating impression of vast indifference. The open sea can do this if there are only a few people around. Or the huge bowl of a clear night sky, or a wide and lonely view of rolling hills where hardly anything stirs but a high buzzard circling silently over its hunting grounds.

Cities, towns shopping centres, offices, houses, pubs, cafes, busy streets. None of them create this effect, although there may be hints of it in the still silence of an ancient country church.

It’s a spiritual thing lying just beyond the easy assurance of familiar language, a reminder that one day we will be gone and the natural world doesn’t care and never did care. And maybe this is a good thing. It leaves open a reminder that we should pay attention to own cares and make sure they are at least worthy of the limited time we have.

In my experience this vast indifference can be found quite easily. Others may find it in different ways, but one or two of our walks offer huge views with hardly any people and often this is all it takes. It cannot be experienced indirectly though – certainly not through the media. Even thinking about the media in such a context seems to pollute something important, something we’ll never capture except personally.

Are there downsides to such an experience? Yes there are – the ceaseless wittering of political obsessives come across as infantile. That isn’t necessarily good because people who could do great harm have to be taken seriously. Sometimes it isn’t easy.

Until...

 

Just make it work

Warning - the link below takes you to the Guardian -

Justin Trudeau has praised Joe Biden for rejoining the Paris climate accord during their first bilateral meeting, saying: “US leadership has been sorely missed over the past years.”

The Canadian prime minister added: “And I have to say as we were preparing the joint rollout of the communique on this, it’s nice when the Americans are not pulling out all the references to climate change and instead adding them in.”

The ongoing hatred of Donald Trump has a strange feel to it. Something distinctly abnormal for a very popular and democratically elected leader. There appear to be a number of reasons behind the abnormality, but one of them may be his undeclared but powerful identification with making things work as the reason for employing someone.

Which seems a little offbeat as an explanation, but it is surprisingly instructive to view a job as being paid to make something work or keep something working. Looked at this way we get rid of the fluff.

That something may be anything from making a column of figures add up, a car which starts every morning, a school doing what schools are supposed to do, a bus route which works, a piece of software which works or fixing a central heating boiler to make it work again. The number of possibilities is huge.

Yet during my working life I have encountered people who never seem to make anything work apart from their own security as employees. It's a guess, but I don't think this is an unusual experience. 

Over the past few decades universities have churned out millions of graduates with mickey mouse degrees who seemingly never learned how to make anything work in the real world apart from social interactions working for their own benefit. Many seem to emerge from university with a view that anything can be achieved by describing it in an approved manner. Too many never seem to lose that early training.

To my mind it all suggests that collapse is inevitable. We do not have enough people who understand how to make things work and how vitally important this is. As for Biden and Trudeau, they possibly don't care either way, they have their security.