Machine-Gun Discourse

/rant on

With a new round of presidential debates upon us (not really debates if one understands the nature of debate or indeed moderation — James Howard Kunstler called it “the gruesome spectacle of the so-called debate between Trump and Clinton in an election campaign beneath the dignity of a third-world shit-hole”), it’s worthwhile to keep in the front of one’s mind that the current style of public discourse does not aim to provide useful or actionable information with regard to either the candidates or the issues. Rather, the idea is to pummel the hapless listener, watcher, or reader into a quivering jangle of confusion by maintaining a nonstop onslaught of soundbites, assertions, accusations, grandstanding, and false narratives. Our information environment abets this style of machine-gun discourse, with innumerable feeds from InstaGoogTwitFaceTube (et cetera), all vying simultaneously for our limited attention and thereby guaranteeing that virtually nothing makes a strong impression before the next bit of BS displaces it in a rapid succession of predigested morsels having no nutritional content or value for earnest consumers of information (as opposed to mouth-breathers seeking emotional salve for their worst biases and bigotry). Many feeds are frankly indecipherable, such as when the message is brutally truncated and possessed of acronyms and hashtags, the screen is cluttered with multiple text scrolls, or panel participants talk over each other to claim more screen time (or merely raise their asshole quotient by being the most obnoxious). But no matter so long as the double barrels keep firing.

I caught Republican nominee Donald Trump’s campaign manager Kellyann Conway being interviewed by some banal featherweight pulling punches (sorry, no link, but she’s eminently searchable). Conway proved adept at deflecting obvious contradictions and reversals (and worse) of the Trump campaign by launching so many ideological bombs that nothing the interviewer raised actually landed. Questions and conflicts just floated away, unaddressed and unanswered. Her bizarre, hyperverbal incoherence is similar to the candidate’s stammering word salad, and ironically, both give new meaning to the decades-old term “Teflon” when applied to politics. Nothing sticks because piling on more and more complete wrongness and cognitive dissonance overwhelms and bewilders anyone trying to track the discussion. Trump and Conway are hardly alone in this, of course, though their mastery is notable (but not admirable). Talking heads gathered in panel discussions on, say, The View or Real Time with Bill Maher, just about any klatch occupying news and morning-show couches, and hosts of satirical news shows (some mentioned here) exhibit the same behavior: a constant barrage of high-speed inanity (and jokes, omigod the jokes!) that discourages consideration of an idea before driving pellmell onto the next.

Thoughtful persons might pause to wonder whether breathless, even virtuoso delivery results from or creates our abysmally short attention spans and lack of serious discussion of problems plaguing the nation. Well, why can’t it be both? Modern media is all now fast media, delivering hit-and-run spectacle to overloaded nervous systems long habituated to being goosed every few moments. (Or as quoted years ago, “the average Hollywood movie has become indistinguishable from a panic attack.”) Our nervous systems can’t handle it, obviously. We have become insatiable information addicts seeking not just the next fix but a perpetual fix, yet the impatient demand for immediate gratification — Internet always at our fingertips — is never quelled. Some new bit will be added to the torrent of foolishness sooner than it can be pulled down. And so we stumble like zombies, blindly and willingly, into a surreality of our own making, heads down and faces blue from the glare of the phone/tablet/computer. Of course, the shitshow is brightly festooned with buffoon candidates holding court over the masses neither intends to serve faithfully in office. Their special brand of insanity is repeated again and again throughout the ranks of media denizens (celebrity is a curse, much like obscene wealth, or didn’t you know that?) and is seeping into the ground water to poison all of us.

/rant off