Narrative Straight Jackets or Life Outside the Asylum.
Better to be bewildered for a few days than captured by bandits, or shepherds.
Intellectual historians have long contrasted political debate and ideological difference in the US with their counterparts in Europe. They have found that we have been far more united here because of our agreement over a strong national narrative of bourgeois individualism, or what some political scientists have call “Lockean Liberalism.”
Our political battles have been over minor disagreement on the overall narrative, largely because our political battles have been between a somewhat wealthier and more establishment Eastern party and a more egalitarian middle belt peoples’ party. Both have been in fundamental agreement about goals and values. They have differed in terms of the role of government in assisting one group over against another other.
What, if anything, has changed? My best is on the development of social media, its remarkable echo chamber, that has both developed and popularized hostile and largely false narratives about the political choices that we face.
While the Great Depression was a second American Revolution in some ways and created strong opposition to the economic status quo, it was not until the last decade of the century that a new generation of talented and highly paid publicists created new political narratives that are shaping our understandings of reality and changing our views about the American Party system—from a view of two competing teams, following different but similar paths to modest reform, to a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness preparing for a political Armageddon.
When I began writing this blog, what started me thinking was the persuasive power of the narratives of MSNBC and Fox. I am an admirable of the production values of both networks. Television, and film in general, have the technical know-how to create powerful stories. A viewer of one of these news networks will be “captured” by strong story lines that slant information to strengthen a partisan narrative.
How do they do this?
(1) What people say and what people do is always in contexts, multiple contexts, and these contexts explain the actions. Quote or choose out of context and you can add drama, but at the price of distorting the factual basis of your narrative.
(2) Any sustained story contains representative and nonrepresentative moments. Exceptions do not “prove the rule.” If placed before the audience as examples of the whole, they defeat any attempt at objectivity. Sometimes this is done through ignorance, usually it is simply targeted manipulation of the audience.
(3) Limited time is limited understanding. Most complex events require extended descriptions and interpretations. Cable news, particularly, is a collection of sound bites that are “explained” by their judious placement in relation to each other.
(4) Traditional “hosts” are bullies and their interviewees chosen to show apparent weaknesses on one side of an issue while showcasing the superior understanding of the host.
(5) People are simply not prepared to watch TV for clarity and critical awareness. We are trained from Sesame Street onward to “take our medicine” with heaping spoonfuls of sugar. News as entertainment! And entertainment is in our culture “hero-villain” battle. That is, our sports and stories emphasize a fight between evil and virtue.
(6) Are there more reasons? More can be said about the use of psychological research to deliberately manipulate people.
Enough said, though, to make the point. We see ourselves as far apart. We see others as serious dangers to people like us. We see ourselves standing at an all or nothing point on a road with divergent paths. We are cajoled, misinformed, herded by “elites,” to avoid a path downward toward chaos and to be swept upward by our warrior friends to the shining city on the hill.
I would argue that actual reality is still much like it has been for the past 250 years, Robert Frost’s two diverging roads, very much if not entirely alike. Choices that require sober thought and careful trial.
Or maybe not separate narratives at all. Maybe we can step outside the many stories that we are encouraged to “enter.” As Daniel Boone was reported to have said when asked if he had ever been lost in the foods, “no, just bewildered for several days.”