Page 45 - SurprisingTruthFinal

Nicholas Boothman
“My old firm, The Clarity Group, is running the
script,” Henry said. “They’re selling the lie that the
messenger is unstable, so the message is toxic. If the
truth comes from a lunatic, it’s just another piece of
noise.”
Vincent, who had been quietly monitoring the few
remaining independent news feeds, nodded grimly.
“They are using our own demand against us. ‘Courage
Over Comfort’ is now ‘Terrorist Rhetoric.’ They are
offering people the comfortable fiction that the
problem is a few bad actors, not the foundation of the
world.”
The counter-attack was effective. The initial spike of
outrage over the train crash softened into confused
suspicion. The blue panic line, which had briefly shot
back up, began to oscillate wildly as people struggled
to decide whose narrative to believe: the cold,
terrifying facts, or the familiar, comforting
demonization of the source.
“We can’t fight the distraction war,” Henry
declared. “They own the airwaves, the search engines,
and the emotional trigger points. We have to change
the battlefield.”
45