in which postmodernism becomes realpolitik [1]

Post date: Feb 16, 2020 10:5:7 PM

this article from the atlantic was sent to me a week ago or so, via Daniel Harvey's newsletter, so yes: this opinion is probably obsolete by now.

anyway: i'm only a few paragraphs in, but already here's an excerpt or two worth sharing:

"The story that unfurled in my Facebook feed over the next several weeks was, at times, disorienting. There were days when I would watch, live on TV, an impeachment hearing filled with damning testimony about the president’s conduct, only to look at my phone later and find a slickly edited video—served up by the Trump campaign—that used out-of-context clips to recast the same testimony as an exoneration. Wait, I caught myself wondering more than once, is that what happened today?"

"I was surprised by the effect it had on me. I’d assumed that my skepticism and media literacy would inoculate me against such distortions. But I soon found myself reflexively questioning every headline. It wasn’t that I believed Trump and his boosters were telling the truth. It was that, in this state of heightened suspicion, truth itself—about Ukraine, impeachment, or anything else—felt more and more difficult to locate. With each swipe, the notion of observable reality drifted further out of reach."

~ from "The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President" by McKay Coppins

sometimes i wish i could just magically develop a kind of immune system to all this spin and disinformation, my digital antibodies swallowing the germs of fake news, leaving just the truth behind.

...

on an unrelated note: taking this later excerpt at face value for now, i'm enjoying an AHA moment:

"The weaponization of micro-targeting was pioneered in large part by the data scientists at Cambridge Analytica. The firm began as part of a nonpartisan military contractor that used digital psyops to target terrorist groups and drug cartels. In Pakistan, it worked to thwart jihadist recruitment efforts; in South America, it circulated disinformation to turn drug dealers against their bosses."

this analytica firm has been given a pretty awful caricature in the news i read, back in 2016-17, to the point that i was largely imagining a bunch of guys sitting behind laptops and making "mwoohahaha" evil laughs regularly. maybe they didn't start out as "evil" right away, but the tools having been invented, they needed new problems to solve.

then again, maybe this is just more spin and they want me to believe exactly that. life is confusing.

...

[1] as i caught myself saying to someone, the other day: we have reached post-modernist era of politics. that said, i was trying to sound cool and honestly, i don't really understand post-modernism. i also don't really understand the real world, for that matter.