On losing control of the narrative.

Posted by Pointman on March 1, 2017 · 7 Comments 

In a number of previous pieces, I had a go at explaining why I thought electorates were so angry and disillusioned with establishment politics all around the civilised world, and also how the comfortably established old order under siege would react badly and therefore lose their power. Brexit and then President Trump subsequently proved the point. I am the sage of Wallawoora, and all these terrible things I’ve seen in the fevered visions of my dreamtime have now come to pass.

In a minor way it also helped that I’m a product of the blue collar class who never lost touch with his roots and knows when to just stop talking and earwig quietly at the edge of whatever social group I was in. White, black, spick and all the colours in between, we’re all in the same boat and have to work together or it sinks. For me, old times are never forgotten. All I had to do was listen to them working hard for a living rather than the madding clamour of the legacy media, and I knew what was coming down the road towards us. Randall Flagg, the dread walking dude and the concomitant of all liberal nightmares.

That’s the secret to being a great sage, seeing what’s under your nose for yourself rather than being told by oh so smart experts who have no real connection to the real world outside medialand. If 2016 proved anything, it was how much one can rely on the predictions of so-called political experts. They are just another defunct player in a game which they to this day still don’t realise has changed beyond all recognition.

The whole idea of an overwhelmingly liberal media in full support of inoffensive centrist politicians more concerned about what the media might say about them rather than what the voters might think, was predicated on the by now defunct theory that the media shaped both opinions and voting patterns. There was a time when that was true, but that was when papers and broadcast news and TV were the only news outlets.

Those days are gone.

The presidential campaign of last year and the excesses of a media desperate like grovelling whipped dogs to elect a hold-your-nose totally corrupt candidate and at the same time savaging Trump at the behest of both its Democratic and Republican masters, has fatally wounded trust in the mainstream media. It has been destroyed.

Fake news is now a phrase in common parlance and with a real meaning – too many people have seen the difference between how a political event was reported, or to be frank spun, and the raw footage of it as seen by their own eyes on YouTube. When you no longer trust the messenger, their message whatever it is becomes irrelevant because you no longer bother to read it.

It’s no coincidence that for the first time, YouTube is getting more viewing hours per day that all of American TV put together. The problem is that trust is now gone and once that’s lost, it’s well nigh impossible to get back. Even in what’s still being presented as the aftermath of the election of Trump disaster, the coverage is patently biased, juvenile and an insult to the intelligence of the common man in the wake of these fake news days.

The sage of Wallawoora did also warn of this incorrigible behaviour on the part of the legacy media in a previous post, but I can’t take any credit for it – knowing the entitled arrogance of the MSM, that prediction was a no brainer. For all you avid collectors of mixed metaphors out there, they’re no longer shooting themselves in the foot, they’re busy hacksawing it off to spite their nose. That’s a triple by the way.

Losing control implies whatever methods or strategies always worked in previous years no longer work. The classic and worst option in terms of reaction to such a situation is to apply them even more strongly in the hope that it’s just a bump the budget up thing and it’s fixed, throw some money at it and the problem goes away, but that is just exacerbating the situation – you lose control even quicker.

It’s perceived as a slightly embarrassing attempt to do yet more of the same ole same ole crap people are already so plainly tired of in a vain attempt to desperately regain some tatters of authority, never mind relevance in a whole new political landscape which is rapidly evolving.

In terms of credibility, there’s only a growing crater where the MSM used to be, so the question becomes what is going to fill that void, because nature, both human and natural and even political, abhors a vacuum.

Obviously, it’ll be online but the consumers of the news items being pushed to their mobile phones will have their finger on the hair trigger fake news call. A spiral off of that developing reflex will be a divergence in terms of content between what you can prove and what you might think of it. Again, a reversion to old school. A piece is either reportage fully double sourced of the raw events which actually happened, or an opinion piece, both of which will be appropriately titled.

The days of incestuously mixing the two and passing it all off as news are gone.

The media like to talk of Trump’s war on them but the reality is a lot simpler; he’s simply ignoring them and going straight to his voters using YouTube and twitter. Like naughty children who’re being ignored, the tantrums get bigger and bigger, and the blatant inventions to injure his administration get bigger and bigger. In the meantime, he’s doing the twenty-first century version of FDR’s fireside chats on YouTube and every event he’s involved in goes directly to social media, without barely a sign of a press handout.

This fit of pique by the legacy media has been getting full on but unthinking support from the beautiful people of the entertainment industry who like the media don’t actually live in the real world anyway.

Down home folks America, the ones outside the Washington beltway, the M25 or in the urban wastelands not too far away from Sunset boulevard, are saying look at my face, look really hard. Do I look like I really give a shit about what you Hollywood millionaires think? I know the size of my steel-toed working man’s boots when I can scrabble for some work and you Hollywood he-men all know your glove size. I get to kick shit for minimal wages and eat it as well just to bring some money home to put on the table for her and the kids, while you get to fly someone in to do a serious job of work on your eyebrows.

And the follow on is I deeply resent what you’re saying about Trump because by implication you’re insulting me. Nearly seventy million of us who are in your stylish opinion retards and thickos, voted for him and now you’re painting us all as racists or Nazis.

Suddenly the number of people tuning in to watch the Oscars show plunged to a nine year low.

Perhaps all those millions of stupid people who voted for Trump suspected what was coming and changed channel. After watching a few of the foreshock award shows with all of their posturing by various fading or wannabe Hollywood icons and then them treating you to a by now de rigueur five minute brain dead tirade about Trump, they felt they really couldn’t be arsed to tune into yet another glitzy show for yet another helping of more of the same crap they found objectionable in the first place.

The fact that the whole bunch of twits, twats, prats, pseuds, tinsel-titted tarts and hairy arseholes with perfectly capped white teeth managed to make a complete cock up of the grand finale went some way towards redressing the karmic balance. It was an irony few people didn’t have a good snigger at. As Alfred Hitchcock said, actors are cattle. Without a director to shout at them or a script to put words in their mouth, they’re a helpless meandering bovine disaster waiting to happen and of course the inevitable chaos did ensue.

The world has now moved on from the well presented but essentially stagnant years of the Obama administration, which worked for everyone else but that vast invisible middle ground of America who have now decided they want substance rather than the shadow of it. It’s their nickels and dimes and bums on seats that keep the Hollywood harlots in caviar and Champaign and they are now using that power to withhold their favours. Take note Hollywood.

In the same way but on an entirely different stage, the tsunami of change is working itself across electorates. If you’re determined to stay seated during the president’s address to Congress and not clapping like these two disgraces called Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Keith Ellison did all the way through a two minute standing ovation by the whole house to a widow of an American soldier who gave his life for his country – we don’t need you.

We’re painting our own narrative now, a brand new one for these times though admittedly using very traditional colours, but either way it doesn’t need the likes of trash like the lot of you in the picture.

©Pointman

Related articles by Pointman:

Looking out of a broken window.

The spoilt brat complex.

An analysis of the Trump election victory.

People are pissed off.

Brexit – an analysis in the aftermath.

Click for a list of other articles.

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