I have spent a lifetime in art of narrative formation and promotion.
I trained as a journalist in the 1970s in MSM.
Since them I have worked as a communications professional manipulating media narratives to my and my clients’ advantage.
When I see people passionately and blindly accepting the official narrative I do not see someone whose beliefs I disagree with or object to their right to hold those beliefs.
I see people who are too lazy or too stupid to inform themselves of the nuances and complexity of real life.
Go get some information.
I grew up a “good Catholic boy”.
In Invercargill just to put an exclamation mark on it. But it wasn’t all bad.
At my Catholic school – Marist College – I was lucky enough to encounter a few amazing teachers, not all of whom we treated with the respect and gratitude that in hindsight the y probably deserved.
But somehow I emerged with a absolute love of classical Latin and Greek learning which informs both my back story and to this day my curiosity about the philosophical and pedagogical foundations of this arcane world that I was born into.
Despite my rabid reading of everything I could lay my hands on I arrived at university without any study skills while retaining an ability to read interesting. Not good if you wanted to succeed at the esteemed halls of higher learning.
In my first year I majored in in sex and drugs and rock and roll, achieving honours in all three. The hallowed halls of education could not find it in their hearts to recognise my successes and proceeded to ban me for a year.
So it goes.
Through all of this I managed to retain and develop a concept of humanism derived some fundamental precepts of my Catholic upbringing.
The high road was the apparent compassion in the teaching of Popes across the years (even in my naïve younger years I always found this a bit twee) but I always found the low road more attractive.
Grass roots activism seemed more logical, comfortable and attractive and I was drawn to community activism in areas such reading programmes and challenging the prevailing narratives of the given we were living in the Muldoon years.
Well a we saw a lot of fun, supported self referential narratives of our success and a very active social life.
While working in a local steel foundry in Dunedin, I attempted to address my deep guilt deriving from my promise to my mother that I would be a journalist when I grew up (I was a good Catholic boy after all).
On my way home after work, in my overalls and steel caps I called into the Evening Star, went up to the editorial floor and told the person I was talking to that I wanted to be a journalist.
Somehow (I can’t recall the details of the transaction) the encounter ended with them saying fine and I could start on Monday.
So my journey started through a range of publications and journalistic roles into the entry into the “dark” side of public relations and corporate communications.
“Forgive me father, for I have sinned”.
I have no desire to lay out the details of my sins and while over the years I have attempted to apply my evil skills to positive endeavours, trust me I did some truly evil shit in the service of the very well-paying corporate masters in the private and public sectors of the day.
The echoes of this era and approach can be seen in the myriad campaigns we see on the television where our elected representatives through their public sector acolytes push a wide range of agendas to subsidise public broadcasting and make pathetic attempts to indoctrinate the wider public.
Again, so it goes.
And now to my point.
We live in the age of controlled and contrived narratives and the left seems happy to rage against the machine while continuing to want to specify how others should behave.
If only everyone thought like us it would be all alright!
Wake up motherfuckers – there’s a war going on. We are ceding the ground to the enemy. The narrative shaping game our bought and paid for media is playing doesn’t have to be one-sided,
The basic rules of the game are not complex (if you think about how easily the idiots in the establishment control and promote their narratives this should be obvious) and we have enough skilled practitioners on our side to push back.
Turn the thing around.
