It has been said that ‘you can fool most of the people, some of the time’. Which, it seems, is all that is needed if you want to be an evangelical preacher, a right-wing warrior, or a mainstream journalist. (sigh)
In any rational and well-regulated world it would be impossible for hate merchants to make bank. Seriously deranged bronze-age fantasies would not be at the centre of our politics. Reading the front page of our daily newspapers would not require the suspension of disbelief. But here we are.
I do not have to convince any of my weary brain-battered readers that our entire media ecosystem is more than slightly fucked-up. You people are not necessarily a part of the problem. I can be fairly sure that most who are huddling here in the faint candle-light thrown by The AIM Network are simply sheltering from the torrents of bullshit raining down elsewhere. Just like me. So, while it seems more than a bit superfluous to start lecturing all the other occupants of this lifeboat regarding the bleeding obvious, nobody else is listening, so bad luck.
Nor do I really have to talk too much about the long march to where we find ourselves today. The right-wing forces in our country have waged unremitting class warfare against the Australian socialist ethos for three decades and have now effectively won the culture wars.
The citizenry of our country no longer have any input. Foreign owners set the country’s political agenda and police themselves, having written their own regulations, that were then dutifully implemented by their pet politicians. Which is how we all come to be bobbing up and down, atop this tiny fragile lifeboat, adrift in the middle of a Sea of Fools.
I am stretching metaphors to breaking point for a reason, people. I want to point out, once again, in the starkest possible terms, that we are now frog soup, in a media saucepan. The period of gentle heating has long since been replaced by the hot fire of misinformation: yet we real-world refugees, nevertheless, still pretend that we are somehow representative of a ‘majority voice’. Try and say that on one of the News Corp threads and see how you get on.
It is now time to declare defeat. Perhaps we will be allowed to carve out a small enclave somewhere, just for those of us who remain stubbornly wedded to objective reality? It is a faint hope yet maybe it is still possible if we sue for peace early enough.
We have to confront the horrifying reality that our common sense of decency copped such a flogging last year that it died sometime around Christmas. It certainly didn’t make it through into the New Year. Note that currently all of our papers and current affairs performances feature a saviour of the people, funded by a mining magnate, who is preaching neo-capitalist claptrap and light neo-Nazi propaganda.
The right-wing vote falls to pieces so our media spends 24/7 examining exactly how this will cause chaos for a middle of the road government that commands a massive majority in the House and a working majority in the Senate. A cautious government removes a series of giveaways to the rich that have pump-primed our housing market, and it is portrayed as a heartless tax grab that will render every second disabled single-mother-of-six homeless!
Europe burns, ice caps melt, glaciers become history, and our media focusses on the scourge of renewable energy. Trump invades four countries in two years, slaps tariffs on everyone, abuses our PM, yet China is depicted as the aggressor we must fear?
War is peace?
Let’s face it: we lost.
The culture has now become officially ‘whatever rich people want’. Moreover, we no longer even entertain the ability to have any say in what content our news media might want to publish, or who owns what, or who they might want to buy. Nor can the Labor Party do anything about it. They have been gelded, put in a pen, and will eat whatever they are fed, or else.
Yet now that all us woke, rational, and thinky crowd have been cut adrift, and the ‘MSM’ have established their very own alternate reality which we cannot penetrate, what the fuck do we do? Where can we go?
This temporary status quo, adrift in a tiny universe of our own, where we occasionally draw straws and then devour one of our own (for nourishment and fun) can only last so long. Our various intellectual sanctuaries are shrinking and you are all, by now, getting pretty sick of me droning on about the bleeding obvious. This is a genuine question. I am stumped.
Do we simply give up on the big players and aim for an underground media ecosystem? A samizdat culture where we all craft and disseminate radically accurate news? Newsletters where we can be surreptitiously nice to each other? Or even profess to liking some migrants? A realm of conversation where rich people are not the ones editing the text (while laughing all the way to the bank)?
No? I suppose I am being unrealistic. Plus, what would I know? I’m not a billionaire.
Still, it is interesting to ponder on what the new salute will look like. (I wonder if the Fall of the Roman Empire felt anything like this?)
Dr JiMM
Also by Dr Moylan
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When that pair in the photos finally kick the bucket there will be no coins valuable enough for Charon to accept from them to ferry them across the Styx, Acheron, Lethe and Cocytus. Their withered and vile little souls will stare with envy at the souls that Charon considers worthy as they wander the riverbanks for eternity.
Well written, and all true, except for the air of despair.
The right-wing structure is built on sand.
Sooner or later even the dumbest among us see through the nonsense.
Our best course of action as we wait for the inevitable collapse is to prepare for the replacement system.
I feel like I’ve been shouting this into the wind for at least a decade. Not that I believe we’re vanquished. Not quite yet anyway. I’m hoping as we stand on the edge of the cliff, at the last minute, we, as a nation, decide to pull together and fight back, instead of lying down and taking it, as we always have. I fear that it’ll get ugly.
We are NOT “sick and tired” and probably take seriously the comment on media and society- Orwellian, Sisyphus-ist and absurb. The dark part comes in the consideration of implications and their streams.
When considering the extent to which increasingly unhinged, desperate and dangerous manufacturers of Petrodollar products (the wealthiest private bankers on Earth) may indeed go to protect their privileged money monopolist status (many are worried the premier criminal gangsters on Earth, Netanyahu and/or Trump, will resort to nuclear weapons), – defeatism/surrender is NOT an option.
Thank you all,
the air of despair is an attempt to mirror the internal dialogue of a depressed middle class, elderly, reflexively entitled, cis-normative, pseudo-progressive, male intellectual
the intent was to lead the contemplation down a dreary path into less favourable territory, then end on a downward trajectory
all on the theory that (sometimes I feel) there is not enough light and shade in my commentary. My writing feels slick and insulting at times, and far too upbeat. But only sometimes.
Who would have guessed I am not always a bundle of light and cheery, but then I am not always an eternally bitching entitled twat. I swing wildly between these poles.
And none of it really bears any close scrutiny. I am a writhing mass of contradictions and historical concretions, so I sometimes like to provoke rather than stroke. Then the next day I don’t.
it was fun until it wasn’t
JM