Situational Assessment 2017: Trump EditionIn fact, as I go back and try to do pattern matching, the only real pattern I can find is the 1776 “election” (AKA the American Revolution). In other words, while 2016 still formally looked like politics,
what is really going on here is a revolutionary war. For now this is war using memes rather than bullets, but war is much more than a metaphor.
Front One: Communications Infrastructure.All modern warfighters know that the first step of any conflict is to disrupt the enemy’s communications and control infrastructure.
Our legacy sensemaking system was largely composed of and
dominated by a small set of communications channels. These included the largest newspapers (e.g., NYT and Washington Post) and television networks (e.g., CNN, CBS, Fox, etc.). Until very recently, effectively all sensemaking was mediated by these channels and, as a consequence, these channels delivered a highly effective mechanism for coordinated messaging and control. A sizable fraction of the power, influence and effectiveness of the last-stage power elites (e.g.,
the neocon alliances in both the Democratic and Republican parties) was due to their mastery at utilizing these legacy channels.
https://medium.com/deep-code/situational-assessment-2017-trump-edition-d189d24fc046#.eh3uost3b
