U.S. Focus On Narratives Will Let It Collide With Reality

The impeachment narrative circus is leaving the town and the real world work can now begin:

With the distraction of the impeachment trial of his predecessor now over, President Biden will quickly press for passage of his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan before moving on to an even bigger agenda in Congress that includes infrastructure, immigration, criminal justice reform, climate change and health care.

Without the spectacle of a constitutional clash, the new president “takes center stage now in a way that the first few weeks didn’t allow,” said Jennifer Palmieri, who served as communications director for former President Barack Obama. She said the end of the trial means that “2021 can finally start.”

“Wait!” screams the narrative industry. That does not fit our business model. The ‘left’ side of the media is set up to beat up Trump every damned minute and the ‘right’ side is there to constantly condemn the ‘left’ for beating up Trump. Over the last five years that system produced record ratings for everyone.

Wolf Blitzer @wolfblitzer – 16:11 UTC · Feb 15, 2021

The Trump trial is over but local, state & federal investigations continue. There might be a 9/11-type commission. News organizations continue to investigate. And @realBobWoodward is working on a book on Trump’s final days in office. Bottom line: we are going to learn a lot more.

“I hear you,” responds Nancy Pelosi. And what better way to hide that Biden will pursue the same policies as Trump (but sprinkled with some LBGTQWERTY quackery) than to extend the narrative circus:

Congress will move to establish an independent commission to investigate the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, including facts “relating to the interference with the peaceful transfer of power,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California announced on Monday.

Calls have grown for a bipartisan, independent investigation into the law enforcement and administrative failures that led to the first breach of the Capitol complex in two centuries, particularly after the Senate acquitted former President Donald J. Trump in his impeachment trial on a charge of inciting the rioters. For some lawmakers, such a commission offers the last major opportunity to hold Mr. Trump accountable.

Yes Nancy, lets investigate this and other such question: Why was Capitol police chief’s request for National Guard denied ahead of riot? Republicans ask Nancy Pelosi.

Keeping the eyes on Trump is of course the best way to guarantee that Republicans will continue to stick to his narrative and that he will come back:

Though the 2024 primary is still far off — who knows what will happen with Trump three months from now, let alone in three years? — he currently swamps any potential rival. Fifty-three percent of Republicans said they would vote for Trump if the primary were held today.

All the other Republican hopefuls are polling in the low single digits, besides Mike Pence, who received 12 percent. Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, Mitt Romney, Kristi Noem, Larry Hogan, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Tim Scott and Rick Scott all polled below 5%. Only Donald Trump Jr. and Nikki Haley punched through at 6%.

Further investigating the Mardi Gras invasion of the Capitol will also help to push for new ‘domestic terrorism’ laws. Where those will be pointed at is already evident:

Thomas B. Harvey @tbh4justice 17:56 UTC · Feb 15, 2021

FBI arrests BLM protester, claiming his social media posts show he is “on a path to radicalization”. A judge determined he is dangerous bc of these posts and held him with no bond. This is where we’re headed if we accept this domestic terrorism frame:

The FBI warned about far-right attacks. Agents arrested a leftist ex-soldier.

Welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism where every rant you ever posted that does not fit the official narrative can (and will) be used against you:

This clearly represents a quite different magnitude of ‘control’ – and when allied with the West’s counter-insurgency techniques of ‘terrorist’ narrative disruption, honed during the ‘Great War on Terrorism’ – is a formidable tool for curbing dissent domestically, as well as externally.

Yet it has a fundamental weakness.

Quite simply, that being so invested, so immersed, in one particular ‘reality’, others’ ‘truths’ then will not – cannot – be heard. They do not stand out proud above the endless flat plain of consensual discourse. They cannot penetrate the hardened shell of a prevailing narrative bubble, or claim the attention of élites so invested in managing their own version of reality.

The ‘Big Weakness’? The élites come to believe their own narratives – forgetting that the narrative was conceived as an illusion, one among others, created to capture the imagination within their society (not others’).

Examples are legion, but the Biden Administration’s perception that time was frozen – from the moment of Obama’s departure from office – and somehow defrosted on 20 January, just in time for Biden to pick up on that earlier era (as if time was uninterrupted), marks one example of a belief in one’s own meme. Whilst the EU’s unfeigned amazement – and anger – at being described ‘as an unreliable partner’ by FM Lavrov in Moscow, is just another example of how élites have become remote from the real world and captive to their own self-perception.

“America is back” to lead, and ‘to set the rules of the road’ for the rest of the world, may be intended to radiate U.S. strength, but rather, it suggests a tenuous grasp of the realities facing the U.S.: America’s relations with Europe and Asia were growing increasingly distant well before Biden entered the White House – and, therefore, from before Trump’s (purposefully disruptive) term, too.

Why then is the U.S. so consistently in denial about this?

The U.S. – or at least its ‘élites’ – need a wake-up call that pulls them out of their narrative world and brings them back into reality.

The alternative is a violent collision with the realities that others -domestic as well as foreign- perceive.

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