It's All about the Narrative

National Review ^ | March 2, 2009 | David Kahane

[reaganaut1]

[Media] stories, like fables and fairy tales, have narrative. A framework of good guys and bad guys, archetypes and stereotypes. A shorthand for our audiences, so that instead of wasting time on establishing characters we can get right to the morality play/propaganda point, all the while disguising it as “news” or “entertainment.” The narrative is like a continuing serial or soap opera, which our audiences can drop in and out of, secure in the knowledge that they know what’s going on. Thus urban minorities = good, white ethnics = bad. Corporate chieftains = bad, union leaders = good. Brave Hollywood screenwriters speaking truth to %$#BUSH@#$!!! = good, Limbaugh/Hannity/O’Reilly = bad. It really is that simple, and, as the election returns showed, the American people bought it hook, line, and BO2.

And now, just as you have absorbed and internalized these stereotypes, here comes our boldest one of them all: capitalism = bad, socialism = good. “We Are All Socialists Now” proclaimed Newsweek recently, in a cover story co-written by Evan Thomas, who totally coincidentally is the grandson of the six-time Socialist candidate for president, Norman Thomas. (From the article: “Remember Joe the Plumber? Sadly, so do we.” Now that’s snark you can believe in!)

Hence our blitzkrieg attack on Amerikkka this past month, which you wingnuts should have seen coming, and might have seen coming were it not for our control of the narrative. Heck, it wasn’t as if the Dear Leader and Teacher didn’t warn you. Sure, Hussein’s backstory didn’t stand much scrutiny. Sure, none of our finest Finemans ever explained who backed the Quisatz Haderach’s remarkable glide from Punahou to Occidental to Columbia to Harvard to Chicago to the state senate to the U.S. Senate to the White House.

[reaganaut1]

Usually National Review is "respectable", but this essay reads like a Free Republic post (calling Obama "Hussein"). It would be amusing if it weren't true or were happening to Belgium or Canada.

[Forward the Light Brigade]

A few years of Socialism will make people weep for the good old days. We are suffering from the post Hippie Revolution and maybe we need to let them be in charge for a while just to see how bad things will get. America is an experiment, always has been. What I fear isn’t social change but war. I fear Obama’s weakness will inspire our enemies to adventurism and we may well be pushed into a war we can not win against a real enemy and not a third world tin pot dictatorship. Could we beat China or Russia in a conventional war? Could we beat a grand coalition of states? We could beat France in a week or two, but an alliance of French, German, Italian, Danish and Spanish forces might be too much.

[atomic_dog]

I busted NR for spamming me via an affiliate in Quebec. Times must indeed be tough.