Glitches in the matrix

Apparently ‘grief’ and ‘outrage’ cancel out the need for transparency, rigor, and accountability

One of the biggest paradoxes in this age of hyperlinks, 24/7 TV channels, and a supercharged social media is the demise of objective reality. Apparently ‘grief’ and ‘outrage’ cancel out the need for transparency, rigour, and accountability. Inconvenient facts are routinely ignored. The result is a political discourse that is a mish-mash of competing, contradicting narratives, riddled with discrepancies and high on cognitive dissonance. Consider the recent tragedy in Orlando, Florida. The dust has barely settled and already we have a multitude of alternative accounts.

For instance, CBS just interviewed Miguel who claims to be shooter Omar Mateen’s ex-lover. Miguel does not believe the attack was terrorism; rather, Mateen wanted “revenge” on Latinos because he had a relationship with a Puerto Rican man who turned out to be HIV positive. In fact, as per the LA Times, regulars at the Pulse nightclub claim that Mateen hung out there often. The FBI disputes these accounts. Witnesses are unfazed. One says he’d be happy to take a lie detector test. He doesn’t trust the FBI — after all, the agency investigated Mateen twice before, put him on a terrorist watch list, and still couldn’t prevent the shooting.

Speaking of witnesses: one survivor from the shooting affirms on CBS that Mateen was specifically avenging the Afghan invasion. During the incident, Mateen, himself an American-born Afghan, singled out the black people. “I don’t have a problem with black people,” Mateen said. “This is about my country. You guys suffered enough.” Another witness interviewed in a chilling ABC News exclusive overheard Mateen on the phone telling someone that he (ie Mateen himself) was the “fourth shooter”! Apparently three snipers were positioned outside the club to shoot at the police when they showed up. And there was a female suicide bomber lurking around on the premises.

And the story keeps getting tangled. Now we discover, courtesy of Reuters, that Mateen obsessively researched psychiatric medication — sometimes staying up all night to do so — worried that he may have “slipped into psychosis”. Could medication be yet another causal factor? Last year, a CBS Reality Check episode touched upon the compelling links between violent behaviour and psychiatric medication. Mood-altering drugs like Prozac are known to cause violent episodes, hallucinations, suicidal thoughts, and tendencies to self-harm. And apparently in 26 mass shootings in the US — including the Columbine school massacre, the Charleston incident, the Virginia Tech shooting, and the Colorado theatre shooting — the attackers were taking psychiatric drugs, sometimes heavily.



We don’t know whether Mateen was actually on medication, but there are strong indications. A co-worker reports that in the month leading up to the attack the generally-friendly Mateen exhibited “deteriorating behavior”. In fact, just 18 hours prior to the attack, Mateen totally transformed his look, completely shaved his head and face, that he was “silent”, “surly”, and “agitated”.

So here we have multiple conflicting accounts, very hard to reconcile into a coherent, authoritative story. To paraphrase US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, we may never know Omar Mateen’s real motive. And what’s truly terrifying — for the few who actually believe in democratic values — is that no one seems really stressed over ground truth any more. Instead everyone’s charging full-steam ahead with pre-configured agendas. Welcome to the new normal.

Look at the San Bernadino shootings. A man and a woman of Pakistani origin burst into a mental home and start shooting. The discourse is dominated by speculation about how the couple got radicalised, their motivation, a running commentary on the threat to America from guns, from Muslims, and everything Islamic.

And then there are the glaring discrepancies, big glitches in the Matrix: multiple independent eyewitnesses (appearing on mainstream news sources, including CBS, KTLA and NBC) report alike that the shooting was done by three tall white males dressed in black military attire with assault rifles. One even describes the attackers’ clothing and weaponry in careful detail. Indeed, when the initial 911 calls went out, local news sources (including Fox) report that the police were expressly on the lookout for three white males. One witness, talking to the LA Times, insists quite emphatically that it was not Syed Farook doing the shooting.

So which is it? Three white males in military fatigues or a young Muslim couple with a newborn baby? Is it too much to ask for a coherent objective account before we get all hyper?

But popular discourse is all about half-truths and illusions now. We will likely never know how guns laundered in a secret US government operation against Mexican drug cartels ended up being used in the Paris terrorist attacks. The Iraqi WMDs deception is only just starting to sink in for many. And now, long after Afghanistan has been pulverised to dust, we’re told there’s a secret Congressional report linking the 9/11 hijackers directly to the Saudi government. On the home front, Seymour Hersh has blasted big holes in the bin-Laden-assassination narrative. And, of course, there are critical unresolved questions about the APS tragedy and Benazir’s murder. It’s like living in an alternate reality — the ‘what-if’ implications are staggering.

We simply don’t have timely objective truth anymore. The machinery for generating ground truths — i.e., an independent and committed fourth estate and a vigilant citizenry who appreciate the value of human dignity — are artifacts of the past. The death of investigative journalism is well documented but we are only just starting to wake up to the consequences.

Now — with so many credible alternative explanations for everything — every Tom, Dick and Harry cherry picks the account suiting his particular prejudices. In the Orlando case, the liberal is parroting the homophobic angle, the conservative is yelling about the terrorist Muslim invasion, the politicians are pushing for gun control and killing civil liberties, the conspiracy theorist is linking it to the Illuminati, and the Muslims are on a personal quest to publicly justify their faith for the hundredth time. It’s a regular tower of Babel where everyone is yelling past each other, no one actually engages.

And, at the end of the day, we all sit back and complain that society is becoming too polarised.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 17^th, 2016.

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