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Integral to the managerial polyarchy is the narrative. This is the semi-official story for how the managerial elite believes events ought to unfold. The narrative promotes some cause or issue popular with the elite or it can simply work to promote solidarity in the managerial class by underscoring the difference between the members of the managerial class and the masses. The narrative not only frames reality, but often it is expected to shape reality by altering behavior.

The Ukraine war has provided good examples. When the war started, regime media figures were decorated with Ukraine flag lapel pins and instructed to say “keev” rather than Kiev, which everyone used up to that point. The official narrative was that Ukraine was the good guys and Russia the bad guys. For no reason at all, the evil Vladimir Putin decided to launch an attack on Ukraine. Soon, the volunteer army of regime toadies online was chanting the official lines.

The concept of “no reason at all” is a standard feature of regime narratives that are primarily about establishing a moral dichotomy. The bad guys are always described as acting irrationally and without a describable reason. The good guys being good are always acting from the best and most easily understood motives. Vladimir Putin is “crazy Ivan” capable of anything, while Zelensky is the heroic defender of democracy who only wants to defend his country.

It is an interesting inversion of cult behavior. To members of a cult, the rules of the cult are perfectly rational. The appeal of the cult is it provides clarity to the members who struggle with a disorganized mind. The member find herself surrounded by people who see things through the same lens. On the other hand, to those outside the cult, what happens inside the cult is strange and counter to objective reality. It is why cults have a negative connotation. They appear irrational.

The managerial class looks at the masses as a cult. The people who vote for the wrong candidate in elections are not acting from rational self-interest. They are not even acting from subjective preference. They are irrationally lashing out out of fear and anger for no reason at all! The role of the managerial class in the great narrative of life is to impose their rules on these people. Those wreckers and deviationists are cast into a role that supports the narrative.

We see this with the holiday of Juneteenth. If you lived in some parts of the South, you may have known about this event prior to now. Most black people did not celebrate the holiday, contrary to the current narrative. In fact, most black people heard about it when most white people heard about it a few years ago. As part of the ongoing pogroms against white people, the managerial elite decided to take this obscure regional event and turn it into a national holiday.

Of course, this holiday is part of a narrative that has been central to the managerial class since the middle of the last century. The great struggle is one of the main plot lines in the story that justifies the existence of the managerial elite. The struggle is against those backward, recalcitrant bad white people who tirelessly work to turn back the clock and overturn progress. As Joe Biden likes to say, those bad whites want to put black people back in chains.

Essential to the success of any narrative, according to managerial culture, is control of the means of cultural production. They have a materialist’s view of culture as a product that comes from the television or the internet, rather than the result of human interactions over a long span of time. They think they can use the media to flood the public space with their narratives. That will change the behavior of the masses as people will assume the narratives are true.

This has the side effect of reinforcing to the managerial class that their current narratives are not only factually correct, more morally correct. Afterall, everything they read in the media tells them that they are on the side of angels. Right now, they are sure that black people around the country are gathering to celebrate their Independence Day with public readings of the Emancipation Proclamation. Maybe they cap off the day by singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing”.

Reality is probably closer to this, but that does not make this weekend any different from most weekends in the summer. In heavily black cities crime remains an immutable fact of life, no matter how many black holidays are created. Maybe if the energy put into these antiwhite pogroms was directed toward cleaning up the inner-city ghettos, more black people would live to see the absurdity of Juneteenth, but no one in charge cares about black people, so the point is moot.

It does, however, point to the limits of narrative control. They can bang on about Juneteenth as much as they like but it will remain an artificial holiday that most people ignore unless they work at a bank or the Post Office. Then they get a three-day weekend to enjoy while their neighbors are at work. Martin Luther King Day has fallen into the same pattern. No amount of narrative framing will change the fact that for most people it is a meaningless day on the calendar.

There is a parallel here to Kwanzaa. This was invented as black Christmas in the 1960’s and promoted by the beautiful people as an authentic black event. It was mostly a joke, even among black people. The lesson of that experience was to make Martin Luther King Day a federal holiday. That did not quite work, but you cannot roll back a federal holiday, so it was good enough. That is why they skipped the marketing campaign and went straight to the federal holiday for Juneteenth.

The limits of the narrative tool may explain the panic and paranoia that have become a defining feature of the managerial class. Enormous effort was put into making Martin Luther King Day into black Christmas and it largely fizzled. This effort to make Juneteenth into black Independence Day is following the same arc. If you cannot convince people to celebrate a free day off according to the narrative, then it does not bode well for other projects.

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