Part of the problem is the allure of the celebratory, the fan base which characterises public attention these days. The glitz and the glitter which we have become used to in our daily diet of TV entertainment has overtaken reality and that gritty prescription of real life has been swopped for a scripted, imaginative fantasy, where facts are swept aside for titivating fiction.
It seems that no matter what Donald Trump does, his fan base, including, the Republican Party, will cheer him on and probably give him re-election as president. Even the Impeachment Proceedings are taken by a large swath of the population as the Establishment having a go at our man. Black or white, the inditement of his actions have no effect and only entrench the Trump voter in their deep rooted prejudice born of hardship inflicted upon them by the very same sort of people which Trump represents.
It's the same over here. Johnson's followers, are impervious to what some of us see as his blatant misuse of the truth and trust, his willingness to totally disregard the norms of private and political etiquette and at the heart of the man a deep antithesis to the people who are supporting him. The more outrageous he is, the more he is liked.
Have we, along with our American cousins, through our 24/7 absorption of what television portrays become disconnected with our own reality, preferring the 'gore' of 'reality TV' with its offering of the penny dreadful and a never ending revelation of the various dilemmas people have to live under. Out of work, barely managing, living only from day to day, scrounging a subsistence life, seems to reinforce us in our own comparative but only marginally better circumstances.
This influence of the public persona, of the bandwagon effect, has a dark history.
Germany in-between the war years was ripe for the propagandist. Having suffered defeat and brought, (by stringent Reparations), to an economic low point, (not all of which was shared across the society), they longed for strong and decisive leadership.
In some ways Trump and Johnson are part of a not too dissimilar mould. Determined to break with convention, these egotists will do anything to play to their fan base. Decency and reflective humanity is not in the pack from which they deal and instead they play to the crowd, whipping up disharmony to confuse the multitudes, who then believe only what the headlines tell them.
Is it a poverty of education and opportunity which limits the general not to ask the questions which should be asked when their heroes make such crass claims, has the public at large become some sort of symbiotic creation, a new breed of men and woman who after so many decades of infatalised TV are mentally programmed to accept anything if dressed up with enough glamour.
Has our own sense of worth been so corrupted that we are prepared to believe anything other than the reality staring us in the face
No comments:
Post a Comment