the coming storm

i probably told this story before. it's not even my story, it's salman rushdie's. it's been a few years since i read shame, but there's a bit that takes place during one of pakistan's wars with india. the war isn't going well for pakistan, but pakistan's censored media spins everything into good news. and so the pakistani people just hear about battlefield victory after victory. kashmir is almost liberated, the newspapers brag!!! then one day the news breaks that pakistan has surrendered, or at least agreed to the pre-war status quo. pakistanis are outraged! why did the government give in when india was on its knees? the people take to the streets and the government falls, the victims of their own censorship.

i'm not positive i am remembering the scene from shame right, and i'm even less sure whether a pakistani government ever did fall because it lied to the people about its war with india, but i think of that story more and more when i read about the bubble conservatives in america have built for themselves. after blaming everything that has gone wrong for them on media bias, they have built their own alternative conservative media. but that means their view of the world is steadily diverging from the rest of the country.

so what will happen on november 7th when their parallel universe collapses into ours? what will be the equivalent of the pakistani government that falls?