Rhetoric about physical borders morphs into mental divisions
"Counter Disinfolklore ~ Controlling War Magic" Episode XXIII
Invoking border struggles (the Witch Switch) stirs, provokes, and trolls into being controversy, which is the energy ambitious aspirant troll monarchs feed on.
By invoking mythical separation points, in the guise of an actual physical border, they are projecting physical spatial division into our minds into which they can consign one category of human beings - Mexicans, pregnant Small Boat People, immigrants, Nazis, Others.
It is a story structure that becomes a cognitive structure.
Photo: one of countless settlements in Ukraine which Ruschia has vaporised.
This Inner/Outer Realm structure is immanent in the first færy tales we ever encounter. Just because the story is told on the news, and not in a Disney film or Ladybird book or text justifying a piece of legislation, we approach the tale as if it is more real than a story about a princess and prince trapped by an evil king in a castle being rescued by a rescuer of damsels-in-distress such as Sir Launcelot (who, incidentally, is a reflex of the Indo-European God Lugh / Lugus / Lear referred to earlier - something we will get back to later). In essence though what shines through such mean-spirited populism is its quality as Disinfolklore.
This is how the American conservative commentator David Frum assesses the Congress’s legislative proposal about bombing Mexico to stop migrants:
“Contemporary conservatism tells a fable about virtuous middle-Americans beset by alien villains. Apply that fable to the fentanyl crisis, and you arrive where Fox’s Gutfeld did at the conclusion of his December monologue: “So that’s my plan, bomb the supply, reduce harm among the demand by availing safer, clean alternatives.” Compassion for us. Violence for them. But even if bomb-Mexico talk is intended only to shift blame—to redirect anger toward politically safer targets—the talk carries real-world political dangers.”
Frum is unconsciously integrating a Counter Disinfolklore perspective to his Republican colleagues’ bonkers Bill - we know this because we identify in Frum’s tone, the Mana of his enterprise. Frum is, as I am doing in Counter Disinfolklore, offering us a Way of Seeing Crenshaw’s crazy “Bomb. Mexico” legislative bill through the lens of Disinfolklore.
As you know by now from reading this far, when I take examples from the Ukraine Domain any information unit whose Mana is “protect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the life of its people from Russian aggression” I am engaging in counter Disinfolkore. You have an intuitive sense of what is right and what is wrong in this case.
Genocide is wrong, and any arguments whose Mana is somehow defending or promoting genocide is necessarily Disinfolklore. Likewise, here, we know that bombing Mexico to prevent Americans becoming addicted to a drug is a bad idea. It is Disinfolklore. And Frum, despite being the American conservative who coined the term “Axis of Evil” to justify invading Iran, is at least for once now on the side of the angels here.
Frum elucidates how in explaining his mad legislative bill to “Bomb. Mexico” Crenshaw is defining into existence an Inner Realm community (“middle America” “Conservatives”) against another (“Mexicans” “Drug cartels”). This Inner / Outer Realm homology should immediately alert us to the potential for Disinfolklore. Frum then highlights using the word “fable” and through his dismissive tone that is communicated using the term “alien villains” how ridiculous Frum finds Crenshaw’s bill.
For Counter Disinfolklore purposes I am going to broaden the meaning of the term to include this sense: in the manner of a light or railway track switch, certain tropes have the effect of switching our mood by manipulating our Mana (the well from which all of our intentions and motivations flow).
In effect, stories about migration penetrate the part of our minds where we manage our constant Inner / Outer Realm redemarcation / re-identification mental processes.
Immigrants as an Other are the fundamental (along with Trans (it’s the meaning ‘Transgressors’ that is smuggled into our minds inside trolls about ‘Trans’ and gender neutral toilets, etc, I believe)) Outer Realm invaders coming to steal our personal, family and community life’s
1. Sovereignty (Immigrants will gain political power and punish us. Ironically, in trying to deal with with chimera of the Immigrant Menace countries’ sovereignty is weakened in the attempt: Congress dissolves into a shambles, Brexit weakens Inner Realm England’s Sovereignty, Security, Fertility (economy, fertility/propsperity));
2. Security (Criminals/Warriors/Soldiers); and
3. Fertility/Prosperity (lock up your daughters! branding Mexicans as r*apists, photos of mostly dark males - invading to steal our bloodlines, our daughters, our wives).
To be continued…
This post is a continuation of:
I was a guest on
recently. Great reaction to our chat about, among other things, Disinfolklore’s origins in Herder’s insight that led to the unification of (some of) the Germanic peoples - 50,000 people watched and 3,000 people ‘Liked’ what they heard of our conversation:First in series:
