No one can say with a straight face that 2024 has not been a strange year, and we’re only half way through it. It’s like sitting on a monster roller coaster waiting to roll out and you’re not sure whether to be thrilled or terrified.
In the wheelhouse of a ship, there is (or used to be) a device called an Engine Order Telegraph (EOT). It’s that dial thingy with the handle and bells and the speeds printed on the face that the bridge officer grabs to indicate course and speed to the engine room. Now imagine one of those installed on the Good Ship Mass Media Inc., as a mysterious hand reaches out and pulls the handle from FULL AHEAD to FULL ASTERN. The engines roar, the ship shudders and the entire vessel slowly begins to change course — in this case 180 degrees astern.
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Something happened in the last month to switch the narradigm into full reverse. With blinding efficiency, the GeezerMedia has switched to “Biden Bad” and “Trump Sympathetic”. It makes no sense on it’s face. Oh sure, Biden flubbed the “debate,” that was inevitable, and Trump got winged on the ear. Heck, the GeezerMedia has been trying for years to activate some “lone nut” to take a shot, and suddenly Trump is good when one does?
An old friend and colleague of mine is a perfect bellwether. We both work in media, had the same media professor 10 years apart, and we’ve known each other for 35 years. If the Bumbledicks had a cheerleading squad, he would be their Bob Fosse. A couple of months ago, I texted him about Biden’s decline, which I’ve done for many years now. His response was, “What the f**k’s wrong with you? Do you have Biden Derangement Syndrome?” That was genuine anger.
Yesterday, I texted him about how Trump had just won the election, and had gone from hero to legend in an afternoon. Instead of the usual vitriol accusing me of being a Trump-lover (which I’m not) and a Republican operative (which I certainly am not), he was shockingly subdued and even joked about the merchandising revenues from the Trump “FIGHT!” fist pump. I tripped over my jaw. He’s not the type to go down without a fight, yet here he was resigned to a Trump victory.
Weird, I tell ya.
Here’s what I suspect, and yes, this is a conspiracy theory, but you wouldn’t be here reading if I delivered the same tired old crap everyone else does.
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I suspect that up on Olympus, the plan was to take both leading candidates out of the US presidential race. First, it was swapping the narrdigm on Biden, admitting he’s a vegetable and pulling a Scarlet O’Hara: “Oh Rhett, wherevah shall I go? Whatevah shall I do?” Fiddle-dee-dee. Part Two involved doing a JFK on Trump — head shot in graphic detail with slow-motion and high frame rates as his skull exploded. The cameras were well positioned to get the Zapruder moment and win a Pulitzer.
But something happened. Biden refused to quit (and they can’t shove him out), and Trump not only refused to get dead, but earned his god-king crown.
The pre-planned narradigm was supposed to rouse fear and anger toward an impotent and ineffective Biden presiding over a rudderless ship of state (see what I did there?), while stirring up sympathy and anger over Trump being horrifically and publicly cut down. Both events were to happen between the end of the primary cycle and before the conventions began, thus causing unbelievable amounts of chaos as both parties and the general public pointed fingers of blame, while trying to figure out who would replace the candidates.
It reminds me of that brilliant scene in The Man Who Would Be King, where Danny takes an arrow to the chest and keeps on fighting, to the bedazzled amazement of both armies.
