As IF Times

Donald Trump will go down in history as the only man to have ever won 3 national elections. As the results emerged last night, it became clear that the message he has been promoting resonated with an increasingly large swath of voters.

However, even among the media who were notionally pro Trump and certainly among many conservatives, there was still only guarded enthusiasm as everyone is residually scarred by the sudden change in voter numbers in 2020 when Trump had also apparently secured the requisite numbers for victory. The Charlie Brown, Lucy, football scenario lingered in their minds.

There is a scene in the 1983 comedy film, Yellowbeard, in which a blind beggar asks for some food from a Pirate.  The Pirate tells the blind man that he can have some chicken and proceeds to hand him a chunk of bread.  The blind beggar thanks him profusely for the ‘chicken’ and scurries away.  I’m reminded of this scene because of the masterful job of gas-lighting that the left have managed to impose over their years in power.  Regular people were made to doubt even what was clearly evident in front of them in favor of the narrative coming from the left.  Even very conservative media and many people in the general population were not ready to believe the news of a Trump victory.  They had become programmed to become cynical and fearful of optimism after years of a constant barrage of propaganda. Relentless browbeating from all fronts made people accept almost anything as truth.  It almost worked.

Donald Trump refused to be beaten.  He and a very small core population did not succumb to the narrative pushed daily from the left.  While at first marginalized and scorned, his persistence of message gathered more and more believers as it became more and more evident that the nation was collapsing badly on all fronts; economically, culturally, politically and upon the world stage.   As we all know by now, his message of optimism gathered more and more adherents during his campaign, even as there were several assassination attempts on his life. His stature as a hero, one who would literally put his life on the line for citizens, resonated with a growing number of people disenchanted with the inauthentic heroes posted by the left. He was the real guy. He wasn’t manufactured.  Rational people can sense authenticity and his support exploded across all demographics.   Perseverance in the face of adversity is as an American trait as it gets and Trump personified this. People love and identify with stories of overcoming bullies. Detractors could only point nebulously to his unlikeable personality.  Can’t please everyone.

But despite the left’s gas-lighting, their balkanization of the population into their own interest groups and the pleading of ‘celebrities’, the people could feel empathy with Trump’s message.  At the base of it all, most people just want to be left alone to pursue a life with their families. They don’t want to be told how to comport themselves, how to look after their families and to be taxed at every turn.  They didn’t want their tax dollars spent on distant wars, for questionable causes and for illegal entrants.  They reject all the ‘isms’ imposed upon them.  The problem was always that they did not have anyone to strongly champion their cause. They could see the bullying by the left in their attempts to imprison and bankrupt both Trump and his supporters and even exposed him to physical harm.  Trump’s steadfast refusal to back down struck an enormous chord with people who needed a real champion.  This message resonated with some very influential people such as Elon Musk, Robert  Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, all former Democrats who came to support Trump’s vision for America.  They recognized the dangerous path that the nation was on and they chose to support decency for the future.   Decency is not abstract.  It is not what a celebrity tells you it is.  It is comportment by oneself that is performed even when no one else is aware of it but you.  Most people know this and they see that decency in Trump.

The reality is that the US is the only place left in the world in which freedom of speech and of actions are uniquely celebrated and encouraged.  Every other nation in the world has minor to severe restrictions on what their citizens are allowed to do…including all of the notional free countries of the West. The hysterical handwringing from the left on a potential tyrannical regime clearly disregards those 3 recent tyrannical years of forced vaccinations, masking, confinement and restricted travelling enforced by police against people’s wills.

Finally, the euthanizing of P’Nut the squirrel was a clarion call for people who were enraged by bureaucratic tyranny imposed by the state at all levels.  The lack of judgement in so many facets of people’s lives demonstrated by this cruel event probably prompted even the most cynical to vote Trump.  If there’s one tyrannical edict I’d like to see mandated by the incoming administration it would be that people need to be rational and to think for themselves.  The time for groupthink is over.

It’s interesting how far the world of mass media consumption has come.  Only a hundred years ago, if you wanted to be entertained, you had to dress up and go to the town theater to watch some kind of performance, typically including some singing, dancing and maybe some vaudevillian theater.   Then, radio came along and although it wasn’t the same visual experience as theater, you could listen to stories in the comfort of your living room, or parlor as it was probably known in those days.  This was a marvelous technical invention as it allowed listeners to create scenes in their own minds drawn from the sketches of audio only broadcasts.  The apex of influence of this medium was probably HG Well’s 1938 broadcast of The War Of The Worlds when people were led to believe that a Martian attack was under way.

But when Television came along after WW2, entertainment made another great leap forward.  No longer did people have to suffice with just audio, or with silent films at the movie theater, you could have voice and video in your own home.  However, the technology was still ahead of the content and despite classic pioneering shows including Milton Berle and Lucille Ball, most of the early offerings were rather banal.  Why? Well apparently most talented writers were working on real entertainment; Broadway plays and motion pictures.

But as in all things, the ability to make money from this new medium spawned an explosion in the amount and quality of content available on the small screen in the years to come.  Thus advertisers willing to pay to hawk their goods drew people into the business of putting out popular content.  During this time, the output of content fell to 3 major broadcasters who had a monopoly on all kinds of entertainment including news and sports.

This was pretty much the model for another 30 years until a guy named Ted Turner decided that audiences were willing to accept partitioned and specialized entertainment, thus heralding cable channels with narrow, specific fields of interest.  This shrunk the audience and influence of the big 3 networks.  To this day, you can still find a midget basket weaving channel or similar on your two hundred channel cable guide.  The next evolution was streaming.  This is essentially the same as cable channels except that you pay extra for ‘premium content’.  It’s like Only Fans, but non pornographic.  This caters to people who want to control their entertainment and on their schedules. It also contributed to the phenomenon of binge watching.

But the real 800 pound gorilla of entertainment today is Social media:  Instagram posts, Tik-Tok videos.  To the degree that most everyone on earth is able to have access to a mobile phone, they are also all consumers of Instagram or Tik Tok videos.  These are the platforms of our time. They are comprised of very short clips on any given topic.  For good or bad, these platforms truly shrink the expanse of the planet. Unlike the history of entertainment which has always been in the hands of the few, now EVERYONE is a content creator and the audience is truly vast.  Unlike all other avenues of entertainment, there are no boundaries for content, nor for that matter, taste. But these are not purely artistic and expressive works; these short videos are all now made with commercial intent.  As some may know, there are entire ‘farms’ in China which produce only short social media content for commercial use.

As with TV a couple of generations ago, everyone is looking for a way to capitalize on people’s appetite for amusement. Grand oeuvres won’t be found here, but you will find mostly themes of humor or prurience. And it’s lucrative. If somehow you are able to catch lightning in a bottle and acquire millions of view, you would be an internet sensation and all these views translates into real cash.  These ‘influencers’ make thousands or hundreds of thousands depending on the volume of clicks. They will benefit from affiliate marketing and branding.  Some of the top influencers are Cristiana Ronaldo and of course the Kardashians.   But even below that tier, many content makers can make very comfortable livings by simply putting out banal things and often simply following established formulas for content.  Who hasn’t scrolled through cute animal videos or food recipes?

Interestingly, the audience and sweet spot for marketing is and always has been to teenagers, both boys and girls as indicated by the people with the largest audiences.  But it’s also a powerful marketing tool for the entire spectrum of ages and there are probably no businesses today that don’t have a social media presence. Thus influential media has moved away from the gatekeepers of the past.  Now, anyone with a phone can influence the minds of millions as if they were stars. This is a great egalitarian platform.  So instead of professionals, people are essentially entertaining themselves!  But while this platform can reveal great minds when they otherwise would never have had the opportunity, something tells me it’s more like water…which always finds its lowest level.