Prompt: Five Arenas

Politicians depend on fictions as much as facts to communicate and accumulate power with and from their audiences, us citizens. This is how artists become indispensable.

This is about AI, artists, technology and power. It is also about journalism. In other words, I want to examine the fact/fiction world in which we all swim, every day of our lives – even if we would prefer to remain apart to some degree. This post is about us digital citizens.

It will tell you a story which takes place in five arenas in an inter-connected sequence of events: the political arena, the artistic arena, the AI technology arena, the journalistic arena and the citizen arena which I sub-divide into the hyper-local and the digital-global.

The citizens who occupy the hyper-local and the digital-global arenas are most probably you and I, and everyone else who are both citizens and audiences. Yet some of us are more at jeopardy than others. In other words, some of us have a lot to lose - up to and including our streets, neighbours, families, and even our lives. What I see in this fact/fiction world may not have the same consequences as it does for you.

The political arena - 4th February 2025

It starts with the political arena as press conference – a wild, incendiary address by President Trump alongside Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. To all intents and purposes Trump confirms his intention to break international law. It seems he implicitly states his support for ethnic cleansing and its genocidal implications for the Palestinian people of Gaza. 

For the full text, visit Chris Baldwin's #ClickbaitCitizen on Substack.