T he memory hole is working overtime in the USA zeitgeist these days. Shit
happens and a week or so later, it unhappens — at least it seems that way as
manifested by the front page of The New York Times or the flapping
of Anderson Cooper’s gums on CNN.
Anyone remember that Malaysian airlines plane that went down in July in
Ukraine killing 283 persons? US government officials were jumping up and down
trying strenuously to blame Russian Donbass separatists. The trouble was,
they had no evidence whatsoever and their exertions were looking ridiculous
(making the USA look ridiculous, of course). Last thing we heard, there were
questions about two Ukrainian air force jets chasing it, and photos of entry
and exit cannon holes in the pilot’s cabin. Recorded communications between
the crew and traffic controllers were shoved into storage bin in the
Netherlands, never to be made public. The whole story vanished from the news
media like the legendary D.B. Cooper — anyone remember him? — and hasn’t
resurfaced since.
Anyone remember the outbreak of World War Three in Ukraine two weeks ago?
The USA was trying — again, strenuously — to promote the idea of a
Russian invasion — minus any evidence of the actual Russian troops, you
understand. That didn’t go over so well. All this was occurring, remember,
because the USA was determined to make Ukraine a NATO member, contrary to
explicit agreements reached with Russia following the collapse of the Soviet
Union to not expand NATO eastward. Anyway, there was no Russian
invasion and the US State Department and the White House were left holding a
pig in a poke that nobody wanted to buy. End of story, as Tony Soprano liked
to say.
Recall the action in Ferguson, Missouri, last month. A very large teenager
got shot and killed by a policeman named Darren Wilson. The scraggly suburb
of St. Louis exploded in protest and then looting and violence. Don Lemon of
CNN was egging it all on. Then the videos and photo came out: Michael Brown
stealing cigars… Michael Brown posing with an semi-automatic pistol, a bottle
of vodka, and a wad of dollars in his mouth. Hmmmmmm, maybe not such an
innocent little lamb. Plus reports of broken bones in the policeman’s face.
End of protests, end of story.
Something happened in the Gaza recently, didn’t it. Hamas fired rocket
barrages into Israel and Israel answered with very aggressive action to stop
the rockets. Eventually, the rockets did stop and so did the actions taken to
stop them. Nothing in the news media ever suggested that there was a
cause-and-effect relationship there. In fact, if anything, the news media
went out of its way to excuse and rationalize the firing of rockets. The
results speak for themselves, of course. But I’m sure few will remember that
the whole thing started with the rockets.
Remember the Argentine bond default? That story dribbled away in a train
of inconclusive confabulations, still ongoing. Argentina did default, by the
way. The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) declared a
“credit event,” tripping credit default swaps on those bonds. Some of the
bonds couldn’t actually be found… but no matter. The machinations around this
are admittedly abstruse, but I would suggest the bottom line is that nobody
wants to see those credit default swaps actually triggered because doing so
would induce such a majestic chain of counterparty failures extending far
beyond Argentina that the very Gods on Olympus would have to start checking
their bank accounts for bail-ins.
So it goes, as the late, great Vonnegut always said. All of these stories
have something in common: tons of unanswered questions, which the news media
shows no interest whatsoever in following up on. And no consequences. People
die, nations rise and fall, money disappears, and everybody forgets. This
can’t just be about the diminishing returns of the grotesquely over-hyped
“information age” — though the blowback from computers and all they have
wrought may be tremendous. No, the memory hole is the truest signifier of the
times we live in: the Age of Anything Goes and Nothing Matters.
That may be changing, even as I write. The Age of Consequence comes in on
little cat’s feet. (See Steve
Ludlum at Economic-Undertow.com for an excellent disquisition on that.)
