The Alt Radical Bleak and The Art of Confrontation or how working class and honest poor whites became an oppressed minority group

Confrontation Art Scene

Author’s note: this is the third and, for now, final piece on the ARB.
– Marlow

Downtown big city cable, broadcast and print media on both coasts had fallen prey by the latter part of the 20th century to covering set piece public conflict whose outcomes, be they good or bad, fell into one of their favored storylines and values. It had become so common that it was routine daily practice in the 21st century on national and local cable and broadcast TV as well as the 24/7 internetted mainstream media outlets and bloggers.

They didn’t know what to do without it. The folks in NYC’s Rockefeller Plaza or downtown Hollywood talked the talk all the time, but they didn’t known any more about what was going on in flyover country than they did about Mars. They didn’t know nor care where to look. They didn’t even know whom to ask. What could they do? So they kept on keepng on.

Well . . . they ended up using favored group bloggers and website editors who echoed their values as sources . . . right . . . They sat back and waited for crowdsourced stories to come rolling in with certified angry folks who were oppressed, their militant oppressors, guaranteed frustrated and disavantaged ethnic youth, women of all colors, starving infants, and so on. Then they had their confrontation with its de rigeur ugly scenes, sometimes violent, between the good and the bad.

If it was outrageous enough, if they shook up their viewership enough, gaining enough sticky eyeballs and online clicks, the story might last them two or more newscycles. Worried storyless producers whose stomachs were twisted up in sheer physical knots would smile shit-eating grins, when they were gifted with these guaranteed successful, real deal goods.

They knew how to play this – granting the righteous oppressed a long, in their 90 second story spot industry view, window in which to frame their grievances and request reparations, change, justice and so on. To do otherwise communities and the nation wouldn’t know about these horrors and, more importantly, their clicks, ratings and carefully planned out careers would crater.

They were geniuses in the art of covering these confrontations and had the post event shakedown of governments, large corporations, small businesses, and key influencers to overreact in their favor down to laboratory science of continuous public pillorying and shaming. If need be, they would frame the oppressed’s conditions as so grievous and threatening that it slyly legitimized violent redressal by the oppressed in the face of continued inaction. This was a not-so-subtle extortion to effect change. Sadly, after almost half a century of their art in support of their favorite causes, it had lost its hold on many parts of their audience.

They couldn’t believe it when they realized their power to effect change started to diminsh. It was a perverse demonstration of a reverse Tinberbelle effect, where the more you believe in something, the more likely it is to vanish. They whispered to themselves, “We’ve changed the national dialogue, fixed many past injustices, created jobs for millions of the hardest to employ and other new problems were well on the way to being solved.” They ran their business as if it were a free catering service to whatever cause or oppressed group du jour was then in vogue.

Logos of past Causas du jour

Fellow travellers of these media giants, universty journalism departments, practically gave classes in these confrontation and shakedown techniques. They preached these elites higher values, views of oppressor history, and networked aspirants into outside support systems to carry on la causa. Students were briefed as if they were Alpha Strike nugget pilots before they flew their raids over North Vietnam.

They were taught to rehearse entire story arcs cinematically in their heads, with stock characters, scene and issue framing, landmarks, idea and character development, approach and set ups, and finally the climatic good triumphs scene where the viewer would have a first person co-pilot view of the confrontation’s every twist and turn. Sometimes they would be fortunate to have themselves in their story involved in a getaway scene from the bad folks or things.

These budding journalists were taught to shape how their coverage would impact Americans in their living and dining rooms. They were taught how to dress for their appearances in interviews or on camera. There was a need to appear authentic, synmpathetic and impartial to those whom they covered as well as those to whom they were talking across the print and media divide.

They needed to be talkers, storytellers or convesationalists, not didactic professors, boring drones or academic types. Feelings not facts were their stock and trade. In some ways it was vaudeville. At least that was what some of the more perceptive students saw.

Having an infrequent sense of humor was important but it had to be well planned out, right down to the last detail. One couldn’t risk their carefully crafted images of serious concern for the critical social issues of our times.

Pretty soon these methods were adopted in newsrooms and TV stations across the country. Everybody was out covering small town confrontations and injustices and shaking down local powers in the story’s aftermath, to see if they could win the victories the big city boys had won nationally. By the mid 2010s there must have been fifty to sixty different groups getting the oppressed group coverage treatment and the subsequent militant rent seeking.

LEAK TO US, PLEASE!

Proven go-to confrontation story tactics included but were not limited to

– soliciting leaks openly, now it seems digitally via SecureDrop
– openly confrontational interviews, oress conferences and Q&A sessions
– ambush style questioning at the subject’s work place, front or back yards, front door or in restaurants
– multiple cameras
– hidden cameras and microphones
– secret collaboration with erstwhile competitors
– repetitive daily stories
– dumpster diving for data
– deliberate sowing of chaos and false info based questions
– having allies not just sources
– black and white, good and bad, no grey
– find and expose system failures/injustice

It quickly became a standard American cultural custom, like 70s Sunday morning news talk TV shows and divorce court hearings. The shakedown was the message. Everyone on the inside got it. The confrontation was only the road not the destination. Whenever anybody other than the designated approved oppressed groups tried the confrontation/shakedown tactic, they ran into problems, because elite trend setters and arbiters on the coasts and in academia had to approve their inclusion pre-event.

The impact of this was accentuated by the fact that most of us didn’t read the papers, so at best we were uninformed. Journalists did, but they were often misinformed. Reporters strove to be first to report something, so we were faced with a rush to be first-est with the worst-est. Never mind the truth, context, trends and so forth.

So, we were left with an overabundance of first reports and pseudo facts and opinions thereon These first reports were often revised later, but the initial opinions were never retracted. No one cared anymore about the integrity of the process let alone the reporting. They didn’t care who it hurt, they didn’t care who was destroyed. They just said it, sold it and repeated it.

The Goal of Confrontation Art – The Shakedown

The explosion of cable TV channels and the webbed internet during the 21st century changed this game forever. No longer were media outlets few in number or similar in world view and values. Now everyone had a channel, outlet, or website. Everyone had a champion.

Slowly at first did these new content purveyors learn, embrace and perfect the confrontation/shakedown game to their purposes. That changed in the early 2010s.

By then the most successful of these ARB newbies had become professional mourners of good times past . . . their unsung theme song was wonderful to the ears and on the heart strings of the audience . . . “those were the days my friends, we thought they’d never end, we’d sing and dance forever and a day, we’d live the life we choose, we’d fight and never lose, for we were young and sure to have our way.”

As certified wailers, the ARB made great show of heretofore unknown yet great losses in America’s fly over country. It didn’t matter what the issue was or whatever their targeted audience was angry about, they were there to show the confrontation, start the shakedown and get their politically inert viewers/readers to start manning their artillery emplacements and flak the coastal elites as they passed high overhead of fly over country. They wanted their audience to no longer catch flak but to start shooting back. Politically speaking.

The coastal “old” media was caught flatfooted. It stood there with its mouths agape, still playing their old tricks again and again, and thinking . . . “we’ve done it before and we’ll do it once again.”

They figured that no one would follow up and press the counterissues raised by these newbies. But this time was different. ARB follow up was consistent, loud, controversial, unforgiving and down right nasty. They were allowed no time for restful sleep and new idea storming. Every day was a new raucous show they hadn’t anticipated. All the way up to election night and beyond.

Each campaign day ended with old media members asking themselves “What really happened today? Well, he lost more support than she did. Had to. That’s what happened. Hmmmmmm . . . like maybe these Alt Radical Bleakers and their candidate are as dumb we thought after all.”

After election night, the Alt Radical Bleakers made a discovery. There was an extra dividend to their tactics. It was a delicious, creamy, chocolately cheesecake. It wasn’t just that their candidate won and showed the “old” media that they meant business. It wasn’t just that they now had real influence. There was something sweet that happened right there on election night. They made the “old” media quake with fear. You could see it on their faces for months. Even now it peeks through their indignant rants about whatever long developing affront they are covering.

“Old” media people began to realize for the first time that working men and women, particularly the high school educated ones, provoked in them a deep fear with their masculinity and anger. Quite a revelation.

Our society and political system as a matter of practicality demanded the confrontation/shakedown ritual to effect change. The electorate demanded it in equal parts educational, enlivening and entertaining. Subconsciously or not, for our leaders, confrontations have become a key ritual. It is the way our system now works, standard operating procedure.

Ninety-nine percent of the time the old ruling elites, their media supporters and their ideas were in no danger whatsoever. The ARB understood through and through that their unconventional shakedown was a tactical procedure or game. No actual damage or danger or hurt would occur if things went according to the script.

Alt Right Bleakers were a long way from being willing to be violent, to be revolutionaries let alone fascists. 99.99% of them weren’t. A lot of the old media seemed to think then and still do now that the ARBers were ready to rise up and follow the white supremacists and other fringe right wingnuts into violence at a moment’s notice. None of them actually admired let alone supported these fringe folks. Old media types always seemed to think they had the ARB’s leaders, approaches and philosophies and goals identified and cataloged, and they were always wrong.

Watching and listening to old news media round tables now 10 months after the election is like watching college students attending a 60s happening complete with spiritual awakenings and revolutionary discoveries. Pure serene toned voices intermix with righteous indignation about the latest ARB affronts. Propriety prevents them from on camera clucking approvals and expressions of right on, brothas and sistahs. When they finish, the moderator looks up at the camera in a most serious way, with chin up and steely eyes, and closes the discussion the way a preacher closes his well thumbed Bible after his Sunday sermon to the congregation.

During the ensuing commercial break, I have often suspected that the panel participants whisper to each other “Far out” . . . “Too much” . . . “Wow, that was heavy” . . . “Groovy”

The ARB, like the RB, is full of Jeffersonian individualists. Sadly the old media treats them like a cracker judge from the 1940s south would treat the most despised accused in his courtroom. I wonder if they ever will catch onto the irony of them sounding like some middling cornpone KKKers on the bedsheet and torch burning circuit.

The confrontations and the shakedowns brought some of the more talented ARBers something more. It brought them celebrity, more and higher paying placements for their outlets and for some of the luckiest ones jobs in the newly forming government. You can turn on a TV now, and there is some formerly unknown ARB type who was last seen exiting a 7-11 late at night with a sack full of Red Bull cans and a bag of Cheetos headed back to his basement apartment to finish the next day’s internet articles. There he is now on the screen, a leader, a spokesperson for the honest poor in a new suit and conservatively striped neck tie. Political bloggers, even those on the fringe are like ugly buildings, tycoons and whores — they all get respectable if they last long enough.

Let us all welcome This Latest Greatest and Newest Thing.

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