Who said it? Nobody said it.
I was vaguely thinking about the BushRush style, which became the only form of public discourse after 1990.

It definitely started with Bush Senior in politics and Rush in media. Never complete a thought. Always jump unexpectedly to a new subject. Psychopath mode.

Above all NEVER APOLOGIZE and never explain. If the current statement clashes with what you said 7 seconds ago, you might "clarify" that what you said 7 seconds ago was just parody and irony. Beyond 7 seconds, no need to worry because the audience has automatically memoryholed it for you.

Now everyone in public life speaks the same way. Disconnected ramblings, changing at every moment, constantly shifting the subject and switching the truth. Trump's scampaign speeches were perfect.

It's one version of Room 101, but it wasn't directly foreseen by Orwell.

When was the last time you heard anyone in politics or media or ESPECIALLY SCIENCE say "I was wrong"? (The whole point of science, according to the textbooks, is admitting when previous results and theories are wrong!)

Just for fun I tried googling "I was wrong". 90% of the items were about some rock-and-roll noisemaker who had a hit "song" with that title. The other 10% were mocking televangelist Jim Bakker for saying "I was wrong".

That's it. Nothing else. Nobody except Jim Bakker said "I was wrong" in public during the period that Google examines.

See also flat assertion, the core of this technique.

= = = = =

Self-calibrating: I went back through the archives of this blog to find verbatim "I was wrong". (Not looking for other ways of saying the same meaning.) There are about 20 instances of "I was wrong". About 1/3 of them were apologizing for a previous attitude or assumption which was actually right. In other words, I was converging to fashionable neocon idiocy and apologizing for being unfashionable before. The other 2/3, especially after turning off the TV in 2011, were in the correct direction.

One major exception in the later period: When Brexit finally happened in 2019, I was happy to see Boris getting it done, which I had never expected. "I was wrong" that it couldn't happen. Soon I realized that "I was wrong" about being happy. As soon as Boris got Brexit, he started ruining Britain even faster than EU had been ruining it. He wanted Brexit, and pushed it through to completion, so he could be free of EU constraints on his own power.

Labels: endless hell, Jail mode, metametrology

  ¶ 5:57 AM