Only Fools and Politics

In a time when nothing you hear is necessarily true, when all of what you see is suspect and eye-witness accounts depend so much on the ideology of the witness, how do you tell fact from fiction. (I just accidentally typed ‘fuction’; I think it’s a better word.) I mean, did you ever read a newspaper article which was wholly accurate? Or to be more specific, have you ever read a news item written about something on which you are something of an authority and realised that the writer hasn’t the first clue about the subject?

Our media world is full to the gunwales with reporters, wannabe reporters, commentators and so-called ‘influencers’ who care not one jot about accuracy, just so long as they can get their name out there. The report that the US government is (and who can say if this is true or not?) briefing TikTok ‘stars’ on the situation in Ukraine is just one more step along the way to the Orwellian singularity in which the truth is whatever people say it is.

The propaganda wars waged between east and west is just an upscale version of the information wars that have been pressed by governments and oppositions on their populations for many years. The future is bright, the future is shiny. “Jam tomorrow!” cries the party of government. “Lies, all lies!” say the opposition. And then, they swap places, leaving the scripts in place for their opposite numbers.

Given the unknowability of the future, this pantomime is a safe charade, for who can say that had the current opposition been in charge things would have been different? And a catastrophic decision made today is in no way an impediment to ennoblement tomorrow. In this rarefied world our actors in leadership find themselves sucked up by the undertow and swept along into the maelstrom of misinformation. I genuinely believe that those ‘in the know’ are simply in the thrall of different ‘facts’.

How else can you explain how the deafening roar of the usurped electorate goes unheard against the quiet whisper of the Mandelsons, the poison drip of the Grieves, the persistent murmur of the Westminster echo chambers? “British jobs for British workers!” pipes the election clarion, yet in government this becomes permission to open up the floodgates to all who wish to gorge on our largesse. And it matters not which party because as you look from Labour to Tory, from Tory to Labour, you could be forgiven for imagining they are all from the same porcine species.

It is little wonder, then, that so many have turned away from the news, regarding papers, podcasts, panel discussions and the like as mere entertainment. The truth matters little when the prospect of one commentator ‘owning’ another is so much more amusing. Even words like ‘owning’ have become the stuff of headline writers, hyperbole to sell a dreary exchange which results in no outcome of note.

In fact, the news has become little more than a sitcom. An episodic series of pratfalls, mishaps and misadventures in which Del Boy learns nothing, Rodney is still a plonker and Trigger hasn’t a clue what just happened. The news has no real effect on us any more, it is just the wallpaper, the background to our dreary lives, scrawled with the pattern of the day, and it only exists to give us a moment’s vicarious glee at the misfortune of others. When nothing is real it doesn’t matter how daft the plot, and if one punchline fails to land don’t worry, there’s one born every minute.

Pressed

Donald Trump is an idiot. There, I said it. Actually, I have rarely thought of him in any other way, except for seeing in him what so many of ‘the usual suspects’ utterly refuse to comprehend. He is not whatever else is on offer. He is not a practitioner of slick politics. Far from it, politically he is like Tommy Cooper, busking away when his tricks failed, only to finally pull that rabbit out of that hat. (Or in his case “Glass, bottle, bottle, glass… just like that!”)

Did he become a billionaire through brilliance or luck, or dodgy dealing? Did he even become a billionaire at all? But none of that matters because what Donald Trump really is, is ‘none of the above’. Politics has been mired in subversive deals with lobbyists, elected representatives not representing those who elected them and has been exercised in a manner detached from the lives of those who have to live by what politicians decide. The stench of corruption, real or imagined, is palpable, thick and offensive.

But, right now, as thoroughly loathed as politicians are, this position is being strongly challenged by a press which seems to have lost its mind. Just as in the UK the media as a whole think that their preferred politics – leftish, ‘liberal’, ‘progressive (in their estimation) – is the only obvious and logical stance to take. Anybody thinking otherwise is regarded as Untermenschen needing protection from self-destructive instincts and who really ought not to have a say, for their own good.

And so frenzied is their ambition to topple populist leaders, like Trump, that they cannot help but rewrite reality, even where no such rewrite is needed. Now forever dubbed Dettol Don, the president, unable to marshal his thoughts and consider them before opening his big, bellicose mouth, rambled along with a stream of consciousness which demonstrated a barely rudimentary grasp of recent research findings. But at no point did he suggest that people should inject themselves with disinfectant.

This ignorant monologue just wasn’t enough for the press, though; they just had to embellish it. It is possible that the alarming revelation that some people have actually done this and been admitted to hospital as a result may owe more to the way the press reported his words than what the orange-haired buffoon actually said. What he said was stupid, but what the press say he said was even more stupid. It might look like a clever move in retrospect, now that he has responded like a clumsy, guilty child, claimed it was just a joke and refused to answer more questions, but he never needed any encouragement to look like a clumsy, guilty child.

The press think their job is ‘to hold the government to account’ or ‘to speak truth to power’, but it isn’t. The job of the press is to diligently and even-handedly report the news. Not to distort it, not to inject it with spin which reveals their own bias. And certainly not to change it, communist style, especially when the actual source of their stories is available for all to see on the internet. So, journos, stop making it all about you. Report what actually happens and let the idiots hang themselves out to dry.

Hobgoblins

When travelling in the United States some years ago I was struck by what I thought at the time was a curious gullibility in accepting the most outlandish of explanations for the origin of words and phrases. There seemed to be a sort of epidemic of such inquiry and a willingness to accept the most peculiar distortions of history, physics, grammar and reality itself to placate this thirst for knowledge, however unreliable.

I wish I could remember some specific examples but I do recall being amused at some long-established phrases of well-known nautical origin being explained away by the use of colourful and imaginative invocation of what were relatively recent phenomena. Thus a salty insult derived from the days of sail would be shoehorned into a tale about the early years of computing and accepted without question. I actually bought a book of such explanations and chuckled at both the ingenuity and naivety of some of the expositions.

Long ago I noticed the propensity of humans to swiftly accept the most unlikely of reasoning for observed phenomena, to ascribe the most complex of motives to the simple failings of competence; to search for greater depth than is actually there. Now, in the post-truth era we are said to live in, such ability to set aside the simple for the complex appears to have become ubiquitous. Who cares for the truth when a ripping yarn gets the blood flowing?

I write all this because over the last few days I have been mildly assailed by interlocutors demanding I accept their facts, when opinion or distortion is all they have offered up. One such issue was the case for immigration: “Immigration is a net benefit!” insist the soundbite swallowers, without even the most cursory reflection on why such a generalisation has become so widely promulgated. “There is no evidence that low-skilled immigration lowers wages!” is another frequently expounded notion.

Try telling any of that to the working communities who have been displaced by industrial scale invasions of people who are, frankly, ‘not like us’. Because it is one thing to amalgamate all the doctors and scientists and engineers and artistes along with those who work in the low wage economy to come up with a minimally positive financial calculation, but the truth to those who are face-to-face with it is a different thing entirely. Or maybe, in order to make that national omelette it matters not how many eggs you have to break?

Another was trying to argue that full employment meant there was no demand for labour and thus would keep wages low. It didn’t matter that this inverted the basic supply and demand formulation, this was his truth and he was sticking to it. This was on the back of a diatribe about how the state should intervene to distort the labour market, even though the state intends to do exactly that by announcing future restrictions on low-skilled immigration. The truth didn’t matter because the truth is now what you want it to be. Facts are fluid and for every verifiable statistic, multiple interpretations can be constructed. 

It was thought that the internet would bring us access to all the world’s knowledge. It was even proposed that schoolchildren need not even be taught facts because the facts were at their fingertips. It turns out that none of that makes a blind bit of difference and that H L Mencken’s observations still hold true. Here’s one to be going on with: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” And here’s another: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

The Fourth Estate

The other day I watched The Post, the 2017 biopic of the Washington Post’s revelations about backroom dealings behind the Vietnam War. Without intending to spoil – it is all in the public domain now anyway – the fundamental message is that press freedom is an essential pillar of democracy. The press is, or should be, unafraid to challenge government and in that respect it should act in the interests of the general population who rely on free and fair information. If government truly is for and of and by the people, then the people need to be reliably informed. They’re not.

That period was characterised as the age of propaganda, the cold war and the guarded use of knowledge as a weapon of war. But since glasnost and freedom of information the new age of mass communication has morphed into the age of disinformation. Today, governments are at war with their people as possibly never before and the press is often complicit. Even the language used to frame the ‘news’ shames even the best of the press at times. Listen to any mainstream news broadcast and you will hear, liberally enunciated, the terms far-right, hard right, extreme right, neo-fascist, etc.

Leftist listeners, however, only hear their darlings referred to as hard left, Marxist, Corbynite and so on.  With so-called ‘citizen journalists’ indulging their own biases,  putting out highly selective video clips, using old photographs to supposedly illustrate current events and constructing elaborate but untrue memes, either in malice or ignorance, the picture gets ever more indistinct. Fake news? The hard part is discerning the non-fake news.

As soon as you subscribe to one view or another it is difficult to critically view anything that crosses your sight lines. If you disagree with it, it must be confection, if it rings your bell it must be gospel. Out-of-context soundbites, ‘adjusted’ statistics, opinion posted as fact, fact posted as supposition and provenance going out of the window are commonplace. Newsreaders are now commentators and none of them are truly impartial. Even the magnificently even-handed Andrew Neil is seen as a far-right propagandist by the left, while the entirety of the Sky News team are branded communist stooges by the right.

The Fourth estate is now cynically viewed as the Fifth Column by many people. And when you don’t trust your news sources, don’t trust your politicians and have no clear means of obtaining an objective view of the battle is it any wonder that we all retreat to the safety of our own little band of brothers. From the middle of the mob you can only see what that mob wants you to see... and you can’t even see that that is all you can see. Watch the movie and ask yourself, would the Pentagon Papers ever see the light of day in 2018, or would they simply be dismissed as fake news?

What’s the alternative?

The latest variant in the fake news phenomenon is the ‘alternative fact’ farrago. Both of course, are intended to deceive but as Groucho said “Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others” Over the years many news organisations have been accused of distortion and even gross deception in order to serve a narrative, but in recent years the whole business of lying to the world has been legitimised by spin doctors who are now so bold they can repeat a barefaced lie to camera a hundred times without batting an eyelid.

We used to need an outlandish figure like Robert Maxwell to carry off such astonishing effrontery but now it seems as if it is the carefree, everyday normality of organs which should stand for truth and justice. Ah but, whose truth and what do you mean by justice? Is it just to let people starve while others grow fat, or is it kind to let people grow fat and ill while others stay fit and thrive? Is welfare really a human right? And what is the real truth behind climatological carbon? A good rule of thumb used to be ‘follow the money’, but the democratisation of lying muddies the audit trail.

We seem, many seem, to need a backing track to our lives, a tune to sing along to, a theme to tie it all together, but why do we think, or why do some of us think, there has to be such meaning? It used to be religion but what if – and here’s a shock to the system – there is no order to our universe and things just happen? Some things are true and others are not, but every now and then, quite often if we’re honest, what we expect to be the truth turns out not to be. A nutter kills Saint Joe Cox, which somehow proves that all who voted to leave the EU are vexatious simpletons with Nazi sympathies. Yet looters who plunder businesses and try to harm the police are excused because they’re upset about the outcome of a vote.

These things aren’t really part of an organised whole, but the extent to which some parts of the whole are organised can be telling. It’s hard enough to distinguish truth from tittle-tattle from the vantage point of a distant observer, but how do you do it when you are a throbbing part of the enraged mob? Is it an ideology, or just a fun day out in town? The flimsy rationale for some allegiances often hangs by a single thread; the left is good, therefore the right is bad and there’s an end to it. Once you have decided which side you’re on that side can do no wrong, but how do you break free from groupthink?

To be able to tell fact from fiction you need to do more than accept face-value, bias-confirming soundbites. You need to be educated but not indoctrinated, widely read but not too fickle, informed but also incisive. Oh and you need to be impartial, the hardest thing of all. It is said that critical thinking skills are thin on the ground but even possessing all of the above humans are notorious for making poor choices: ‘I can’t afford the thing, I can’t afford the thing... Honey, I bought the even more expensive version of the thing!’

The expensive thing many seem to want to buy right now is that life can be made wonderful by the application of government. Dream on. You want a good life, you have to work for it. It really is as simple as that... you just have to break free of the chains you have meticulously wrapped around your thinking. It is nobody else’s job to make you wealthy, healthy or happy... or wise. This, undeniably, is true, but it’s also hard. What’s the alternative? There isn’t one, but sometimes it is just easier to accept the truth you want to hear.

Cheeky Fakers!

Buzzfeed’s leaked intelligence that the CIA have actual video of Michelle Obama fellating a horse while Donald Trump pleasures a donkey with Barry looking on, masturbating into Tony Blair’s opened and gently steaming skull, may not be verified by anybody actually seeing said tape, but this hasn’t stopped YouTube from pre-banning it. No fake news for the popular online vloggers; everything you see is exactly as it happened.

Most news is fake news – have you ever read a report on a subject you know a great deal about and found sheer bollocks in every paragraph? Well why should it be any different when it’s politics, or war, or celebrity shenanigans; Kim Kardashian’s arse alone has its own team of reporters working round the clock to bring you untruths you never even realised you needed to know. How in the world is the average Joe to tell what’s real? Although celebrities have their own special world affairs advisors to keeps them informed; this is why Lily Allen, Meryl Streep and the Cumberdumbers are so well-informed.

If yesterday’s press junket with The Donald was a glimpse of things to come  – I do hope they call them ‘Press Trumpets’ from now on – we are in for a world of confusion; the Trump train is going to be a whole lot of fun in 2017. ‘It is reported’ has replaced the authoritative statement of fact when announcing news, along with ‘unconfirmed speculation’ and ‘alleged’. In an age when everybody has the ability to record and broadcast events as they happen you would imagine we ought to be getting closer to the truth, not further away.

Even the BBC were dismissed yesterday as ‘another beauty’ alongside children’s news channel Buzzfeed, the entire Fox network and Citizens Naughty News, as Trump ushered in a whole new era. Want to know the next big thing in news coverage? Well, much like the partisan readership of newspapers, broadcast news is known for its bias, so the natural development is to allow viewers and listeners to contribute their own facts to the story. Already, tweeted comments are often ticker-taped across current affairs reportage; why not let @AngryAngus edit the content as well?

You can already download an app to your smart phone which searches for the latest bulletins and automatically edits them so as to appeal to your interests and allegiances. Thus an unconfirmed allegation that a famous footballer has been involved in a hotel-room ‘romp’ can be variously be presented as a harmless bit of fun, the worst excesses of pampered wealth, a grave career-threatening error of judgement, or an impending court case. The app also allows you to vote for your favourite version and then compiles and issues a verdict. The errant striker can then be variously applauded, shamed, or issued a court summons within minutes of the original event. Isn’t technology wonderful?

Extra! Extra! Write all about it!

They have called this the post-truth, post-factual age, an era when nothing you see or hear or read can be relied on. Facts ain’t what they used to be and truth is what you make it. Instead of presenting said facts and allowing you to draw your own conclusions – a process far too rigorous and effort-heavy all round – it is so much easier, cheaper and faster for you just to turn to a source which supports your unshakeable prejudices and leave the cumbersome facts for history to assemble once the verdict is in. You read it here first...

Fake Off!

Emboldened by the Brexit vote the closeted bigots are taking to the streets and assaulting fragile people because of their colour, their religion or their political allegiance. Or are they? The reporting of ‘hate crimes’ may be at an all-time hysterical high but given that a hate crime is classified as such by those who report it, does the reporting match reality in any way. Also, in the wake of the Trump victory people are taking to social media to report in unconvincing terms, incidents that ‘literally’ never happened. But then, that’s social media for you.

And then there’s this: According to the yesterday’s newspapers, the impression was given that a leaked cabinet memo decried the government’s unpreparedness for Brexit, stating as if a fact, that another thirty thousand civil servants would need to be recruited just to deal with the admin of leaving the EU. “There you go!” cried the Remainers, “Where’s that £350-million a week for the NHS now, huh?” But hold your horses there, boys and girls; the ‘leaked cabinet memo’ turns out to have been written and speculatively punted by Deloitte and is little more than conjecture.

This may well be explained away as a simple misunderstanding but wait a minute. Nothing gets into the public domain unless it is put there. Yet this was no whistle-blower appalled at impending totalitarian legislation; this was no insider-opposition to a company poisoning the water. Rather it was cynical anti-Brexit mischief, created by exactly the sort of organisation that the public who voted ‘out’ distrust the most; big money, the alchemy by which a few words in a few ears makes $billions for people who already have $billions. The very sort of people who are seen as the establishment’s string-pullers.

We are, it is reported widely, in the era of fake news. Prank sites have been around for years. And pre-internet there were Private Eye and many others who feasted on parody, poked fun at the high and mighty and generally enjoyed a good old belly laugh at the government’s expense. But with the advent of the Internet it is getting harder every day to separate fact from fiction. Hence all the ‘I was attacked by Nazis’ stories being touted as evidence of sinister moves by one side and being ridiculed by the other. A common trope of our times is that everything is ‘divisive’; Brexit, Trump, Labour, Tory, climate change. Of course it is; if opinion wasn’t divided it would be whole and unwholesome – we’d be in N.Korea.

This is absolutely true!

But it turns out that all the fuss is over nothing; the proliferation of fake news sites is click-bait for advertising revenue. Like all such phenomena it will either stand the test of time and be recognised for what it is, or it will eventually fail to amuse and fall out of favour. In the meantime, it is far more informative to look at who is spreading the news and why; without provenance it would be wise to treat every supposed news item as fiction and its promulgators as peddlers of partisan lie. Or maybe, just maybe, the reporting of fake news sites is, itself, fake news. You decide...