My last post in this series described how, due to widespread disillusionment, "the trancewar's foot soldiers already appear to be losing control of the public narrative. It may take them a while to regroup, during which time there exists a rare window of opportunity to observe - and perhaps begin to make new sense of - the power dynamics at play behind the curtain of media spectacle."
Looking through this window of opportunity, here is some of what may now be seen:
On November 21, PBS ran a piece titled "5 important stories that aren’t fake news". This article opens with the statement: "We are living in a “post-truth” world."
On the same day, the Washington Post published an article which tacitly blamed unethical tech companies for the results of our recent elections.
Meanwhile, Breitbart (which I rarely consider a reliable news source) published an excellent piece on mainstream media's use of fake news.
From my perspective, the 'fake news' debate is an early warning sign that reality may get seriously twisted in the US as fundamentally incompatible worldviews collide in the months and years to come.
Open-Source Insurgency
Back in February, John Robb (a.k.a. the guy who wrote the book on 21st Century networked conflict) named Donald Trump's presidential campaign an open-source insurgency, and then correctly predicted the outcome of this 'insurgency'. More recently, Robb has started to publicly speculate about what comes next:
"The next open source protest we are likely to see will form to force Donald Trump from the Presidency before the next election - a Tahrir square moment in cities all across the US. A massive and diverse open source protest that has one simple goal: the immediate removal of Donald Trump from office."
To those that read mainstream media's response to Mr Trump's win as a sore losers' unimportant hissy fit, Robb's vision for the future may appear far-fetched. But to those that regard this media freakout as greenlighting open rebellion against an obviously tyrannical control regime, Robb's hypothetical "Tahrir square moment in cities all across the US" may actually seem plausible.
Personally, I suspect that such an 'open source insurgency' is in the cards, but believe that Robb has the specifics wrong.
The idea of preventing Mr Trump from serving as president may well be used as a rallying cry around which an otherwise hopelessly fragmentary "left" temporarily organizes. And the form of civil conflict in which the US will probably soon be embroiled may well possess many of the qualities of an 'open source insurgency'. But the salient events that drive participation in this conflict will probably not carry the overtly political symbolism of 'Tahrir square moments'. Instead, their symbolic import will appear: 1.) existential, and 2.) moral.
A prime example of this kind of salient event recently transpired in North Dakota, when a 21-year-old woman from New York was injured by an explosive device during a law enforcement attack on water protectors attempting to halt the construction of an oil pipeline.
In a sign of things to come, conflicting accounts of this disturbing incident are being reported in the media.
The most reliable-seeming version of this story that I have been able to find reported:
"Water protectors were violently engaged by police on Sunday November 20 when they tried to clear a bridge of debris, enduring seven hours of assault that police say was necessary to push them back and because they themselves felt threatened (though in defense of their actions, reported no injuries, and on videos and according to eyewitness accounts the violence was one-sided). Of the 300 people who reported injuries to the medics of the camps near Cannon Ball, the most horrifically injured person was Sophia Wilansky, 21, of New York City, who may lose her arm after much of it was blown away by a concussion grenade that her father says was intentionally aimed at her by police."
Wayne Wilansky, Sofia Wilanski's father, officially stated to the press:
"At around 4:30am after the police hit the bridge with water cannons and rubber bullets and pepper spray they lobbed a number of concussion grenades which are not supposed to be thrown at people directly at protesters or protectors as they want to be called. A grenade exploded right as it hit Sophia in the left forearm taking most of the undersurface of her left arm with it. ... The police did not do this by accident - it was an intentional act of throwing it directly at her. Additionally police were shooting people in face and groin intending to do the most possible damage. Sophia will have surgery again tomorrow as bit by bit they try to rebuild a somewhat functioning arm and hand."
Along with these reports, a well-known activist media site posted extensive documentation of this incident, including images of some of the spent law enforcement munitions littering the scene of the conflict.
This documentation appears consistent with what might be expected from an improperly deployed crowd control device like The Stinger® OC Grenade.
The Dakota Access Pipeline has become symbolic of the wholesale destruction of fundamentally necessary resources like water for the short-term benefit of the few at the expense of all of our futures.
The protection of stuff like food and water is very easy to understand as important, and is far more basic than politics. When pipelines break - which can and does happen - water becomes poison, crops fail, and people die. If the government refuses to adequately protect food and water supplies, some people will naturally feel they have little choice but to attempt to protect these critical resources themselves, directly. This is why I suggest that the symbolic weight of a salient event like the November 20 DAPL thing is more existential than political.
No matter the circumstances, it is very difficult to argue that maiming people with explosive devices is morally justifiable.
And when a pretty young white woman is maimed while trying to protect water, it is very challenging for the control regime to convincingly blame her for her own injuries. Even so, law enforcement spokespersons know better than to try and defend the morality of using an explosive device against an unarmed woman - and so are attempting to sell a version of reality which equates peaceful water protectors with terrorists.
In other words, law enforcement appears to be doing some all-too-familiar victim blaming in an attempt to gain control of the narrative using a political argument to avoid taking moral responsibility for their role in this event.
A 'Tahrir square moment' in the US is unlikely, because the US population is diverse and politically disillusioned. But things may well be lining up to produce many symbolically analogous moments within our collective unconscious.
Such events may naturally give rise to a confusing and multi-polar 'open-source insurgency' in our psychosocial ecology as various ideologically-integrated networks (see: SPINs) begin utterly and explicitly rejecting social norms on which we have come to depend to keep this complex society running smoothly.