When Life Imitates Bad Art…

All That Remains is Power

It was predictable in its way. It happened in the migration from print to radio, then again in the migrations from radio to broadcast TV, from broadcast TV to cable, and from cable to digital. More and more authentic storytellers were left behind — orphaned by the institutional consolidation of power and wealth — with each subsequent migration. 

Finally, all that remained was Soviet-style agitprop: the official but bloodless theater produced when mediocre artists are paid by the state to produce mediocre propaganda.

Of course, the most easily imitated art is bad art, mediocre art. That’s why the state so much prefers the services of bad and mediocre artists to great artists. Mediocre artists are easy to convert into propagandists. Mediocre art and propaganda are, after all, the ubiquitous but essential facades of pop culture, whose only real imperative as state agents is to obliterate history and bury any dangerous artifacts from the past — like great art.

By contrast, great art cannot be conscripted to speak for the state because great art doesn’t even speak for the artist; it speaks only for itself. So by all means, stick it away in a museum where someone actually has to leave the house to see it, or convert it into a money laundering scheme for the obscenely wealthy who answer to no one but themselves. Either way, mission accomplished.

The most critical features of agitprop as a state tool are the critically low standards it imposes and the critically low expectations it invokes. That’s why no one expects anything more from it than cheap political theater. No one really believes it in the first place. The built-in lack of credibility means those in power — those who commission the agitprop — can change the entire narrative at a moment’s notice however and whenever they want. 

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Turn it all upside down on a whim; no need to explain why the new narrative is necessary, or why the old narrative is suddenly so last Tuesday. After all, the new narrative is guaranteed to be every bit as insane as the one it replaces. Notably, no one will notice and no one will care because the narrative no longer matters in the least. And when the narrative no longer matters, only the power remains.

Nothing makes sense when all that remains is power. The slightest scratch on the surface renders the official climate change, antiracism, and gender equity narratives utterly incoherent and senseless. Likewise, the official Covid narrative was and remains utterly incoherent and senseless. True also of our ruinous open border policy and the official Ukrainian war narrative: both utterly incoherent and senseless. They all defy rational explanation, scientific or otherwise.

Of course, the populists among us might offer a simpler, more rational explanation for the apparent insanity: the accelerated migration of wealth and power from poor and middle-class people of all colors worldwide upward to those institutions and individuals already pregnant with far too much wealth and far too much power. But apparently, making sense of the world these days is simply too conspiratorial by half.

Populist conspiracy theories aside, when the global power narrative breaks down, when it ceases to make any sense — regardless of how they bend or mutilate it, we suddenly find ourselves in shark-infested waters. Ideologically identical and too big to fail, the most powerful institutions in the world have now realized — individually and collectively — that they no longer need a narrative at all, coherent or otherwise. 

In the absence of a coherent narrative — once everyone has already entered a narcotic state of suspended disbelief — rich and powerful institutions and individuals simply no longer need to explain themselves. Because they already possess the only thing that truly matters to them, the only thing they truly wanted in the first place.

When life imitates bad art, absent the need or patience for real storytellers and real stories, all that remains is power. Sheer, unadulterated, brute power awash in a sea of predatory acronyms like ESG, SDG, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, WHO, WEF, CDC, CBDCs, DOD, EU, and NATO.

When power is all that remains, science, justice, and the rule of law no longer matter. When power is all that remains, crisis and chaos reign supreme and insanity is suddenly sane. When power is all that remains, only psychopaths and sociopaths will have power.

So when life imitates bad art and all that remains is power, do one thing: tell your story. Tell it to the ones you love. Tell it to your kids. Tell it to your friends. Tell it to your neighbors. Tell your story, the story of your family, and the story of your town to anyone who listens. When all that remains is power, your story is the greatest story ever told.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.