by Craig Willms
What is true? Can you even know the truth? It's a real question, it's an important question, but ultimately it may prove to be unanswerable. Or is it as Jack Nicholson once declared, "You can't handle the truth!"
We hear the often-used quip 'there's only one truth'. Or this one, 'you're entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts'. Is that so? Well, what is actually true? What are the facts? There are obvious truths like the fact that water is wet, and concrete is hard and so on. But even that's questionable, ice is water and it's not wet, and before concrete sets it's not hard. Truth is a slippery devil.
Perhaps there are no simple truths. Who's to say. Setting aside the eternal questions and all the philosophical quagmires and just focusing on daily life "the truth" is even more perplexing. Looking at the news media, academia, the corporate and political arena the truth is nearly impossible to establish. Because of the Internet, I assume, with its access to many, many viewpoints, we've finally begun to ask questions that were historically stifled by the powers that be, the gatekeepers. It does not mean the truth has become clear, if anything it's more muddled than ever, but at least the subject is now open and is being examined. Many of the traditional icons of truth are being exposed as liars or charlatans.
When are people going to think critically and take everything that comes from the news media with a grain of salt, instead of the holy grail. I can only speak to the American media but assume the rest of humanity is equally foolish. In America we've taken to calling the news media the alphabets. On one side, the blue side, we have ABC, AP, CBS, CNN, LAT, MSNBC, NBC, NYT, PBS, WaPo - the alphabets. On the other side, the red side, we have Fox News (or, that f_cking Fox News) and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. In the last thirty years we can add talk radio to this side. Radio? What's that? All kidding aside radio has declined exponentially in the modern era. It's gotten to the point where auto manufactures are not even going to include AM radio in new cars. Why cut AM radio? Could it be that's where talk radio exists?
Back in the day local newspapers and the three TV networks had the monopoly on the news we were fed. It was the pinnacle of trust in media, and the fact that they all said the same thing only solidified their lofty perch. What most people didn't know and still don't is that the media had been infiltrated long ago by the intelligence community (read CIA) which steers the media where they want it to go. They've only got in deeper as time passed. This isn't a goofy conspiracy theory it's been corroborated numerous times by people inside and outside the IC. It explains why the alphabets all work in lockstep within 'the narrative'. The narrative? A set of approved truths and beliefs. For sixty years now the narratives are always set by the left to the benefit of the Democratic Party. That f_ckng Fox News and talk radio became safe harbor for those resistant to the narrative, but they too were ultimately part of the narrative.
The Internet age has opened the door for more discussion of more viewpoints allowing anti-narrative thoughts to get out. As podcasts and alternative news sources have proliferated the traditional media has lost a lot of clout, and rightly so. There is no more stranglehold on the news that's fit to print. There are numerous alternative narratives that are proliferated via the Internet, but none have their hooks in the greater culture like the major media, academia and corporate/government cabal.
You would think that all these previously suppressed viewpoints would illuminate the truth, anything but. What this newfound scrutiny has exposed is the width and breadth of the approved narrative as the allowed truth. Stray from allowed truth and suffer the potential penalties of such misbehavior. The left's dominance for setting table for what is true may be coming to an end. The news media is the first to fall. Will academia be next?
The education industry from kindergarten to the Ivy League has become a cesspool of deception. This has been known for years. At the beginning the gate keepers of public education and state funded universities filtered what was taught with a decidedly pro-American slant. The negative aspects of American history were whitewashed or ignored completely. Schools were propaganda mills. Since the 1960's that has been turned completely on its head. In recent decades students are taught that the United States is the bane of the world. That is the current narrative. The truth is probably somewhere in between.
Public primary education has been captured by the teacher's unions, and it serves the union's interests instead of the students. Parents are not welcome. In recent decades test scores have plummeted, and graduation rates have tanked particularly in the inner cities. Traditional subjects and courses were eliminated and culturally taboo subjects taught to younger and younger children. This fed the universities blank slates, young minds to be formed. The modern university is no longer a place for open discussion and an exchange of ideas. People who buck the narrative are cancelled and are run off campus. Those students who challenge the allowed beliefs are punished, eventually they either shut up or leave. The rest graduate with the narrative fully implanted.
Science and medicine are particularly touchy subjects. Science, the seeker of truth, is something to be admired. However, since so much of science is done by universities it had become captive to the narrative as well. Corporate and government interests have also stifled science by steering it into serving corporate profit or government control, as in the clout and regulation of the pharma business. Moreover, the science industrial complex as some have called it, is not involved in finding the truth as most people believe but interested only in the funding pipeline. To attract funding published articles in the prestige journals and university presses are paramount. There's a term for this that says it all - publish or perish. This leads to safe bets, not groundbreaking theories. In other words, don't rock the boat, and disavow and stifle anyone who dares propose disruptive new theories. Breakthroughs by oddball geniuses are becoming rare, because no one will fund the oddball. Is this science?
Science needs to be freed from this hamster wheel.
Corporate and political interests have bred a bottomless pit of untruth. There is no truth seeking, it's all deception, all the time. It's all designed to steer someone to buy a product or elect a so-called leader. The corporate/government cabal and the media that they control in turn control the narrative...
Controlled the narrative, that is. No longer. Things are changing.
It was Covid-19 that showed us glimpses of the truth. The mainstream media collectively revealed that they are the communication and propaganda arm of the corporate/government collective. Trust in media has fallen to its lowest point. It's not bouncing back as Covid fades. Science and medicine followed suit, "trust the science" was the command, which is whatever they said it was regardless of their own counter factual evidence. Rebel scientists and doctors were falsely discredited and, in some cases, fired for questioning the Covid narrative. Governments at all levels became megalomaniacal, threatening to smackdown anyone not following the lockdowns. Eventually, they demanded citizens submit to a potentially dangerous experimental vaccine (that wasn't a vaccine at all). Corporations fell in lockstep with the government and flooded the airwaves with ad after ad that spewed the Covid narrative at us 24/7.
By the time of Covid social media had become the new way to communicate, and the traditional media didn't have the sway it once had. Social media companies prodded by the feds punished their users for daring to offer unapproved opinions. Here again government used its leverage overt and covert to force the large social media companies to comply.
The skepticism of everything that we were being told was not suppressed. The gatekeepers were failing. Many doctors and scientists, influential people from all walks of life, used social media to counter the Covid narrative. Eventually, as Covid faded the evidence these people brought to our attention turned out to be true in many, many cases. The mainstream media is still hush hush, but the manipulation and lies, death and destruction of so many lives is all the proof needed to illuminate the nonsense, or better put - the danger of the narrative.
What is the narrative? It's not one thing, it's everything that supports leftism and degrades tradition, religion (except for Islam) and the United States, Western culture et al. Nothing demonstrates the depth of the insanity of the narrative like the transgender agenda. Beyond the belief that men can become women while still sporting a penis and should be allowed to use the little girl's bathroom, is the appalling practice of mutilating or poisoning young children who've decided they are not the sex they were born into. As if a child should be making such a dramatic life altering decision when they can't even decide which cartoon to watch. It's insane. Yet the narrative fosters an environment where doctors and health professionals around the world promote this abomination of the Hippocratic oath. It's not compassion, it's shameful.
The cultural narrative often flies in the face of evidence and actively retaliates against anyone who objects. Countless people, professionals and laymen alike have had there careers or prospects diminished because they pushed back on the approved narrative. Again the Covid saga illuminated what the keepers of the "truth" were capable of. Everyone suffered the lies and deception, but it backfired, and finally it can be called the nonsense that it is.
The demise of the narrative won't come easy, the damage that's been done is real, and the psychosis is deep for the true believers. The rest of us are corralled by it, whether we were paying attention or not. The populace became conditioned by the relentless repetition of the narrative from all corners. Setting the record straight will be a monumental task and it can go off the rails - in fact we can count on it going off the rails.
We can start by saying what we think, giving our opinion, arguing in good faith. Most importantly start listening to others that see it differently without resorting to draconian, Orwellian tactics in retaliation. Ironically, we can follow something the narrative has always shouted about, but for all the right reasons this time. We can stop the hate. In the end that's what the narrative is, hate, pure unadulterated hatred of anyone or anything that is not approved.
America is not irredeemably racist. The police are not white supremacist brutalizers. The world is not going to end in three years six months and twenty-nine days due to climate change. Men, maleness and masculinity is not toxic. Conservatism is not fascism. Boys can't be real girls and girls can't be real boys. Illegal immigrants are not just undocumented workers. Conspiracy theorists are not necessarily nutcases. Appreciating a beautiful woman is not sexism, conversely a morbidly fat woman is not sexy. Profit isn't evil... This could go on and on, take any commonsense notion turn it on its head and you have the basis of the mainstream narrative.
Do we, as people, as human beings need a narrative to live by? I don't know, possibly, maybe. If we do, it can't be based on obvious mistruths. It can't be hemmed in by the cancellation of dissenters. The free exchange of ideas and opinions is essential, even the uncomfortable opinions. Just as important we can't impose the guilt of our ancestors on our citizens of today. These have been some of the tenets of the modern narrative. This narrative is collapsing, and rightly so. The worry is the ferocity of the pendulum swing. It's a valid concern but being that the gatekeepers of the dying narrative are still deeply entrenched in the culture the likelihood of slow, painful death is great. The pendulum has only begun on it's reverse swing.
