Vincent J. Curtis
5 September 2016
The alternative narrative is a technique of lying. An alternative narrative is a story line that
is offered in competition to a theory or a reason why something came about.
For example, the “blame the video” narrative completely
flummoxed the investigation into the Benghazi fiasco. It still balls things up. Nobody can talk about how it came to be that
an American ambassador was put into a defenseless diplomatic facility in a
secondary city in Libya and wound up getting killed by an al-Qaeda affiliate
without discussion the video. The video
had nothing to do with Benghazi, but with the cover-up. But “it was the video” worked as a
distraction and is still working.
Hillary Clinton has for more than a year now brought up the
name of Colin Powell as a person who did the same thing she did in respect of
emails. But “Clinton indicated that she
understood Powell’s comments to mean that any work-related communications would
be government records, and she stated that Powell’s comments did not enter into
her decision to use a personal email account.”
By raising the name of Colin Powell, a Republican, Hillary
and her coterie of spokesliars drag red herrings across the trail that lead to
a decision that she made, and that she accepted full responsibility
for (except that she isn't). Powell’s comment did not enter into
her decision to use a personal email account.
That comment would include his warning that work-related communications
on privately owned devices would be government records.
It takes some dexterity to raise Powell’s name as her
working example, then to ignore his warning and then say that what Powell told
her did not enter into her decision. The
image of Powell is first created, and then destroyed in the details. But because the news media are, in general,
not that mentally dextrous and are in the tank for Hillary besides, nobody
presses the point.
Another example of the technique is the Democrats habit of
accusing the Republicans of what Democrats would do if they were in the
Republican’s shoes. The Democrats pronounced
themselves pleased that the FBI released all of their notes on Hillary’s
interview because they didn’t want poor Hillary to be the victim of selective
Republican leaks after those notes were shown the House Oversight
Committee. (The Democrats were undone by
the release. Nobody would have believed
what the FBI found, and the Democrats would have been better of saying these
were selective leaks.)
The technique of saying declaring a conclusion that the
facts won’t support, indeed demonstrate the opposite, is a clear example
of planting an alternative narrative.
Like Hillary saying that the FBI exculpated her. Like saying that because the evidence is not
conclusive – only smoke, no fire; no smoking gun – that Hillary committed no
crime or did not do the thing of which she is accused. The fact that James Comey thought that he
could not obtain a conviction against Hillary for reckless endangerment of
national secrets in order to hide her continued involvement with the Clinton
Foundation doesn’t mean that Hillary didn’t recklessly endanger national
secrets, or that she didn’t maintain an ongoing involvement with the Clinton
Foundation while Secretary of State.
The fact that the FBI found no evidence that Hillary’s
server had been hacked, doesn’t mean it wasn’t hacked, especially given that
Hillary wiped the server and destroyed the emails before handing the server
over to the FBI. Hillary destroyed the
evidence, and the absence of evidence is held up as indicting that the thing
never happened.
It’s an old technique in politics to say, “I am be bald, but
you are fat.” The Democrats lack even
this creativity. If Hillary is a liar,
Trump is a liar. If Hillary has Russian and
Saudi connections then so does Trump.
This technique works because the poor, half-attentive listener gets
bewildered by the cross-accusations that are identical. Accusing Trump and Republicans of the same
thing of which the Democrats are guilty is a means of making smoke, or
squirting ink, and obscuring who is guilty to the inattentive observer.
This last Sunday provided several examples of the use of
alternative narratives as a means of defending Hillary’s rudderless, powerless
derelict of a campaign adrift on the winds and tides. These defenders are like destroyers trying to
ward off danger to the capital ship of the fleet.
Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace interviewed Rep Gregory
Meeks (D-NY) who is head of the Congressional Black Caucus. He contended that Trump’s outreach to the
black community was “not real.”
Wallace began with, “Do you
give Donald Trump any credit at all for going into an inner city and
meeting with African-Americans?”
Meeks replied, “No.
Because it’s not real….” And the he launched into a talking point on a
tangential matter.
“Do you hear anything in the very different Republican ideas
about school choice, about enterprise zones, about renegotiating trade deals
that are taking jobs out of America’s inner cities? Do you hear anything in those Republican
ideas that you think may be kind of an interesting alternative?”
“No…..” And then he launched into an alternative storyline.
Isn’t the crime bill of the 1990’s part of the Clinton
record?
“I think, if you put this in perspective of what was taking
place at that time….Much of that was taken out of context….” Never once a yes or no.
Neerra Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress,
was a most hateful guest panelist on FNS.
You have to wonder what she was doing there, being a known Clinton
spokesliar from an organization known for its vicious spokeslying. Her technique that she used on Chris Wallace
was to lie, defame, and filibuster Chris’s interruptions and attempts to regain
control of the discussion.
The method of an alternative narrative often reduces to:
lie, interrupt, filibuster, and defame.
A bare description of this method has taken up so much time and
space, that I shall have to return to it later to give it justice.
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