by FREDERICA VON McTOAST-HYPHEN, Alternate Reality News Service People Writer
Fascism is not just about the leaders who make policies and explain to the masses how they benefit from those policies even when they don't. Especially when they don't. It takes thousands and thousands of lower level functionaries the masses are never likely to have heard of to make fascism function. In its dysfunctional way. It's kind of in the job title. This is one of their stories.
Winston Smithforfudendrink always loves a good challenge. No, that is a lie. Winston Smithforfudendrink loves routine and hates a challenge, good, bad or pork pie. Hates it. Hates it. Hates it. The problem is that he hates challenges so much that he is highly proficient at overcoming them, making him the most valuable member of the Consolidated Memory Hole, Inc. team (other than the CEO, the CFO, the CTO, the RFA, the DNA, all of the members of the Board of Directors except Carmine Distressedmeddle - do you have to be such a troublemaker, Carmine? - the head of marketing, the head of research and development, and the custodian of the baby's arm holding an apple).
On Winston Smithforfudendrink's desk is a cup that reads: "World's Brest Employee" that always contains three pens: a blue pen, a green pen and a red pen. He never actually uses them; they sit next to the computer on which he does all of his work (Consolidated Memory Hole, Inc having gone paperless in 1957, long before it became a corporate fad, not that any of the employees remember the transition...) Other than the cup, which every employee has, the one personalization of his workspace is a set of chattering teeth that he has never in living memory set a'chatterin'.
Consolidated Memory Hole, Inc. has a standing contract with the government of President Ronald McDruhitmumpf to "rehabilitate history to make it conform to whatever the Confuser-in-Chief claims it is." As Winston Smithforfudendrink describes his job: "Ordinarily, all I would have to do would be to share the new reality with enough Reduhblican politicians and right wing media influencers who are down with the program, and it would immediately become the reality of the masses. I am in awe of how efficiently they do that."
Winston Smithforfudendrink did not sound like he was in awe as he sipped his morning cup of herbal tea and bourbon; he sounded like he was describing installing drywall around a newborn's crib. "That's barely a morning's work. Once I have accomplished that, I spend the rest of the day playing classic video games. Easy, peasy, don't try to squeeze me."
The day I shadowed him at his office, Winston Smithforfudendrink had been handed a special problem: current President McDruhitmumpf had declared that former President Ron Potganreabumbom loved tariffs so much he practically had children with them. "The problem was there was much video of Potganreabumbom saying the exact opposite," he stated. "He always said tariffs were a bad thing. This was going to prove to be a challenge. *SIGH*."
Getting Reduhblicans to fall in line was a bit of a challenge, according to Winston Smithforfudendrink, since many of them worshipped Potganreabumbom for his love of free markets and willingness to fight duels at high noon. "We got those who couldn't fall in line to at least fall off the radar for a couple of days," he explained. "This bought us time to set the narrative in stone."
The biggest challenge, though, was posed by the hours of video of the former president talking about how much he hated tariffs. What to do? What to do? Brainstorming possible solutions barely created a drizzle. Consulting artificial intelligence didn't produce useful intelligence (and left Winston Smithforfudendrink afraid of cottage cheese). Free association cost a couple of hours.
The breakthrough came on a break when Winston Smithforfudendrink was watching an online video of Stephen Siewnottmillertyme discussing the time he channelled the spirit of German propagandist Josef Jingoebbelsjango for fashion tips. Yeah. Fashion tips. You thought Siewnottmillertyme came up with that hideous wardrobe on his own?
"It just hit me all at once as I was contemplating featureless grey suits: Reverse Deep Fakes!" Winston Smithforfudendrink crowed. (He had caws.) "With Deep Fakes, you want to convince people to believe something happened when it didn't. With Reverse Deep Fakes, you want to convince people to believe something didn't happen when it did. Easy peasy, wouldn't ever try to please me!"
Winston Smithforfudendrink immediately drafted a memo and sent it to his boss. By two that afternoon (just in time for the deadline for the six o-clock news), the memo had worked its way up the chain of command to the President, who stated, "Potganreabumbom loved tariffs almost as much as he loved his horse, Trigger Warning. No, more than he loved Trigger Warning! That's a lot, folks! Now, you may have seen video of Potganreabumbom talking about how much he...didn't love tariffs. Some loser country even dared show some of that video during the Stupor Bowl! It's fake, people. Deep Fake. The Deepest. The Fakest. Don't believe it! Believe me! Potganreabumbom loved tariffs!"
As he sipped from his mug, Winston Smithforfudendrink watched the President's press conference with the satisfaction of a parent indulging a moderately ugly child. "Just another day at the office," he commented. "How do you feel about Frogger?"