re: #68 Belafon

It’ll end up like Ted Lieu said, just like Al Capone’s vault.

Well…no.

The vault involved a final reveal—there are contents or there aren’t contents, in a direct, material way. If Geraldo had doubled down and speculated that the contents had been stolen or moved, or specifically moved to discredit him, that would be closer to the current situation. But that’s still an imperfect comparison; at some point, the vault situation is about material evidence…a physical, made-of-matter thing is or isn’t.

The memo situation is scary because it’s specifically exploiting the slippery nature of what constitutes veracity with regards to documentation and just plain words in general.

The memo is valid in its claims and assertions should be something carefully assessed with a neutral disposition and with recognition of the fact it’s (1) an opinion piece, (2) that its meaningfulness hinges entirely on how it uses cited intelligence to reach its conclusions. That would the equivalent of “the vault is full” or “the vault is empty” verification.

But the whole point of the memo is to poison the well of veracity. Following the logic of the above paragraph, it makes no sense to circulate or hype an interpretation without knowing what’s interpreted. But that’s what’s happening because the goal is not veracity. Rather, the hyperbole, the emotionality, and the keying into an existing framework of both conspiracy theory and partisan alliance is being done to create verisimilitude—truthiness—specifically to misdirect as many people as possible.

And there’s a lot of folks who will participate in their own misdirection. Some are cynics, and will echo anything they see as advancing their wants; some feel that affiliation and emotion are more valid than documentation and analysis, some literally don’t know how veracity works and have never thought about it.

No, the memo won’t work on everyone, but it will keeping the people already gulled, gulled, and many of those folks will invest deeper in the idea that everyone questioning Trump is part of a conspiracy. It’s just another feint in a series of feints, but there is an intended cumulative effect to this kind of repetition of narrative. One is makes the story true in the mind of the person who listens to the story; the second is that it reinforces how truth is a product of narratives by the right kind of people.

This thing we’re watching is exploitation of priming: get your story out first, and wager that a big group of people will do zero followup…a lot of folks now “know” what’s in the memo and will never, ever read it, or read any commentary.