The emotional response to 9/11 connected at an intellectual level to a narrative fed both by Al Qaeda and by some outspoken American commentators: that the two sides were engaged in nothing less than a clash of civilizations, a fight to the death over life and liberty.
The stock footage of the man swimming first behind the dolphin, then along with it, and then ahead of it represents Russian public opinion, which has overtaken and surpassed the patriotic narrative fed to it by state television.
Legal thrillers are about the heroic accumulation of facts; the story of Beth MacMann, like any worthwhile media-fed public narrative, is all about the perceptions that helpfully fill in the empty spaces where facts are missing -- perceptions that arrive by way of opinion polls, second-guessing pundits or good old rampant speculation.
But he also said that the mainstream media was peddling false, force-fed narratives filed by reporters who never did anything but attend staged news conferences, and that it was his mission to call attention to events the mainstream media was unwilling to call attention to.
The absence of this kind of strong statement by the president as the months went by fed into the narrative that Obama was aloof, unconcerned with the problems facing ordinary Americans or out of touch.
It satisfied perfectly an urgent desire for grand narrative in our fragmenting Buzz-fed world.
And though we and our leaders may occasionally succumb, in the coming weeks, to our movie-fed yearning for narrative coherence -- for the happy ending supplied by forceful, unambiguous vengeance -- we, and they, must surely know that such satisfaction is illusory.
While the violence is horrifying, the encasing narrative is perversely "heroic", with corn-fed dialogue presented as solidly non-ironic, and images of the real-life combatants used to stirring, manipulative ends.
On the day of former national security adviser Michael Flynn's sentencing for lying to the FBI, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders made a last-ditch effort to promote the false narrative that he was entrapped by the feds.
They've been spoon-fed, spoon-fed, spoon-fed.
He's given the feds so much information, in fact, they've begun to wonder how reliable the narrative he's providing is, and fear he may be "grandstanding," as the Washington Post reported.
