Disordered discourse doesn’t just govern through those who believe its manufactured narratives - it forces even those who don’t to submit. To stay in power, they must either bend the knee to the lies or become the next target of the machine they helped create. - ThreadSky

eliothiggins.bsky.social • 2 days ago

Disordered discourse doesn’t just govern through those who believe its manufactured narratives - it forces even those who don’t to submit. To stay in power, they must either bend the knee to the lies or become the next target of the machine they helped create.

Comments

kytravelers.com•2 days ago

How do we fix it?

russburlingame.bsky.social•2 days ago

Guillotines.

freedomforall.net•1 day ago

Disordered discourse may be a cloak for an entire differently ordered discourse, perhaps one that is deeply flawed, whereby its proponents aim to assert it's dominance over the narrative. It does not change physics yet can move mountains.

eliothiggins.bsky.social•2 days ago

America is not unique. Any democracy can fall to state capture by disordered discourse if there’s no systematic response. This isn’t something we can fact-check our way out of - it’s deeper than misinformation. It’s about power, identity, and the narratives that shape reality itself.

iwasid.bsky.social•1 day ago

"it’s deeper than misinformation. It’s about power, identity, and the narratives that shape reality itself"

tbf it's always been that. The reason we arrive here today is because we allowed it to go on in weaker forms and pretended it was democracy.

Now a strong form has arrived ...

itadude.bsky.social•2 days ago

I mean, if Putin propaganda can get its message effectively in country submitted by the Soviet regime just a few decades ago, then it can succeed pretty much everywhere

sarahviktoria.bsky.social•2 days ago

It's not possible without supportive misinformation and in the US, as in the UK that has happened because of a monolithic captured mainstream media.

pete1965.bsky.social•2 days ago

I think you're wrong that it could happen anywhere. The American founding fathers weren't very smart. they wrote a constitution that would have been used as toilet paper by any other country. Well, if the paper had been of high enough quality.

Also, in any other country,

pete1965.bsky.social•2 days ago

that was civilised, grown up, and had a decent education system, the Civil Service would require a complete forecast of cost and implementation timeframe - in triplicate - of any coup, failure, or dissolution of democratic norms.

I offer in evidence : The political road to Brexit.

juri-fin.bsky.social•2 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/juri-fin.bsky.social/post/3lb66whiw2s2d

alorialready.bsky.social•2 days ago

@volksverpetzer.de

nightravenspeaks.bsky.social•2 days ago

Settler mentality

richfoxexists.bsky.social•2 days ago

It’s like a systemic cancer. There’s no tumor to cut out, so it’s tough to eradicate. It’s spread through the whole body.

ubermenchies.bsky.social•1 day ago

Reminds me of this from the Bush II administration (as written by Ron Suskind):

waltermulder.bsky.social•2 days ago

They need Bellincat in the US

eliothiggins.bsky.social•2 days ago

We’re living through a fundamental shift in how discourse is created. Institutions once shaped a shared reality through discourse - imperfectly, but with structure. Now, that reality has splintered. In its place, engagement-driven ecosystems amplify whatever resonates, truth optional.

waveorwater.bsky.social•1 day ago

It is not new though. This comes to mind:
The Dakota hangings Dec 26 1862.
This was the same week that President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It is all built on lies. At best.

waveorwater.bsky.social•1 day ago

This seems correct. Another way to put is is simply that intersubjectivity is intentionally destroyed to help the lying side of the power struggle that can not win arguments in an even playing field where truths matter.

jabooby.bsky.social•2 days ago

It seems like an entirely intractable problem.

eliothiggins.bsky.social•2 days ago

The result? A fragmented public consciousness where competing realities coexist, each self-reinforcing and resistant to correction. When truth is no longer a shared foundation, power shifts to those who control the most compelling narrative - no matter how detached from reality it is.

annabusybee.bsky.social•2 days ago

And Russia seems to have won this battle.

iwasid.bsky.social•1 day ago

"When truth is no longer a shared foundation, power shifts to those who control the most compelling narrative - no matter how detached from reality it is"

Strong presumption that we had a shared reality, and that it was a correct grasp on reality.

There's a reason we arrive in this pickle today.

sh33ppurple.bsky.social•2 days ago

This was the same with only written media and no computers. It just goes faster and education has been hit for decades with budget cuts.
In the end, it's all just social engineering.

davethompsonvic.bsky.social•1 day ago

It's not just about a compelling narrative. It's about who controls the channels that determine which narrative gets promoted and which narrative gets reduced. And that's about power.

jeffbarrus.bsky.social•2 days ago

I think it's possible for reality to reassert itself, but only after the suffering caused by the administration is so pervasive and tragic that it can't be explained away with lies. If we're "fortunate" enough for this to happen, America will still be in ruins.

fierceindie63.bsky.social•2 days ago

So well stated. People who support democracy must control the narrative. This is not about Democracts. It’s easier for fascists to hate on democrats & harder for them to hate on democracy.It is about democracy. I’ll be using “democracy” more & more. That’s one of my narrative shifts.

sarapeltola.bsky.social•2 days ago

📌

torbalan.bsky.social•1 day ago

Sorry, are you describing my country, Bulgaria?

tilmane.bsky.social•13 hours ago

That is probably the biggest challenge for modern democracy, ever.

robertoartellini.bsky.social•1 day ago

A French guy on Substack named this “the end of civilizational sixties” https://vertumne.substack.com/p/les-soixante-civilisees-1945-2008:

manderleygeorgia.bsky.social•1 day ago

📌

eliothiggins.bsky.social•2 days ago

Democracies weren’t built around this. They depend on a shared reality, however contested, to function. When governance becomes a battle between competing fictions rather than policy and truth, institutions designed for debate and compromise become tools for enforcing narratives.

amosnic.bsky.social•1 day ago

📌

lngrs.bsky.social•2 days ago

It seems the only ones capable of showing this in stark relief are foreign visitors to the White House.

johngage1.bsky.social•1 day ago

mulvihill.bsky.social•2 days ago

You have to buy into the game - these guys have started playing their own.

fierceindie63.bsky.social•2 days ago

We must adapt to the current reality that the country is being run by liars and creators of fictions.

cuibonobaby.bsky.social•1 day ago

"Competing fictions"? This sounds like the "both sides " nonsense the mainstream media has insisted on peddling and which helped get us to this point. We don't have competing fictions in the US. We have a dishonest, delusional, authoritarian Republican Party and a normal Democratic Party.

eliothiggins.bsky.social•1 day ago

I'm speaking more broadly about splintered disordered discourse and its impact on democratic states.

rbnyc.bsky.social•2 days ago

Is it fair to say this is a battle between competing fictions? Seems one is reality based while the other is whole-cloth make believe?

eliothiggins.bsky.social•2 days ago

The end result is what we’re seeing in the U.S. - a democracy struggling to function because its institutions are trapped in disordered discourse. Governance isn’t about solving problems; it’s about demonstrating loyalty to manufactured narratives.

terrypasta.bsky.social•2 days ago

Well, yes, just like in the UK in the last few...decades. Iraq has WMD, Corbyn is a vile antisemite...

jauntywk.bsky.social•2 days ago

@skyview.social unroll this thread on manufactured narratives plz

jauntywk.bsky.social•2 days ago

The radical extremists controlling the narrative, being able to lie, desceive, disinform with impunity is such the challenge. Their parallel bespoke / constructed realities syccophantically feed a support for braven villainy.

How can we help this noosphere?!

iwasid.bsky.social•1 day ago

"Governance isn’t about solving problems; it’s about demonstrating loyalty to manufactured narratives"

This.

peterhowitt.bsky.social•2 days ago

Come on Eliot. It's an international criminal conspiracy of racist sexually abusive fascists intent on turning the world into Mordor. Just say what it is. Stop pussy footing around with language. It's much too late in the day.
https://paragraph.xyz/@compossible/a-great-wave-cometh

nifjnick.bsky.social•2 days ago

Please tell us you have a solution/antidote, however difficult and lengthy it might be

rynojs.bsky.social•1 day ago

eliothiggins.bsky.social•2 days ago

If you think this can’t happen outside the U.S., consider that we’re all subject to the same forces - social media-driven discourse, collapsing institutional trust, and the rise of narratives untethered from reality. It’s a systemic vulnerability in every democracy.

stokesrj2.bsky.social•2 days ago

What you wrote reeks of a 1930s congress in Stalin's USSR.

Sadly apt for the Republican Party in the US today.

harpua.bsky.social•8 hours ago

Lazy bothsidesism

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