October 29, 2026
THE DAILY McLUHAN DIALOGUES™ • McDialogues™
Understanding the Grammars of Electric Culture and Propaganda Science An Exploration of Technology Ecology as an Anchor in a Sea of Change and Tactical Training in Counter-Propaganda Science by Nelson S. Thall . Former Director/Chief Archivist, Marshall McLuhan Center On Global Communications, Ross, Ca. and McLuhan Media Scientist, Former President/Director, Marshall McLuhan Centre On Global Communications, Toronto, Canada.
THE POLITICIAN WHO CAN SAY ANYTHING
When Contradiction Makes Him Seem More Real
A Student of Technology asks:
How can a politician make a declaration today, contradict it tomorrow, and still seem real to his supporters? They hear the contradiction perfectly well. It does not seem to bother them. If anything, it seems to draw them closer. What is going on?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
The politician’s contradictions are the figure. The technological environment that changes how we experience them is the ground. Electric circuitry surrounds us with information arriving from every direction at once. Under this overload we no longer sort what we hear. We react to it. The know-it-all enters every conversation with conclusions already formed, so he is not there for meaning. He is there for the jolt. Hearing continues, but listening gives way to a restless hunger for the next sensation.
Professor McLuhan observed that under information overload, data classification gives way to pattern recognition. Hearing and vision extend through electric circuitry, drawing us into the discarnate life of the global theatre. Yesterday’s declaration and today’s reversal are still there to compare. The audience notices. But instead of weighing one against the other, they feel the collision between them.
Here is my proposition: the more a politician contradicts himself, the more real he seems. McLuhan taught that touch is not connection but interval, the gap where the action is. Two opposing statements open exactly such a gap. The clash between them sets up a vibration in that resonant interval, and the more contradictions, the more vibration. That vibration hits the sweet spot of humanity.
To understand why, consider the amoeba. It has no eyes, no ears, no brain. Its whole body is a skin, and reality for the amoeba is only what reaches it through that membrane. Electric man has been returned to the condition of the amoeba. Discarnate and overloaded, he no longer judges the world by what he sees or understands, but by what he senses through his electronic skin. The audience does not need to reconcile the statements. The vibration is enough. To the amoeba, what vibrates is real. The politician’s illogic is not a flaw in his message. It is his message.
And therein lies the TECHNOTRAP™. We mistake the force of the experience for the reliability of what produced it. Hearing is mistaken for listening, information for knowledge, and vibration for certainty. Technology Ecology™ asks us to recognize the environment shaping that response. Awareness gives us room to pause, remember, compare, and judge. Feeling that a politician is real does not make what he says true.
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All intellectual property contained herein was conceived, originated and authored exclusively by Nelson S. Thall. Artificial intelligence, aka a pseudo-conscious machine (PCM), was not employed. We hired a stenographer. All rights of authorship and ownership vest entirely and exclusively with Nelson S. Thall.
© 2026 Nelson S. Thall. All Rights Reserved.
I can be reached at: nelson@themediumisthemessage.com