THERE are various ways of taking the temperature of the Western world but few are more reliable than popular culture. The talent shows and celebrity TV that began a couple of decades ago were the symptom of a wealthy society bored by its good fortune and hungry for easily-won fame. At the same time, a growing audience for natural history mirrored increasing awareness of the planet’s fragility and the need to save it. Of late, there is something even more revealing on our screens.
It is no coincidence that, as fake news proliferates, Amazon’s serial The Man in the High Castle, based on Philip K Dick’s turgid novel, has become a hit; nor that the BBC has responded with an adaptation of Len Deighton’s thriller SS-GB.
In Dick’s fantasy, Germany and Japan won the Second World War. Deighton’s novel sees Germany triumphing in the Battle of Britain and the Waffen SS marching across these islands.While fascinating for fiction, these plots are an insult to proper history, or so strait-laced historians would argue. Counter-factual or virtual history has a bad reputation, in part because it has been espoused by the likes of Niall Ferguson, whose pronouncements are decried, in some quarters, because of his political leanings.
Dick’s and Leighton’s books came out years ago but renewed interest is telling. When Nazi invasion is the stuff of Sunday evening viewing, it says a lot about how alarming the world beyond our doors has become. In this terrorist age, new fears are fomenting. That we can be beguiled by what might have happened but never did, tells us something else as well. Slowly, we are waking up to the idea that not only do bad things befall good people, but also that things might have been even worse if courageous individuals had not acted as they did. History, these fictions show, is not fated or predetermined.
As the tapeworm of fake news threatens to gnaw at our sense of what is real and what is imagined, is it any surprise we are drawn to alternative history? At least we know the true story and can enjoy seeing it subverted. Back in the “real” world, meanwhile, away from reassuringly fanciful tales, we are faced with news bulletins, social media alerts and online gossip that require us to decide whether or not something actually happened or is the fabrication of a febrile imagination.
The slipperiness of information would be worrying enough without encouragement from those in authority. Yet, in what can only be seen as a development beyond the bounds of probability, which even chaos theorists could not have anticipated, we now have Donald Trump in the White House.
It is bad enough that he is president. What’s worse is that he is creating his own alternative version of events and running it in parallel with reality. Indeed, his love of “alternative facts” is already taking on a life of its own. He is like the rear end of a pantomime horse that, to the crowd’s delight, might soon start leading the way. Lately, the president’s reinterpretations have rewritten recent history. He has stirred anti-immigrant fever by citing the trouble incomers have caused in Germany and Sweden, including reference to a non-existent terrorist attack in Sweden that he wrongly inferred from a clip from an old Fox News documentary.
If you had to name two well-run, well-integrated European countries that welcomed immigrants, you should go no further. Yet in Mr Trump’s warped outlook, these nations are enduring “problems like they never thought possible”. He also went on to cite attacks in Paris, Nice, and Brussels. In this he is not factually wrong, but he still deploys sleekit sleight of hand. If he were, for instance, to list his own citizens gunned down by fellow Americans, he would never be off air. Rather than tidy up his own murderous back yard, he prefers to paint a picture of Western civilisation besieged by foreign devils.
Then there is his newly formed government’s travails, a comedy of errors he describes as “a well-oiled machine”. And, most self-congratulatory of all, he tells us that, since his inauguration, “a great spirit of optimism” is sweeping across America. In this, he might be partially correct. Confidence in parts of the economy remains buoyant. As a result, fervent followers are not disillusioned, or not yet. But these happy bunnies represent less than half the country. Those who did not vote for him are emphatically not feeling very chipper, and in some cases are downright afraid.
Just a few years ago, Mr Trump’s airbrushing and reframing of evidence would have gained less traction and proved less of a threat. Reported by reputable newspapers and broadcasters, his delusional rhetoric would have been subjected to scrutiny and verification and then placed in context. It would have been decontaminated before entering the global bloodstream. Today, with social media bypassing these traditional and authoritative outlets, Mr Trump can communicate directly with his followers and tell them any damned nonsense he likes. Naturally, the most credulous will swallow anything he says, especially if it plays to their prejudices. The result is ugly enough already, but this modus operandi has the potential to become catastrophic.
Soon, counter-factual reality, the rookie president’s weapon of choice, could lead to the complete erosion and breakdown of faith in hard, irrefutable facts. People will feel free to choose whatever they want to believe. Soberingly, a recent survey showed a significant number of Americans no longer trust once-revered sources such as the Wall Street Journal, CNN and the New York Times. Indeed, some had not even heard of them.
As Mr Trump reshapes the world in his megalomaniac image, he is like the wicked witch who gazes on her image in the mirror, seeing an enchanted, distorted version of himself and his country based on wish-fulfilment, not truth. As a consequence, society is at risk of becoming ungovernable, a volatile culture of pick ’n’ mix beliefs, where facts are no longer, pace Burns, chiels that winna ding. In such a landscape, the emperor’s brazen nakedness is viewed as cause for celebration, not scorn.
The ramifications for democracy, public order and stability are plain for all to see. What is unfolding before our eyes is not fit for pre-watershed viewing. In a matter of weeks, the story of The Man in the Highest Office is becoming so hard to credit it might have left even Philip K Dick lost for words.
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