This morning I was listening to the radio and heard a quote from Steve Bannon, chief strategist and Senior Counsellor for the Presidency of Donald Trump. He told the Hollywood Reporter: 'Darkness is good ... Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power.'
There’s a lot we’re hearing at the moment that is intended to make us fearful. It’s life in the ‘post-truth’ world. People say things to get a reaction. During the election campaign, Donald Trump said a lot of things that he didn’t mean in order to get elected. It worked.
I think that the truth in Bannon’s comment is that real political power comes from turning off the lights to create darkness in a metaphorical movie theatre. The intention of this is to hijack our imagination and overwhelm our rational thought patterns with all kinds of grotesque images for the purpose of creating fear.
Fear paralyses our rationality. It makes us captive. It's the new slavery.
In a climate of fear, we make bizarre interpretations of human behaviour that drive us off course. Last Monday, I was walking north along Pitt Street in the Sydney CBD. There was a young man walking next to me at a similar pace who was moving his hands erratically. Suddenly he said in a slightly raised voice: ‘It’s time’.
My immediate thought was that he was indicating that he was about to unleash some kind of terrorist mayhem on what was one of Australia’s busiest pedestrian thoroughfares. So I discretely crossed the street and walked in a completely different direction, away from the where I was heading for my appointment.
Most likely he was talking on his phone using a hands-free device that was not immediately obvious. Probably he was listening intently to what his friend had to say, moving his hands as many people do, and exclaimed ‘It’s time!’ in response to something his friend had said.
That was the truth of the situation, yet in the darkened movie theatre times we live in, I am conditioned and compelled to fear the worst and take myself off course.