Politics
Profound Disillusionment
Looking for a lifeline in a storm
Eventually all things come to an end. It’s tough to let go. It’s tough when it’s a human connection. It’s tough to let go of a favorite garment. Apparently, it’s tougher when it’s a business model.
That’s the whirlpool of swill we’re tumbling through right now in the conjoined cesspools of media and politics. Eventually it will all collapse in on itself, but in the current moment it’s just turbulently tossing the shit around looking for a crack to drain into. There’s no life jacket or buoy for those trying to keep their heads above water. All the safeguards that have kept so many afloat for so long have collapsed. No one knows how to acknowledge that and too many think the water, though turbulent, is just fine. So we splash around and pretend it’s a dirty water park ride, hoping it will all come out in the wash.
Politics isn’t politics anymore. The same with political journalism. Both have always been blood sports. But sports, even the bloody ones, are always played by rules. Rules may be made to be broken, but when you dispense with the rules there’s no baseline to judge who’s playing loose with the rules, who’s cheating, who’s winning, who’s losing, and who’s just mucking about. What our current political moment proves daily is that the old rules don’t matter and there’s no currency in pretending that they do.
There’s some great writing, listening, and viewing bouncing around the Internet and the cables drawing distinct parallels to America’s pre-Civil war era and Germany’s pre-Hitler era. The parallels are too similar to ignore, but I’m not sure any of it matters anymore. In an age when denying the Holocaust and the ravages of slavery can be covered by the media as legitimate political discourse there seems to be a fear of acknowledging we’re living through that again.
Set cheek by jowl with any AI generated piece of garbage that spins off into hours of coverage in some vain hope of making it stop demeans the lessons humans were supposed to have learned, things we were never supposed to forget, and anything else in the future that AI might pick up along its generative way.
In any rational world in any irrational multi-verse there would be some sort of tacit agreement that perhaps we’ve gone a bit too far in what we allow as legitimate political discourse. But we’ve slipped whatever bonds and boundaries of rationality we might have once felt comfortable surrendering to, no matter how false and flimsy they may have been. Screams of trampling on free speech fall on deaf ears as do calls for some sort of regulation. They both shred vocal cords leading to a congregate turning of deaf ears by the masses.
As I wake up each morning knowing we have months of this ahead of us, I force myself to remember that the presidential election is just an artificial marker, almost a mirage, that promises relief, but a mirage nonetheless. Even if the MAGA forces were to be defeated in a Reagan-esque landslide the factors animating that crowd won’t lead to some mass tossing away of red caps and fading away in defeat.
In between now and then nothing, outside of the candidates’ health concerns, a natural disaster, or some sort of international event, is going to change the course we’re on as we creep closer to that mirage. We’re in a race without a finish line to determine the outcome. And yet, as we wait and watch there’s this attempt by those that supposedly report this to us to treat what’s abnormal as somehow normal because there are ad slots to sell.
No one wants to believe that, report that, or talk about that. Doing so exposes not only the very real danger that no one has answers to, but deflates the instinct to keep the argument afloat and keeping the argument afloat is the business model.
The realities of the political choices ahead of us are as bright and defined as they could be to all but the ignorant few that pollsters dig up from under rocks to question these days. Perhaps their bliss is something we should all aim to acquire, because being in the know just yields anxiety and real despair for those of us paying attention. The justice system, Congress, churches, name an institution, they’ve all been exposed in ways that one might think puts the business model in jeopardy. But look again. Take away the guardrails and it’s easier to get away with anything.
What’s happening in political and media circles is no different than the looting that takes place after any natural disaster or civil disturbance. There’s this sense of it all coming to some sort of end or end times, so grab while the grabbing is grabbable. The so-called upper crust (read rich) of society used to fear the downtrodden rising up and turning the world upside down. Perhaps that’s still their motivation for the wanton, despicable, and often stupid and brazen behavior they now feel unburdened to exhibit. Or perhaps they’ve been brazen but afraid to show it all along.
This post on Threads by Tom L. Wellborn may seem like it’s off topic or just adjacent, but its underlying message about the cause of disillusionment in the digital world sums up exactly what we’re living through in the larger corporeal context.
This is how the business model has evolved. When there is a collapse of credible information in any sphere what is said, what is sold, what is offered doesn’t matter. Put enough volume behind the message and it will get through. Muddy the message up a bit and you can get mileage from it for days. Do so enough and eventually all meaning is lost. Let the effects multiply exponentially to a point that it all becomes noise on frequencies as easy to tune out as they are to boost. But you can still sell ads against it and somehow raise money for it. As Steve Bannon says “flood the zone with shit.”
Rinse. Repeat. It all comes out in the wash. But eventually the fabric weakens and gives way.
If you like what you read here you can follow my other writings on Ellemeno and in general on Medium, as well as on my own blog Life On The Wicked Stage: Act 3. You can also find me on most of the socials under my name as above.
