We had mentioned things were going to get more complicated and a little more weird than they were last week. Example? There had been reports that an announcement would be coming on Sunday about a change in the campaign line-up that was immediately contradicted by earnest declarations that everything was fine and would continue as before.
Since the announcements were made in conflict between schedules and agendas, it appears there was some sort of discussion not held in public audio or visible view. The results were abrupt. Despite the significance of them being as large as the one LBJ made a gazillion years ago, the announcement was made not on White House stationary, but via a single-sheet fed into a scanner. Or downloaded from a computer screen in the basement of a beachfront home in Delaware.
The declaration of support for the Vice President was made moments later, though it was separate and issued by whoever does the Twitter formerly known as something else for the person who allegedly wrote the longer note.
The text of both seemed definitive enough, though a little odd. There was unusual honesty in the phrase “party and country” that was used. We all understand there is partisan loyalty that drives much of this, but one could have reasonable doubt as to why the term ‘party’ would come before ‘country.’
You can see our difficulty on The Patio as QWERTY communicators, and not just in what fonts, capitals and bold print to use to attempt to capture some nuance and truth.
We knew it was going to be tough when the word first started, which a layer of messaging atop the controversy of messaging streams that changed so dramatically with the Debate Disaster, and the subsequent plans that spewed out from that moment in time.
We had become immersed in the attempt to deconstruct the events surrounding the attempted assassination. Our Legal Section had advised us to stay away from any commentary that could be construed as directly supporting (or attacking) any of the three major narrative streams. All, and all variants, seem to have significant flaws.
You know the essence of them. The guy who got shot actually orchestrated it. Or, the mainstream one, that the assailant, through some unfortunate and unintentional events, was in a position to make the shots that killed or injured three people before being swiftly eliminated.
Then, the dark stream, that the organizations entrusted with safety and security managed the almost successful attempt to murder the protected figure while deflecting blame.
You can see why Legal is in a similar knot to the Creative staff. We were still immersed in the curious release of information. One of the most striking was innocuous in the moment, even reasonable. Why was someone washing down the roof?
We understand and respect the need to tidy up the macabre residue, but would have expected at least a demonstration of an organized attempt to retain forensic evidence of the event. Common stuff, like path of the fatal projectile. Splatter from impact, fabric residue from crawling. That sort of thing.
Not a guy with a hose before some sharing of evidence of collection of evidence.
So, we are drawn back to what you can find in Wiki about FRAGPLANS. Those are not our capital letters intended to provoke your reaction. Though it did ours. The term is what we in military planning called the process of accounting for the branches and sequences of life’s motion through changing circumstance.
Wiki says it like this: “A planning fragment contains a plan for an activity or series of activities. Rather than being a complete, holistic, end-to-end plan as presented in an Operation Plan, it is instead a pluggable, planning component which may then be assembled with other fragments to rapidly construct a complete plan.”
That better describes what we think we are seeing, Legal said we could use ‘italics,’ but to avoid CAPITAL LETTERS or bold type for emphasis as sensationalist hyperbole.
They say that would only amplify the confusion, but that is, of course, part of several FRAGPLANs in progress, you know? There may be more to all this that will help clarify what is going on. But thankfully, the roof will be nice and fresh as a place to start.
Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com