AN ANTIDOTE TO GOLDFISHING or OCCASIONING OCCULTATIONS

Deborahlis: Yeah, I’m calling it ‘goldfishing.’

Cephorrhoea: Goldfish?

Deborahlis: Gold-fishing. Not the cracker.

Cephorrhoea: Right.

Deborahlis: I think of it as the parent phenomena out of which comes things like gaslighting, deepfakes, PR spin, and the like.

Cephorrhoea: A goldfish has a three second memory.

Deborahlis: Right.

Cephorrhoea: Laughter and forgetting. There’ is no past, no future.

Deborahlis: Yes. But, of course, it’s not true.

Cephorrhoea: What’s not true?

Deborahlis: Goldfish don’t actually have fleeting memories. We know them to have relatively long memories. This is just one of those things we repeat despite knowing it’s exactly wrong.

Cephorrhoea: Yeah, I think I’ve read that, actually. Or maybe just that the matter was being studied.

Deborahlis: Which is why it’s the perfect term for this phenomenon.

Cephorrhoea: Because it’s wrong and wrongly imposed.

Deborahlis: Right. And all of it only works if most of us reliably pretend not to remember or cannot be bothered to look back. How else would you think about, characterise, make sense of when something we’ve all seen and heard and commented on, something significant, is declared irrelevant or, in more extreme examples, to not even have happened at all?

Cephorrhoea: Well—

Deborahlis: And too— This is critical. And too, the reverse. Is that what I mean? To me it’s the opposite. Where things that definitely did not happen are later inserted into the narrative. Not an erasure of the past but a kind of gross rectification of it.

Cephorrhoea: Yeah. We've all witnessed this. Some have said people are acting like folks are in a cult, or something.

Deborahlis: Or something.

Cephorrhoea: I think of it not as a cult but as the occult. It’s voodoo, orenda, mākutu. The most obvious version of this is clipping. Taking clips of video out of context and pretending someone said or did something which, in context, they clearly did not.

Deborahlis: Occult. I like that. It’s nuclear pig’s blood and silicon chicken bones stirred and spilled to tell the future and inflict curses upon your foes. If you're from rural Asia or Africa, or have just visited, you can see the distinction is merely in the medium used.

Cephorrhoea: Yeah. In its more subtle form someone is attacked on one point and then the narrative shifts when that factor is no longer salient or is exposed for what it is. But, because of the cult or culture, most folks just absorb the message and move on, like the faux goldfish they’re meant to be. They never learn of any corrections and they disregard the obvious fact that the argument shifted. Happens all the time.

Deborahlis: I’ve seen that. Even where the argument transmutes into the opposite of what was just being forwarded and everyone transitions to the new reality in a sickeningly frictionless manner. Goldfish are nothing if not slimy and slippery.

Cephorrhoea: Happens all the time. Happens all the time. And, if you aren't paying attention, very quickly you can be knee deep in falsities you've picked up as fact.

Deborahlis: Right. And my favourite examples are all political. I guess because they happen so visibly and at scale. Like everything around Vice Chancellor Farris and Chancellor Zeidan.

Cephorrhoea: For sure.

Deborahlis: Like Farris’ nomination. It was just three years ago. And it was all over the news. If the chancellor was going to be another Arab woman, the conservatives who were so essential to getting her elected were going to insist that her only option for her vice chancellor was a man. And, more than that, given the tenor and temperature of public discourse at that time, that man would also have to be White. Paper after paper talked about this for weeks. It was even among their headlines. Countless political pundits opined about the fact. But now that Farris has taken over nomination all those same voices are pretending none of that happened. And, well, it’s actually worse than that. Those same voices are declaring that any suggestion the vice chancellor was selected on the basis of his sex or race and not experience, skills, and popularity is engaged in a deeply cynical revision of history, all while declaring to the world their revolting sexism and racism.

Cephorrhoea: Oh yeah, I caught that. And they offered this up knowing that those of us who don’t remember this episode and didn’t take screenshots of their weird narrative could just punch it into any search engine.

Deborahlis: That’s what makes it feel different than some old-school propaganda and more like some kind of cult thing. Or, yeah, an occult thing.

Cephorrhoea: Sure. Like, I’m going to say this crazy thing — this crazy thing that you and I are both certain is totally crazy, or could know for certain that it is without really doing any work — and you’re going to repeat it, unquestioningly, knowing that everyone hearing it will see it for what it is. Fellow cultists will thusly be identified by their faith, by their repetition and unwillingness to question. Like when they came out right after and he, Farris, was being chastised for his political record; that despite him being given only one real job during his time in office — that of being in charge of stemming the flow of illegal immigrants pouring in from Europe and North America — he did seemingly nothing on that front. Do you remember?

Deborahlis: Not really.

Cephorrhoea: Oh you gotta look into this. That was his role. Declared by Chancellor Zeidan, highlighted in the media, and discussed for many months. But now? That never happened — despite everyone being free to pull up a hundred headlines, op-eds, and reports. There are even formal debunkings.

Deborahlis: Sure. There it is.

Cephorrhoea: And here’s the kicker: those, as you say, rectifying the past, and now saying it didn’t happen, are the same ones who published the original headlines. It’s right there. Three years ago: “Zeidan tasks Farris with 'stemming migration' at northern border.” “Vice chancellor expected to focus on coordinating with neighbouring nations and curb the flow of illegal migrants.” “Farris tapped to lead response to northern border.” “Migrant crisis at northern border to improve with Vice Chancellor at helm.” Today? “That didn’t happen.” “He wasn’t in charge.” “The border wasn’t part of his portfolio.” “Despite claims, experts say Ferris was never ‘border czar.’” Same papers, same voices. 100% of the population has access to these documents and instantly. And yet...

Deborahlis: That’s how it goes. Every time. It’s disgusting. And yet somehow it seems even more disturbing the shorter the timeline. You know? Your example and my own were years ago. There’s no excuse for folks not looking it up but it’s at least understandable if folks forgot or didn’t get the memo in the first place. Fine. But we’re also seeing a more radical thing. We’re seeing this kind of reversal in 24 or 48 hours of landing, too.

Cephorrhoea: Like what?

Deborahlis: Well, this whole thing with Zeidan stepping down. People were calling for her to go. For a long time. For something like 18 months. And on the same grounds she eventually left. Everyone saw it. Everyone heard it.

Cephorrhoea: Oh for sure.

Deborahlis: And they saw it in public speeches before large crowds and in intimate, one-on-one interviews. Every kind of setting and venue and with plenty of advanced warning and preparation. They watched it as she climbed the stairs at the legislature — or failed to. They saw it when she fell from her scooter. We all saw it. The response was to claim none of it mattered, focus on it was illegitimate or worse. Some called it a foreign information weapon. Others went further and said this, what we all saw over and over on film, never even happened. Here it is: “Zeidan has never been sharper or more focussed.” “The chancellor’s critics are falling for a foreign disinformation campaign.” “Zeidan is healthy and is the only one who can win against Muerte.”

Cephorrhoea: I do recall some of that. Certainly the general public discourse.

Deborahlis: And then when the calls to step down or at least to step aside as the nominee for the coming election became great, what happened?

Cephorrhoea: They reinforced all their prior messaging.

Deborahlis: Yeah. A unanimous doubling down across all media. Zeidan went before the press and called into television shows insisting things like, "The bottom line here is that I am not going anywhere. Absolutely not. You, the people — not the press, not the pundits, not the donors, not the party officials — made me leader. And I’m not going anywhere! I’m running. I am the leader of this party. And no one is pushing me out!” All her colleagues publicly defended her. Her staff did the same. And that went on for months. Then just hours after reiterating all that for the umpteenth time, now telling the public that any suggestion from anyone at all that the leader of the country was unfit or unwell was helping facilitate a foreign influence campaign to manipulate our elections, she was gone.

Cephorrhoea: A shivving by some accounts.

Deborahlis: Oh yeah, I’m told it approximated the take-down of Julius Caesar.

Cephorrhoea: “Et tu, Brute?”

Deborahlis: Exactly.

Cephorrhoea: Except it was weirder than that, wasn’t it?

Deborahlis: How so?

Cephorrhoea: As you say, she was pressured or pushed out. But who did it? Well, it was the donors and pundits and press and party. And, too, seemingly for being “infirm” and “unable to beat her opponent Muerte.”

Deborahlis: Right. Right. The situation was exactly as everyone could see and was previously stated. And—

Cephorrhoea: And it’s weirder still, right?

Deborahlis: Go on.

Cephorrhoea: Well, with no new information and contrary to every assertion that she would not just be fine but, in fact, at the top of her game in the coming five years, we were told the woman was, suddenly, over night, too enfeebled and unwitting to survive the rest of the election cycle or even maybe just one more public debate.

Deborahlis: Right.

Cephorrhoea: And what did these same sources pair that disqualifying fact? That — though a debate or climbing a flight of stairs or standing for a minute to pose for some photos with other heads of state was too much for the leader of the country, someone who was easily the most frail, least fit politician anyone had ever seen, had a badly failing memory, and on the rare occasion she formulated a coherent sentence was increasingly saying inappropriate things — she was simultaneously perfectly sound of body and mind to continue leading the country for the many months until a new chancellor was elected and could take over office.

Deborahlis: Right. And this amidst several escalating wars and revolutions, several more in the works, and a whole pile of economic, employment, and immigration chaos.

Cephorrhoea: Yes.

Deborahlis: Right. And the elapsed time, again with no new information, from her saying “there is no force in this universe that could change my mind or cause me to leave” and nearly every journalist and party official echoing that and demanding “you’re crazy and maybe working with the enemy if you think the chancellor is unfit” to 100% of them being on the same page that “the chancellor is clearly unfit to govern” and her being out was about 14 hours, 35 minutes, and 27 seconds, as best as I can tell.

Cephorrhoea: 20 hours at most.

Deborahlis: Well, that’s goldfishing. And it makes me feel like I have a rare, undiagnosed form of schizophrenia.

Cephorrhoea: I think of that as occultation. Do you know this word?

Deborahlis: No. Something about the occult?

Cephorrhoea: No. No. Yes, mention of cults likely put it in my head. You’d probably have to be into astronomy to know it. Occultation is what its called when one object obscures another, as in a solar eclipse. But it could be anything. In this case, and others like it, you have what’s going on (the sun) and then you have what they wish for you to see and believe (their papier mache moon).

Deborahlis: Sure. Yeah.

Cephorrhoea: It’s just regular PR and propaganda but those have not transformed much from the precious century to meet where we are at in terms of communication technology. They collide more often than they run parallel or meld.

Deborahlis: When the moon combusts it comes as a shock.

Cephorrhoea: And it’s more shocking still when the ash that flutters down from the lunar fireball is yesterday’s business and comic sections held together by a flour-based paste.

Deborahlis: But all you can do is laugh.

Cephorrhoea: Yeah, you've gotta laugh.

Deborahlis: Yeah, all the dissidents and men disappeared to gulags remind us that to laugh is the only way to maintain one's sanity and humanity when the world turns on its head.

Cephorrhoea: Right. And that reminds me of that old a joke.

Deborahlis: What's that?

Cephorrhoea: There's man in a little park along the river (Rakhmaninovskiy Skver, at the intersection of Lermontovskiy Prospekt and Troitskiy.) He's doubled over on the perfect lawn, among the red oak and ornamental apple. Violently he is puking his guts out. Another man sees him and walks over. Shaking his head, he pats the man on the back, and offers "I know what you mean."