The Social media PoPKru election

The November 19 online edition of the ‘New Yorker’ e’zine makes a plaintive “cultural comment”, on what writer, Nathan Heller calls: “The Failure of Facebook Democracy”. He roots his argument in the earlier public prognostications of a respected jurist in the USA: “If people are sorted into enclaves and niches, what will happen to their views?” he wondered. “What are the eventual effects on democracy?” The Jurist frets about the “Polarization of extremes” and the probable algorithmically impacts of ‘Likes’. In other words what happens when the “People” actually speak.
 
Heller then observes that: “ This month has provided a jarring answer. The unexpected election of Donald Trump is said to owe debts to both niche extremism and rampant misinformation.” … As if Mrs. Clinton, his opponent, was herself innocent of such debt.
 
What a curious cluster of statements. They do however summarise the shockwave running through global media for the past two weeks: whining about the death of meaningful factual evidence and the rise of opinion based reality… whatever that means. And as if they themselves were somehow paragons of virtue when it comes to the dissemination of information. In effect “The people” have chosen to believe their own lies and not those pumped by the press. Tut tut: Norty people [sic].
 
As Moises Naim proclaims, “Being in charge isn’t what it used to be” in his best selling “End of Power”.
 
And … in truth it has been an amazing, tumultuous and ultimately saddened fortnight.
 
Sad for the demise of an icon: well certainly for me. The Late Leonard Cohen: poet and muso extraordinaire. His ‘So Long Maryann’ was the second song that I sang for my equally late Grandmother-in-law at our first meeting: during the opening years of the seventies. [The first was Peter Sarstedt’s “Take off your clothes let me see what it is that you’re hiding… Don’t be afraid you have nothing to fear from my eyes”.] May they both rest in peace, no matter where each thought they might go.
 
It was amazing because of a confluence of previously unconsidered [so-called] Dark Swan events, arriving like the proverbial perfect shit storm. Shock election results [for some]. Shock “Transformation” events [for some] as our National rugby side have become the equals of the national Football team which on the rare occasion that they actually won an international during this past fortnight immediately fired the coach.
 
The Americans elected their first ever ‘working class’, Billionaire social media, reality TV star President. A few hours later the shit storm that followed sent a ‘tsunami’ washing along the side wall of the range of hills that separate north from south in Jakari’s home town Jozi. The Blog’s pad got 58 millimetres in roughly 20 minutes, while the suburbs on the end of the ‘mountain’ got nearly 160 mm in the same time. We get bad storms in summer… Highveld blazers they are of the kind I wrote about in the ‘Buffalo Hunters’ [Publ’ 1996]. This was like three storms in one.
 
It was, essentially, a wall of rain that swept in from the northwest and then slid left along the ridges called respectively Westcliff, Parktown and Linksfield and poured that deluge over Bedfordview, Senderwood and Edenvale.
 It turned a passing section of the ring road highway into a sudden raging torrent, sinking a logjam of congested traffic into a sudden unexpected quagmire of metres deep raging water. Homeward returning commuters found themselves heroically balancing on the roof tops of their wildly plunging, madly prancing, formerly beloved motor vehicles become masses of uncontrollable steel boxes; forming human chains, to help fellow commuters head to the safety of the highway sidewalls: An awesome, truly amazing event.
 
Then more hours later an ice storm hit part of a suburb of a coastal town…. Hail that fell in such a mass concentration that literally blocks of ice engaged with each other. Later still, on the other side of the planet a city on the east side of New Zealand, was devastated by a level 7 earthquake…. the third such earthquake to wreak havoc on the planet in the past month.
 
For us here in Jozi it was sad too for the number of people who were drowned in their cars [and elsewhere] while driving along a disgracefully inadequately guttered highway. A little three year old girl child has yet to be found after falling from a tree in which she was attempting to shelter when a well littered stream that loiters through the north eastern part of the city, became an instant raging flood wall of water: pouring roofs, cars, bricks n rubble, dogs, cats and a years worth of uncollected garbage, accumulated from a year’s worth of garbage worker strikes and strident downtime…
 
A voice on the radio called it “a one hundred year event”. And of course for those who have listened to the Jonker Memorandum they will know that ‘one hundred year’ events are starting to pile up in an ominous fashion…. And I thought I was writing fiction.
 
And so to the month’s tumultuous main two hundred year event: The election of Donald Trump: the world’s first working class, superstar billionaire, Social Media derived President of the USA. And so we enter the era of Tronald Dump. Wow…. we certainly got dumped on… and would prefer that those damm Yankees keep their own Dumpster under control so our commuters can drive home without having to take a bath.
 

Was this bloggist surprised by the result…? No I had predicted it the previous day in a lesson on ‘decision theory’, with my end of day senior class: timed as the election vote was starting on the American subcontinent. Among other things I had pointed out that in a long life of following political events with a trained eye, I had never experienced an event of this nature in which every form of respectable to mainstream to fringe media, of every shape, format and description with which I had any contact, gave one party a ninety percent chance of winning versus the other, who got the ten… grudgingly.
 
Using Mr. Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknown” SM factor… the alleged “Enclave and Niche” effect referred to by the New Yorker piece, we decided: the class and I, that, Mr. Trump’s chances were probably more like 60%; as the disintermediation effect of an uncontrolled stream of conflicting viewpoints opinions and rampant disinformation poured over the borders of this new quagmire called cyberspace. Truly a place as chaotic as out highway became for that half an hour.
 
In fact I did at times wonder if there was more than one contender taking part in the election, so parochial and pointless the entire exercise became… and we don’t even live there and have our own horror stories to endure. Regarding the election in a distant foreign country one was constantly reminded of a classic movie about a couple who buy a used house, the renovation of which leads to a bitter battle, in which they fight over the kids, the dogs and the nuclear button.
 

So how does someone everyone, including the house leader of the Party that he allegedly represented, and in fact pretty well his entire Party establishment; and, seemingly, the bulk of the supposedly supportive media, he represented: that literally everyone wanted to see beaten: become the ultimate winning “little guy”?
 
It could only be the latest quirk in what is now so rampant a revolutionary phenomenon, responsible [allegedly] for respectively the [so-called] ‘Arab Spring’, the upset British Conservative Party election victory in 2015, the subsequent infamous Brexit decision, and now, newly atomized humanity gives us Donald Trump a name that would be a byword for what he has done, in a fifties comic book … but who exists in reality: and as the comic meme goes Tronald Dump’s a Tsunami.
 
In closing, I note that the people, whom Mrs. Clinton called “Deplorables” in a moment that probably killed her campaign; and about whom the media broadly sneered about, as “bigoted, racist, sexist” and whatever other fashionable slurs became momentarily abused , alternately people whom I call the “PoP Kru or ‘Pissed off People’, may not be written off as random hillbillies and general layabouts…
 
That map of the USA became almost a solid red with a thin couple of blue smears along part of each coastline, where seemingly the half of the country that voted for Mrs. Clinton resided. What an awesome comment on the vanity of failure.
 
One hears that much of that crowd that voted for “Change” were of the generation that was Leonard Cohen’s, and additionally that so-called Baby Boomer generation to which I and Mr. Trump and Mr. Cinton and Mr. [Dubya] Bush ironically all belong, and who have continually changed the world during our slowly ending era of existence. And for those that either don’t remember or were perhaps not born it does look as though we are the generation that is about to change the world again, helped by vast swathes of disaffected Millenials.
 
So I call Mr. Trump’s election victory not only a social media victory but also as the initials [s.m.] imply, a ‘Schumpeterian Moment’*: In other words One of those unanticipated ‘Dark Swan’ events that changes everything, irrevocably. Such a disruption can either lead to something better, or, as frequently, to decades of chaos: as it did with our own s.m. “moment” shock election result of 1948. Either way the die is cast the game’s in play.
 
Of course following our own President’s example `Mr. Trump could spend the next four year in endless courtroom prevarication, as did one of his predecessors Mr. Clinton, as those being shoved from the trough fight to get their place back: unknowing that one can never step twice into the same river.
 
He may however break the massive logjam that has locked up economic performance for nearly a decade; and is exerting a relentless grip on the rest of the planet: tightening into a massive debt founded death lock.
 
If he can manage to loosen that, then he will go down to posterity as a man whose name became a Trump card… If not… Then perhaps my Jonker Memorandum ceases again to be fiction and the game may well be lost for some further generations to resurrect.

 
*[With thanks to Professor Nupen, Wits, Pol Sci 101, 1967 for his endless harangues on the Schumpeterian’ power of disruption’… named for Joseph Schumpeter who first wrote about it a century ago. ]

The Dumpster Years : A Schumpeterian season

The November 19 online edition of the ‘New Yorker’ e’zine makes a plaintive “cultural comment”, on what writer, Nathan Heller calls: “The Failure of Facebook Democracy”. He roots his argument in the earlier public prognostications of a respected jurist in the USA: “If people are sorted into enclaves and niches, what will happen to their views?” he wondered. “What are the eventual effects on democracy?” The Jurist frets about the “Polarization of extremes” and the probable algorithmically impacts of ‘Likes’.
 
Heller then observes that: “ This month has provided a jarring answer. The unexpected election of Donald Trump is said to owe debts to both niche extremism and rampant misinformation.” … As if Mrs. Clinton, his opponent, was herself innocent of such debt.
 
What a curious cluster of statements. They do however summarise the shockwave running through global media for the past two weeks: whining about the death of meaningful factual evidence and the rise of opinion based reality… whatever that means. And as if they themselves were somehow paragons of virtue when it comes to the dissemination of information. In effect “The people” have chosen to believe their own lies and not those pumped by the press. Tut tut:
Norty people [sic]. As Moises Naim proclaims, “Being in charge isn’t what it used to be” in his best selling “End of Power”.
 
And … in truth it has been an amazing, tumultuous and ultimately saddened fortnight.
 
Sad for the demise of an icon: well certainly for me. The Late Leonard Cohen: poet and muso extraordinaire. His ‘So Long Maryann’ was the second song that I sang for my equally late Grandmother-in-law at our first meeting: during the opening years of the seventies. [The first was Peter Sarstedt’s “Take off your clothes let me see what it is that you’re hiding… Don’t be afraid you have nothing to fear from my eyes”.] May they both rest in peace, no matter where each thought they might go.
 
It was amazing because of a confluence of previously unconsidered [so-called] Dark Swan events, arriving like the proverbial perfect shit storm. Shock election results [for some]. Shock “Transformation” events [for some] as our National rugby side have become the equals of the national Football team which on the rare occasion that they actually won an international during this past fortnight immediately fired the coach.
 
The Americans elected their first ever ‘working class’, Billionaire social media, reality TV star President. A few hours later the shit storm that followed sent a ‘tsunami’ washing along the side wall of the range of hills that separate north from south in Jakari’s home town Jozi. The Blog’s pad got 58 millimetres in roughly 20 minutes, while the suburbs on the end of the ‘mountain’ got nearly 160 mm in the same time. We get bad storms in summer… Highveld blazers they are of the kind I wrote about in the ‘Buffalo Hunters’ [Publ’ 1996]. This was like three storms in one.
 
It was, essentially, a wall of rain that swept in from the northwest and then slid left along the ridges called respectively Westcliff, Parktown and Linksfield and poured that deluge over Bedfordview, Senderwood and Edenvale.
 
It turned a passing section of the ring road highway into a sudden raging torrent, sinking a logjam of congested traffic into a sudden unexpected quagmire of metres deep raging water. Homeward returning commuters found themselves heroically balancing on the roof tops of their wildly plunging, madly prancing, formerly beloved motor vehicles become masses of uncontrollable steel boxes; forming human chains, to help fellow commuters head to the safety of the highway sidewalls: An awesome, truly amazing event.
 
Then more hours later an ice storm hit part of a suburb of a coastal town…. Hail that fell in such a mass concentration that literally blocks of ice engaged with each other. Later still, on the other side of the planet a city on the east side of New Zealand, was devastated by a level 7 earthquake…. the third such earthquake to wreak havoc on the planet in the past month.
 
For us here in Jozi it was sad too for the number of people who were drowned in their cars [and elsewhere] while driving along a disgracefully inadequately guttered highway. A little three year old girl child has yet to be found after falling from a tree in which she was attempting to shelter when a well littered stream that loiters through the north eastern part of the city, became an instant raging flood wall of water: pouring roofs, cars, bricks n rubble, dogs, cats and a years worth of uncollected garbage, accumulated from a year’s worth of garbage worker strikes and strident downtime…
 
A voice on the radio called it “a one hundred year event”. And of course for those who have listened to the Jonker Memorandum they will know that ‘one hundred year’ events are starting to pile up in an ominous fashion…. And I thought I was writing fiction.
 
And so to the month’s tumultuous main two hundred year event: The election of Donald Trump: the world’s first working class, superstar billionaire, Social Media derived President of the USA. And so we enter the era of Tronald Dump. Wow…. we certainly got dumped on… and would prefer that those damm Yankees keep their own Dumpster under control so our commuters can drive home without having to take a bath.
 

Was this bloggist surprised by the result…? No I had predicted it the previous day in a lesson on ‘decision theory’, with my end of day senior class: timed as the election vote was starting on the American subcontinent. Among other things I had pointed out that in a long life of following political events with a trained eye, I had never experienced an event of this nature in which every form of respectable to mainstream to fringe media, of every shape, format and description with which I had any contact, gave one party a ninety percent chance of winning versus the other, who got the ten… grudgingly.
 
Using Mr. Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknown” SM factor… the alleged “Enclave and Niche” effect referred to by the New Yorker piece, we decided: the class and I, that, Mr. Trump’s chances were probably more like 60%; as the disintermediation effect of an uncontrolled stream of conflicting viewpoints opinions and rampant disinformation poured over the borders of this new quagmire called cyberspace. Truly a place as chaotic as out highway became for that half an hour.
 
In fact I did at times wonder if there was more than one contender taking part in the election, so parochial and pointless the entire exercise became… and we don’t even live there and have our own horror stories to endure. Regarding the election in a distant foreign country one was constantly reminded of a classic movie about a couple who buy a used house, the renovation of which leads to a bitter battle, in which they fight over the kids, the dogs and the nuclear button.
 

So how does someone everyone, including the house leader of the Party that he allegedly represented, and in fact pretty well his entire Party establishment; and, seemingly, the bulk of the supposedly supportive media, he represented: that literally everyone wanted to see beaten: become the ultimate winning “little guy”?
 
It could only be the latest quirk in what is now so rampant a revolutionary phenomenon, responsible [allegedly] for respectively the [so-called] ‘Arab Spring’, the upset British Conservative Party election victory in 2015, the subsequent infamous Brexit decision, and now, newly atomized humanity gives us Donald Trump a name that would be a byword for what he has done, in a fifties comic book … but who exists in reality: and as the comic meme goes Tronald Dump’s a Tsunami.
 
In closing, I note that the people, whom Mrs. Clinton called “Deplorables” in a moment that probably killed her campaign; and about whom the media broadly sneered about, as “bigoted, racist, sexist” and whatever other fashionable slurs became momentarily abused , alternately people whom I call the “PoP Kru or ‘Pissed off People’, may not be written off as random hillbillies and general layabouts…
 
That map of the USA became almost a solid red with a thin couple of blue smears along part of each coastline, where seemingly the half of the country that voted for Mrs. Clinton resided. What an awesome comment on the vanity of failure.
 
One hears that much of that crowd that voted for “Change” were of the generation that was Leonard Cohen’s, and additionally that so-called Baby Boomer generation to which I and Mr. Trump and Mr. Cinton and Mr. [Dubya] Bush ironically all belong, and who have continually changed the world during our slowly ending era of existence. And for those that either don’t remember or were perhaps not born it does look as though we are the generation that is about to change the world again, helped by vast swathes of disaffected Millenials.
 
So I call Mr. Trump’s election victory not only a social media victory but also as the initials [s.m.] imply, a ‘Schumpeterian Moment’*: In other words One of those unanticipated ‘Dark Swan’ events that changes everything, irrevocably. Such a disruption can either lead to something better, or, as frequently, to decades of chaos: as it did with our own s.m. “moment” shock election result of 1948. Either way the die is cast the game’s in play.
 
Of course following our own President’s example `Mr. Trump could spend the next four year in endless courtroom prevarication, as did one of his predecessors Mr. Clinton, as those being shoved from the trough fight to get their place back: unknowing that one can never step twice into the same river.
 
He may however break the massive logjam that has locked up economic performance for nearly a decade; and is exerting a relentless grip on the rest of the planet: tightening into a massive debt founded death lock.
 
If he can manage to loosen that, then he will go down to posterity as a man whose name became a Trump card… If not… Then perhaps my Jonker Memorandum ceases again to be fiction and the game may well be lost for some further generations to resurrect.

 
*[With thanks to Professor Nupen, Wits, Pol Sci 101, 1967 for his endless harangues on the Schumpeterian’ power of disruption’… named for Joseph Schumpeter who first wrote about it a century ago. ]