When Facts Become Background Noise

Control the Narrative, Control the Masses

Control of the narrative involving the capture of Maduro in Venezuela is mind-boggling at one level, and perhaps sadly humorous at another level.

Lessons learned: “Leaders” create social normative values to gain CONTROL of the masses. Logic, right-or-wrong, and truth be damned. Details are best left for historians, while being contemporaneously condemned. Those seeking control have a low tolerance for being challenged by the facts, and those submissive to control can be ruthless defenders. Controlling the narrative and establishing the value system is essential.

Why Transparency Is the Enemy of Control

Control is not gained from transparent disclosure or an understanding by the public of the ISSUES and FACTS involved (often complex and even contradictory at times). The backdrop of surreptitious influence for the narrative, from international economics to the intentional rumor-mill in the hallways, is purposefully ignored by design, and best executed with plausible deniability.

A Real-World Lesson From the 1980s

It’s not theoretical: As a baby-attorney, in the early 1980s, my first significant labor case involved a major airline and a powerful nationwide union. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 amended the definition of “sex discrimination” in the workplace to include pregnancy and maternity. However, many employment laws and court decisions provide explicit or implicit exceptions where a collective bargaining agreement exists.

When Ideology Overrides Law and Fairness

The union had long negotiated highly favorable employee health insurance coverage, including fantastic maternity coverage for a union employee’s “spouse” and even daughters. However, the union specifically excluded “pregnancy and maternity” coverage for a “union-employee”. In sum, the industrial union thought female airline employees only belonged in the cabin aisles serving cocktails and enduring sexist comments with a smile.

Challenging the Narrative Comes at a Cost

Naïve, baby-face attorney, opined that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act could breach the collective bargaining agreement, especially since flight attendants and all non-union employees had comprehensive health insurance for pregnancy. Despite some internal debate and the union’s refusal to negotiate, the union’s health plan was unilaterally amended to include pregnancy/maternity coverage for female union employees.

In an understatement, the union leadership blew a gasket, filed a legal action to continue the exclusion of pregnancy benefits for “employees,” and even threatened a walkout strike.

How Control Is Preserved

The union narrative needed to ignore the issues of sex discrimination and underlying misogynistic norms, to maintain CONTROL. Females in their workforce were perceived as a dynamic threat to the union’s leadership. Regardless of the law and benefit to represented employees, the union reduced the narrative to contend that only the union could agree to an added benefit in the health insurance plan.

The Theater of Victory

As baby-face pretended not to sweat through his undershirt, presenting the evidence and legal arguments, in an objectionable move of procedure and ethics, the lead arbitrator privately met with the union leadership. The result was a quickly drafted addendum to the bargaining agreement to incorporate union-employee pregnancy benefits.

The concession: The addendum would be acknowledged as “proposed” for negotiation by the union and conceded to by the airline. The narrative? The union controlled the action and the outcome. The actual issue and facts needed to remain irrelevant.

Retaliation and Intimidation

Yet the union leaders were not shy to advise baby-face, in mafiaesque fashion, that he was forever on their hit-list – beginning with the monthly, home-delivery of Hustler and Penthouse magazines (for the wife and kids, no doubt) and the office delivery of a box of cow manure – a federal crime – where miraculously it could not be traced, as union employees controlled the internal mail system, carefully vandalizing shipping labels).

Human Nature on the Global Stage

Human dynamics never change: Over 50 countries, including the EU, most Western European and 10 South American countries, openly rejected Maduro’s claim to the presidency of Venezuela. Maduro was a known and indicted international narco-terrorist through two different administrations.

The Operation and Its Aftermath

The recent U.S. operation lasted only a couple of hours, and no boots on the ground, except Miraflores Palace, where Maduro was extracted.

Since 2005, China has provided over $30 billion worth of military equipment to protect Maduro and intentionally divert U.S. military resources. Since 2017, Russia has sent over $20 billion in military equipment to Maduro to deter the U.S. Surely nothing could go wrong with that?

Much of the military equipment was destroyed by the U.S. operation. Fighter jets, Bombers, combat helicopters, anti-aircraft systems, missiles, bombs, long-range cannons, tanks, combat vehicles, firearms and ammunition, plus military training forces.

Historical Precedent Matters

Precedent? In 1989, without Congressional approval, the U.S. extracted, prosecuted, and imprisoned Panama’s self-declared dictator, Noriega. The national and international legal defenses have been litigated and dismissed. He spent the rest of his life in U.S., Frenc,h and Panamanian prisons.

The Noriega extraction involved an actual U.S. military invasion of Panama, 27,000 U.S. troops, lasting over six weeks, fifty-one days of surrounding the Vatican Embassy where Noriega retreated, and blasting Noriega with three non-stop days of Metallica, VanHalen, Guns N’ Roses, and KC and the Sunshine Band music, until Noriega surrendered. Later international rules declared that continuously playing loud heavy metal music (and other genres) was considered “torture”.

Trump Derangement and Narrative Warfare

Yet, here we are with a Trump Derangement Syndrome immediate response of anti-Trump protests and Democrat vilification of President Trump, simultaneously contrasted to the massive public rallies from Spain to the U.S. and the streets of Venezuela, celebrating the removal of Maduro and his sadistic dictatorial rule.

Media, Emotion, and Manufactured Outrage

Control the narrative, and control the public’s value system: False and deceiving media headlines spout “mixed reactions” from Venezuelans, or claim, ‘an attempt to distract from the Epstein files. Video footage focuses on the poorly attended anti-Trump protests, with only glances of the massive celebration rallies of Venezuelans and their supporters. Politicians scream “illegal” or “unconstitutional” because Congress was not briefed in advance, nor gave approval. Let that sink in – publicly seeking approval of a highly complex covert operation.

Issues Ignored, Emotions Amplified

Like him or not, it’s about Trump Derangement – controlling the narrative – not the fact-based issues or the best interests of the U.S. – from Maduro, welfare fraud, reversing a downturned economy, unraveling the failed Obamacare legislation, stopping illegal immigration, to negotiating peace agreements around the globe…and more.

The adversarial outcries do not address the actual “issues” or “facts”. They are derived, illusory, ill-defined, or false proclamations of rhetorical platitudes to arouse emotions, to keep those who don’t want to independently think angry, scared, or even justified, in control.

Background Noise or Truth?

It is the CONTROL of the decision, the outcome, the praise – the issues and facts are only background noise.

From pregnancy and sex discrimination to prosecuting an inhumane narco-terrorist, we will continue to be plagued with the innate human desire of “leaders” to control and a public willingness to submit to control through the narrative.

Perhaps we should start paying more attention to the background noise – ya know, those pesky annoyances of facts, defined issues, beneficial outcomes, and who is in the shadows seeking control, and why?