Scripted Lives

If Only it Was Just Kabuki Theater 

There is a strong likelihood that we are trapped in a live action stage production with well thought-out character arcs and plot lines that keep us captivated and reeling from episode to episode, season to season, unaware that there will be a final act. 

Most realize that politics is Kabuki Theater; cynical, meaningless attention grabbing drama that distracts and entertains but achieves nothing. But, if current events increasingly feel more and more like the twisting plot line in a bad Netflix original, I’m suggesting it’s because it really is a scripted story.

Not a Matrix scenario or artificial simulation nonsense and I don’t mean metaphorically. Rather, there is reason to believe that extending to at least before World War II, major events, key people, and conflicts are literally carefully casted and constructed stories being played out on a global scale.   

Creating Tactical Fake News

Details of the CIA’s Cold War project Operation Mockingbird are easy to find, with its vast paid network of journalists and editors being matter-of-factly acknowledged but dismissed with a hand-wave as having been necessary to “beat the Commies.” We were assured Mockingbird ended.

But, the continuation of State sponsored storycrafting and propaganda to influence the public and decision makers has clearly continued. 

We’ve all seen the compilations of dozens of news anchors and other talking heads repeating word for word, line for line, the new twist in the plotline to make sure even the most casual consumer is tracking on a story’s key developments.  

We all remember the Middle East agitprop stories with the exquisitely evil villains and the regular guys (and gals like Jessica Lynch) who stood up to them—babies torn from incubators, exotic Yellow Cake transactions, WMDs in the hands of mad mullahs, hijackers with box openers and tear-jerking final calls to loved ones…Let’s Roll! 

Consider too how seamlessly the story progressed from 2014’s original, Hands Up Don’t Shoot to the franchise’s exciting 2020 climax, I Can’t Breathe. Think about it in terms of a morality play with specific character types and necessary genre conventions all leading to the inevitable pre-fabbed conclusion. 

It is impossible for this to be merely reporting or the result of autonomous editorial decisions among fellow travelers who are just playing to the zeitgeist. It is exactly what it appears to be.

But there is another level of storycraft beyond creating and coordinating this type of short term tactical Wag the Dog propaganda. This higher level calls for deeper long term strategic goals to be achieved and B-level hacks won’t cut it. You need pros. 

Calling in the Experts

In 1984, the FBI investigated Tom Clancy because his thrillers (specifically, The Hunt for Red October) were a little too detailed; the Feds suspected government sources were leaking. 

After the Baltimore-born Clancy’s death, the Baltimore Sun (link) used the Freedom of Information Act to look deeper into this rumor.

The FBI sent the reporter back 46 pages, “…Including several redacted pages of background checks federal authorities had conducted. But the checks weren’t made because the FBI was suspicious. They were begun because the White House had a special job for Clancy…

A July 1989 memo from the FBI said the bureau was asked to investigate Clancy’s background because he was being considered for a consultant position with the White House Space Council.”   

By itself an interesting anecdote, but now that puts Clancy in context of other leading authors who also worked with the State: John Le Carré (MI5 and MI6), Frederick Forsyth (MI6), Ernest Hemingway (worked for the KGB), Roald Dahl (British Security Coordination), Peter Matthiessen (CIA), Graham Greene (MI6), and Ian Fleming (British Naval Intelligence). 

More recently, the French army created a team of science fiction writers to help imagine future threats with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security doing the same thing after 9/11. 

It is beyond a doubt that governments employ creative and technical talent as consultants or to directly shape big ideas with the intent of regional and global impact. The real question is how ambitious are these storytelling projects and who is really directing them?

Flooding the Zone 

In the 1930s as part of the New Deal, the Federal Writers’ Project (WPA) was created to provide jobs for out-of-work writers. These writers were tasked with many jobs, from the creation of state guidebooks, to the Slave Narrative Collection, to ambitious and time sensitive endeavors like the chronicling of the life stories of aging Americans who lived at the turn of the century, people who met Billy the Kid, survived the 1871 Chicago fire, who were pioneers journeying to the West, etc…

But it turns out that a great many of these out-of-work authors and researchers were also employed at the outset to write anti-American propaganda to the point that the House Un-American Activities Committee opened full-scale investigations as to who these authors really were, who they were answering to, and what exactly they were being asked to do. In fact, the WPA may just as likely have been an elaborate cover primarily to plant talented storytellers throughout the system.

It is beyond the scope of this article to explore how the Federal Writers Project was weaponized but this excerpt in a book by Martin Dies, The Trojan Horse in America (1940) gives you an idea of what was going on: 

“Stalin could not have done better by his American friends and agents. Relief projects swarmed with Communists – Communists who were not only recipients of needed relief but who were entrusted by New Deal officials with high administrative positions in the projects. In one Federal Writers’ Project in New York, one third of the writers were members of the Communist Party. This was proven by their own signatures. Many witnesses have testified that it was necessary for W.P.A. workers to join the Workers Alliance – high-pressure lobby run by the Communist Party – in order to get or retain their jobs…. Several hundred Communists held advisory or administrative positions in the W.P.A. projects.”

As we close in on a century of the State fielding an army of writers and loyal pens across every facet of the culture, something no doubt mirrored or even coordinated with other countries, the extent, sophistication, and impact of this initiative is mind boggling. 

Daring to Storyboard History

We are wired for story. We have an irresistible biological attraction for tales. This is a primordially understood truth. Myths play an essential role in unifying a people so as to anchor them in history and give them collective future-focused purpose. American myth stories were created because they needed to be created and then promulgated, from countless little enhancing details (The Life of Washington, was first published in 1800 and was an instant bestseller but the cherry tree myth did not appear until the book’s fifth edition in 1806) to evolving and concocting foundational ideas (Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852, was published in serial form in the newspaper The National Era).

What is new is the harnessing of the unprecedented omnipotent power and reach that technology, mass publishing and electronic media now offers the State. 

What is new is the knowledge gained over the last two hundred years of being able to observe the impact of efforts to affect human behavior at a mass scale via the engineering of the great political and cultural revolutions (from De Sade and the French Revolution to Marcuse and the Summer of Love). We’ve learned a lot. 

What is new is the consolidation of political, economic, and cultural channels of influence into the hands of the very few.  

What is new is the ability to scrub and rewrite history while creating a new myth for the “global village” to believe in.

This is Promethean level power. It would be impossible for it not to be wielded.

Rather than being far-fetched, it is more logical to conclude that authoring the future at the highest most audacious levels imaginable would be attempted. The effort of a very few committed men daring to write and direct a new meta history of the world is not only possible, but probable. 

Compartmentalizing this effort by tasking the vestiges of the WPA, smart GS10s or 100 Tom Clancys to write as directed, oblivious to the existence of a master script, would be easy. Corporate, military, and intelligence operate on a need-to-know basis with those not needing to know being able to contribute to complex hidden goals all the time. 

As to why “they” would want to do this. Again, irresistible power is….irresistible. It makes little difference if the motivation is malice and deception or leans toward a Grand Inquisitor explanation, that it is best for us to live and die happily in ignorance.

Either way, I believe the Bard was fundamentally correct: All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.