I’ll go ahead and offer an apology for the clickbait title I selected, because I’m not talking about your traditional Saudi’s flying into towers or a Stockholm syndrome producing bank robbery.
I’m talking about regular everyday people that we all have in our lives. People that take or hold hostages, and people that hijack every event imaginable. These people are everywhere and there seem to be more and more of them all the time.
They’ve even managed to fuck up golf. I don’t watch a lot of televised golf but I like to see how Brooke and Adam and Makenzie are doing on tour, and so I tune in from time to time. In the last few years a hijacker has taken over the tournaments and fucked it up for reasons I cannot fathom. I mean who the hell plans to travel to Augusta to stand by a green and scream get in the hole after every shot? I couldn’t imagine coming out to watch the pro’s and having that insufferable prick standing next to me all day. And for what? Does this asshat record all the golf and then play it back for friends so they can be impressed with his vocals?
Whatever his reasoning, what he’s actually succeeded in doing is hijacking an event and making everyone within earshot a hostage to his idiocy.
I believe that this person and people like him only behave this way because there are no consequences. We need consequences or these people will eventually hijack every event known to mankind, and all of us will be hostages. I also believe that a good chunk of the population needs deprogramming from the Stockholm effect I mentioned earlier. I believe that because we make excuses for idiots and enable their continued hostage taking. But we need to understand that if no consequences are applied to the hostage takers, then they become emboldened and graduate to becoming terrorists.
In the case of golf guy we need less people suggesting he’s being exuberant or that he has a right to participate in his own unique way. We need more of people suggesting to him that he shut the fuck up and stop being an obnoxious asshole.
Golf guy is only one example of the hostage takers and hijackers among us. There are many others, and all they need to do is act like assholes to get our attention. Sadly, the asshole pandemic has become so virulent that we barely even notice them anymore, and so the situation has evolved to a point where in order to attract our complete attention these people need to act like complete assholes.
The Americans of course have taken a lead role in the promotion and acceptance of hostage takers and hijackers. However, they’ve modified the idiocy with a stereotypical American flourish.
They’ve monetized outrage and rewarded the provocateurs.
So the United States currently exists in a perpetual contest to see who can capture the people’s attention, because attention equals dollars, and dollars equals power. This, after all is the reality of the American dream. Namely, everything has a price and no matter the endeavor, someone needs to make a profit.
And yet I think a person could be forgiven for having a cautiously optimistic opinion regarding a contest for attention. We’re not talking about children after all, and so it doesn’t sound too outlandish to expect that our attention would focus on adult things, like honor and integrity. Perhaps even measured thinking and science.
But it turns out that we’re much more likely to pay attention to stupid shit. In fact, the less cranial the better, and the attention that we supply says as much about the audience as it does about the entertainers. This isn’t a new phenomena by the way. Roman bread and circuses were the ancient equivalent of modern reality television, and both instances are simply supplying the people with what they want.
There is one significant difference between the panem et circenses of Juvenal and our current state of affairs, and that’s the sheer volume of modern clown shows. Back in the days of Cicero the masses had to gather in the coliseum and there was only the one venue. Nowadays all we have to do is open Facebook or turn on the television while ordering Uber eats and voila. Full bellies and entertainment.
Here’s the Cicero quote if anyone doubts the ability of humanity to ignore the lessons that history offers. Quote from The Fall Of Rome.
Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote: “The evil was not in bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excitement of games which would serve to distract them from the other human hungers which bread and circuses can never appease.”
A modern translation of Cicero’s concern would then be, screw climate change and Covid, I’m going to concentrate on transsexual bathroom options and the tyranny of mask mandates.
I’m kind of on the fence with laying the blame entirely on social and mainstream media though. As I mentioned earlier it’s a supply and demand issue, and the demand is strong for inflammatory news and moronic television. We’re the ones that wanted 24 hour news, and Tucker Carlson is only possible because people want Tucker Carlson.
I think the 24 hour news trend started after the twin towers or one of the American wars with Saddam. It doesn’t matter really, because it’s here and it appears to be in no danger of losing its appeal and advertisers. But in order to remain relevant the news needs to find more news to keep the people entertained. We can only have so many wars or tower infernos, and so alternatives were needed to keep the peons entertained. That’s how we ended up with opinion hosts as opposed to actual news. It was an artful move by Fox to recognize that you can just make shit up and truth becomes secondary to entertainment.
It turned out to be a windfall for cable news when twitter and Facebook and the rest of the communication mediums arrived on the scene. Because now a simple act of stupidity or an outrageous act of racism, are instantly available to feed the insatiable need for outrage and offence. One idiot with an opinion can now be amplified through Tucker or Rachael and the entire world can then share in their disgust with the antics of their adversaries.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that we don’t necessarily have a higher percentage of assholes per capita than in any other era. But now we have access to each and every one of them, and that makes it seem like we’re up to our armpits in assholes.
What the 24 hour news stations realized very quickly is that people enjoy being angry and will tune in with regularity as long as you continue to feed them anger supplements. So, the news and social media has evolved to make certain that our hunger for offence is satiated.
And every time that we take the bait we’ve hijacked our own sensibilities, and allowed ourselves to be held hostage by nonsense and fabrication.
The Americans being the leaders that they are, have moved on from media personalities clamoring for attention, to politicians seeking that same attention. What the politicians have concluded is that you don’t have to be intelligent but you absolutely need to be controversial.
And you have to like hijacking a constitution and holding citizens hostage.
Because those citizens seem to like it and they’ll reelect you.