I’m hoping that by now everyone has seen the compilation of Sinclair Broadcasting talking parrots give their very earnest best renditions of Trumpian talking points to their viewers. If you haven’t seen it, please watch it. If you have seen it, please watch it again. Because as Sinclair and President Trump both understand, repetition has its value. And this is an event you must not forget.
Trump is proud to have poisoned the well of information by saying, and repeating, “fake news.” It’s a double-barreled assault weapon on truth, because it simultaneously displaces attention away from his own epic lying and undermines legitimate news organizations that are still in the business of some sort of standards-based information.
The video is chilling, to say the least, if you still have the capacity to be chilled. It doesn’t take even a minor brow-furrow of concentration to imagine how close this is to a Trump-blessed Total Information Media. Because this wasn’t a theoretical exercise. This actually happened. So-called profession newspeople stood there reading doctrine that could easily have come straight from the Ministry of Tru. What is Tru? Truth? Trump? He would love to make the terms as equivalent in your head as they are in his own. All he needs is the machinery of universal distribution. He apparently is well on his way.
The announcers are fully machine-like in their delivery. The bots have migrated from social media to on-air media. And just like the bots, it is increasingly impossible to determine if you are dealing with actual human beings. See if you can tell if these announcers actually agree with or even understand the words they are mouthing, or whether they don’t even care. But they were right about one thing. Repeat after them: “This is extremely dangerous to our democracy. This is extremely dangerous to our democracy. This is extremely dangerous to our democracy. This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.”
