Capitol Hearings: Competing Narratives

[Dill]

(07-31-2021, 08:05 PM)hollodero Wrote: Yep, pretty much. These things you mentioned sure were used and played a part in getting to this point. And they will still be cited plenty as justification. But I don't believe it's necessary to even perpetuate them. They do that on their own now in people's heads, and they became merely speech bubbles now. Just to clarify, of course Hillary crime families and Biden crime families will still be used to fuel anger, but you could use anything you wish for that at this point. Whoever democrats pick for president next time, this person will be part of a crime family, or done some other unspeakable things, and if a spirit whispered it into Hannity's ear it's as good an explanation as any. People want the anger, the explanations are just window-dressing.

You don’t believe it is necessary to maintain counter-narratives through recurring ideological crises, and to keep the primary one going about MSM untrustworthiness? Couldn’t one argue that Trump’s failure to get re-elected indicates how precarious is the boundary between political success and failure, and that a great part of that failure was a failure of his alternative narrative that the election was “rigged” and “Sleepy Joe” lacked competence and energy—a failure resulting largely from Trump’s own sabotage of that narrative?

What if, right after 1/6, Fox, OANN and all the various RW blogs had folded shop? Would polling on the Big Lie and Trump’s fitness for office be unchanged now in July? Would there be Monkey Shine recounts in AZ still going on? The nationwide, GOP-coordinated push to suppress the vote--are people "doing that on their own"? You grant that alternative narratives “played a part” in this possibly permanent toxic turn in US politics, but assume it is not necessary to maintain said narratives through recurring ideological crises, and especially to keep the primary one going about MSM untrustworthiness?

Alternative narratives may be false, but they are never, and cannot ever be based upon, “anything you wish for.” The ”match” between dominant narrative and alternative is critical—the latter always evolving in direct response to the former, taking its contours. The attacks only seem random when one is not following the “contours.” There is a reason why we have not yet heard about the Obama Crime family, though no doubt evidence for such has been fervently wished for. And Biden crime family revelations won’t shore up the anti-mask/vaccination narrative.
 
When you separate behavior from narrative grounding now, as if individuals can continue to operate independently of guidance and orchestration and previously operative examples and standards, the move is rather similar* to what Trump supporters do when they dismiss all manner of well-grounded Trump critique as simply “Trump hate” and don’t even bother to address the critique, partly on the assumption their opposition is just generating criticism on their own, independently of anything Trump actually does.
 
Were the MSM the only game in town, why shouldn’t we expect a steady retreat of authoritarian politics underpinned by widely believed conspiracies? If I am wrong about the critical maintenance role of RWM constructed alternative narratives, then why tremendous private investment in their production? 
 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/09/the-big-money-behind-the-big-lie

*Similar only in the sense you present individuals as somehow generating “outputs” without actual “inputs.” Not similar in dismissive intent.