An empire that lives by the the narrative, dies by the narrative.

Our feral elite spokespersons can insist at the top of their lungs that Russia is losing in Ukraine or that “democratic” Israel, is simply defending themselves, but in the age of social media reality always has the final say. Indeed, the wide adoption of the internet has caused an information revolution that, similar to the adoption of the printing press, has allowed dissent to grow and spread beyond the control of the ruling classes. And, ultimately the reliance on propaganda or narrative management becomes a poisoned chalice that withers away trust sip by sip until all that is left is sullen cynicism and widespread nihilism.

The late heterodox journalist, John Pilger, met one of Hitler’s leading propagandists, Leni Riefenstahl, whose epic films glorified the Nazis. “She told me that the ‘patriotic messages’ of her films were dependent not on ‘orders from above’ but on what she called the ‘submissive void’ of the German public. Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? I asked.  ‘Yes, especially them,’ she said.

Does that sound like our country in this present milieu? As we dumbly witness the unfolding genocide in Gaza, there is a sense that our national morality has been lost and never to be found again. Then there’s the plutocratic nature of our economy. When did our current society last offer any real growth or value to anyone except hedge funds? When have inventions and scientific progress last been made to benefit Americans rather than mechanize or off-shore jobs–like all the latest AI developments? 

There is a strange lack of purpose in America today, where it seems that everyone is holding their breath. The advertisements that once used to trap us in a common myth of salvation lie withered, exposed as fake symbols. American culture has become stagnant–a broken feedback loop of haunting isolation, loneliness, and alienation. 

The brilliant Mark Fisher, who popularized the Derrida-coined term Hauntology to describe the way our “lost futures seep through the pores of our collective present, synthesizing into an ever-visceral sense of not only loss for something once promised, but an inescapable feeling of gutting emptiness about tomorrow. In essence, lacking a real future, figments of the one promised us continue their seductive hold on our psyche like a hypnotic rhythm; blinking specters of what once was, and will have been. Post-modernity is a vacant lot haunted by the ghosts of a would-be future.”

This is the deep fear of US elite–they know the meta-narrative they’ve been pushing to be a fiction. Nonetheless, they go on telling it to themselves, despite knowing that our era has been made increasingly and dangerously contingent on this meta-myth.

When Edward Bernays began describing how the “engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest”, he was at least conscientious enough to keep the behavioral nudges only slightly offset to the habits of Americans. Society’s mores were preserved, with only careful and periodic retouching to suit the needs of the corporate managers.

Nevertheless, the narrative factory is hard at work, even as it throws off a bit of black smoke from time to time. For example: Israel is the only Middle-East democracy, simply defending themselves from murderous terrorism, and a new Ukrainian counter-attack in 2024 will take NATO all the way to Crimea.

Unfortunately, reality intrudes.

The Gaza genocide is being live-streamed. In Israel, the possibility of an investigation of the events of October 7th has reached a point that it can’t be denied. And likewise, the Zionists are losing on the battlefield. They’re unable to make significant military gains. All they can accomplish is mass murdering civilians. And now they are being prosecuted in the World Court for genocide. The corporate media in the US is doing their best to aid the genocide, willingly, and secretly, by submitting to an onerous Israeli censorship regime.

And in Ukraine, despite Russian battlefield success, the corporate media struggles with analysis of how to define a US/NATO victory. Is it possible to flip the narrative of Ukraine, to being another success, like Libya? Can they, at least, label the Ukraine conflict a ‘stalemate’, and insist that it represents a defeat for Putin and a win for Biden, since Russia was unable to seize the whole of Ukraine? This approach is thought rather sophisticated by the spinmeisters: Frame the narrative of a ‘win’ and ensure that from top-to-bottom of society, all adhere to the correct narrative, or else.

But this is little more than a simple projection from the YouTube influencer’ culture. The problem arises when the narrative become so divorced from reality that it becomes an episode on South Park.

Many people are rightly talking about a major crisis of credibility and trust taking over the US, but historically, this is what happens in the late stage of empires, when the imperial state is reduced to a massive but fragile shell, invincible in appearance but shockingly vulnerable in reality.

The bright spot is that the over reliance on a narrative management that’s so at odds with observable reality has the potential to snap Americans out of the matrix of illusion.