The Twilight Zone Of Our Democracy – The Brand Is Upon Us
When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.
–Isaac Asimov
I feel like I’m reading a book, but at the same time I’m in the book.
I know something is about to happen to the characters in the book, including me.
The book’s author has left a subtle and deftly written bread crumb trail of clues and foreshadowing. I may think I have a good idea of what is coming, but in reality, I may not.
A major plot twist is certainly coming. Death. Disaster. Suffering and chaos on a mass scale.
At the moment, all is relatively quiet. Life and business seem to go on as usual.
But an undersea earthquake that was ignored has created a tidal wave far out in the ocean. At the same time a massive cyclone is developing and has remained willfully undetected thanks to the creative use of Sharpies.
The book’s characters living on the coast are oblivious, convinced that the water drawing hundreds of meters away from the shore is just a low king tide. The characters living inland think the dark clouds on the horizon are just another winter rain storm on the way.
Soon, the lives of the characters will be irrevocably changed. The direction of the story line will soon be altered, probably not for the better for most of the characters, but to the great benefit of the malevolent antagonists.
Of course, the characters in the story don’t know that yet. The characters are existing in the last moments of business as usual. They are in the equivalent of what writer Cory Doctorow calls the bezel.
In this case the bezel is not the edge of chisel or frame of a computer monitor, which are some of the definitions you’ll find if you search for the word on Google. Doctorow defines “the bezel” as that time when a con artist knows he has defrauded his mark, but the mark has not yet realized he’s been conned.
The word “con” is short for confidence. A con artist is one who creates situations where they gain your confidence, getting you to believe what they are telling you is true, what they are asking for is the correct thing to do.
Epistemology, a.k.a. the theory of knowledge, describes the process by which we know things. Epistemological research has shown that people believe falsehoods for exactly the same reason they believe things that are true – essentially someone they have come to trust told them lies or the truth. Thus, the con artist gains the confidence of his mark and gets the person to believe something that is not true, believe something that is a carefully crafted fiction.
The big problem is America’s situation isn’t fiction. This is real life.
Unfortunately, real life has been permeated with malevolent political and social brand building. Branding is often a web of lies held together by tiny grains of corrupted truth and misdirected reality. Usually branding is used to help sell things like, cigarettes, unsafe passenger aircraft, inefficient automobiles or hyper processed food.
We are living in a political branding campaign like no other. What’s being sold is more harmful than cigarettes, unsafe passenger aircraft, inefficient automobiles or hyper processed food.
Many of the people caught up in this hideous advertising campaign — complete with its constantly repeated marketing slogan — can no longer discern fact from fiction, truth from lies, reality television from actual reality.
We are living in the warnings left us in books by the likes of George Orwell and Sinclair Lewis. These warnings have been acknowledged by a few who realize how fragile our social contract was. Mostly the warnings have been ignored.
The brand campaign of evil that portrays itself as righteous and divine was easily able to overcome the warnings and actual reality.
Those in leadership who would or could oppose the brand were stuck in the past, apparently oblivious to fact our social contract was written in disappearing ink on easily shredded and burned paper.
The opposition to evil chose to play by rules their evil opponents no longer acknowledge. They chose poorly.
And here we are in a twilight zone, counting down to inauguration day.
The cast of nefarious characters in the new regime are representative of the new corrupt American brand and include rapists, drunks, compulsive liars, outright thieves, foreign agents and billionaires out for their own interests. Some of them are all these things at the same time.
Even before they have arrived at government agencies they intend to destroy, they are fighting among themselves. Some of the conned fools, like Pittsburgh steelworkers, are already sadly realizing they’ve been had.
This twilight zone is unlikely follow the story arcs of Rod Serling’s immortal TV show: any surprise ending generated by the new regime and its brand is not likely to be good and it will not include a moral. This regime believes morals are for suckers.
Welcome to America’s new storybook brand. It will be grate in all meanings of this intransitive verb.
I wish I could envision a happy ending for the book I’m trapped in. I don’t want all the good characters to get written out or killed off. This book will have many more horrific chapters, many nauseating story arcs.
It’s going to be a long four years. I have no choice but to read on.