Being the concerted ramblings of a cognitive dissident in a cacophony of cognitive dissonance.
It may interest you to know that Prince Harry is now allowed by Buckingham Palace protocol (that’s like Robocop, only much more destructive) to be seated a mere 18 seats away from his latest shag, sorry, love Meghan Markle at public events. I calculate (taking into account social mores, gossip headwinds and spin trajectories) that at this rate, they will be caught in flagrante somewhere on Hampstead Heath just in time for Christmas.
Daily Mail headlines are, I know, the cliché’s cliché, but sometimes Dacre’s Diablos limbo under even their subterranean standards of conduct. The remarkably simple technique of the Mail explains much of its success: when dealing with attention deficit knee-jerk readers online, get all the horror in the headline. So it was that, last weekend, I read:
Two five-month-old triplets found dead ‘in their cots with carbon monoxide poisoning’ and their brother who survived the tragedy – just weeks before the family was due to move house
I know this is a tragic event, but don’t shoot the messenger: I’m pointing out that real live human beings (I assume) write this stuff, and yet somehow sleep at nights. Not only is this story tasteless per se, we also wonder (a) who in the family cooperated to get the pics in the paper (b) which truly awful individual at the Mail let the picture appear with that wording on their clothes (c) is it really relevant that they were about to move house (did the sale fall through?) and (d) as accidental death has now been ruled out, wouldn’t any halfway decent hack have ditched the story? The piece ends with ‘Police investigating the cause refused to comment when contacted by MailOnline tonight’….so it could be something even worse we’re dealing with.
This isn’t journalism, it’s borderline necrophilia. But it is also “modern” life: ‘Never mind the anguish, rake in the money’.
The Mail is more culturally pernicious than the “liberal” press, but the Guardian and Indie are read by more naive noodles – and that combo has the potential for enormous political damage in the shorter term. The Mail and The Sun know exactly what they’re doing, whereas the other two are just written by ideologically damaged sticklebacks.
At the Guardian, we have Owen Jones, Polly Toynbee, Suzanne Moore, Gary Younge and Marina Hyde; and at The Independent, we have….actually, nobody worth talking about at all. Both papers are doing badly, and neither of them has either the insight or will to do anything except keep on writing the same old discredited tosh. The same is true now (with one or two notable exceptions) of the Telegraph, where twelve years of disastrous ownership by the Sarklay Twins has seen both standards and sales plummeting. Add to these The Express (for old people) Mirror (for Old Labour) and Times (for Old Murdoch) and the conclusion is there for even the most myopic to observe: every single title on the street and internet in Britain is peddling an agenda.
Because of this, they all suffer from cognitive dissonance – that is, the ability to hold two utterly opposing views at the same time, in order to maintain their following of flawed ideas. The Mail whines about the decline in moral values, and features a never-ending stream of big-titted celebrities covered in little more than tattoos. The Guardian pushes Women’s rights and condemns misogyny, but refuses to engage with any criticisms of Islamic treatment of women. The Independent dismisses all the positive moral and economic arguments in favour of Brexit, but condemns the Leave side for having “misled the British People” with lies. The Telegraph and FT want to see a reformed EU, but cannot see a veritable Alpine mountain range of evidence to show how little interest the chocolate soldiers of Brussels have in that goal. The Express presents every EU crisis as a torpedo amidships, but never misses an opportunity to bash the innocent Greeks. The Times is a vessel for BBC-bashing but won’t touch Westminster paedophilia. And of course, The Sun is an empty vessel making loud noises about the wonders of Sky footie and cricket coverage, while bemoaning the poor standard of England’s international teams.
Media tribalism’s double standards reflect business and political forked tongues perfectly; in doing so, they exacerbate the most obvious genuinely global trend of the last thirty years: the belief-canyon that divides citizens in almost every Western ‘democracy’. The traditional sovereign Nation State is in crisis, split down the middle on almost every issue…issues that continue to be treated in an uncompromisingly stale manner by the media, economists, bankers, politicians and pundits who dominate our lives.
I do not doubt that globalist, climate change, structural functionalist, energy provider, bureaucratic, military and billionaire egos are happy to see this happen: the one thing George Soros, Jeremy Corbyn, Goldman Sachs, Antifa, Coca-Cola, Greenpeace, the Pentagon, Rupert Murdoch, Angela Merkel, H R McMaster and the London City all have in common is an unquenchable thirst for World Government…..by THEM.
Clearly, they cannot possibly share the same vision about what that Utopian planet is going to be about. And so, the aim is dangerous…..but (more important) in opposition to every piece of research ever undertaken about social anthropology. Pushy ignorance is not a good look.
For myself, I think the future is more likely to be one of a universally free access to communication that serves the needs of mutual communitarian capitalism. A capitalism, if you will, for Citizen John and Jane. A capitalism where the disparities of capital have been reduced sufficiently to ensure everyone is accountable to the Rule of Law. A world where power has been devolved to community level. Communities where blamestorming is minimal, and personal responsibility assumed.
Getting there will not be easy, and I doubt very much these days that it can be achieved without violence and unimaginable hardship along the way.
But I do think that the starting point is to replace cognitive dissonance with cognitive dissidents. In my own humble way, I aim to continue being one of the latter persuasion: to promote empirical reality and deconstruct “settled science”; reject all catechisms in favour of practical philosophy; seek out open minds and discourage closed ranks; and above all, trust in tolerant citizen common sense, while remaining suspicious of élite zealotry.
If you sympathise with this outlook, please follow me either here, or on Twitter at therealslog.
Thank you for persevering with this post. Percy Verance is the best ally I have.
The Slog 