Part One: The Machinery of Forgetting

This is the first of a three part analysis examining how Donald Trump’s “quiet piggy” comment to a female reporter reveals the systematic dismantling of democratic norms. Part One explores how the “flood the zone” strategy and attention economy conspire to make outrages disappear. Part Two will examine the nine year war on women who dare to speak. Part Three will map the global authoritarian playbook for destroying press freedom through intimidation.

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“Quiet, piggy.”

The words are what you’d use to hush a beast in a pen. Last Friday, they were deployed by the President of the United States, aimed at journalist Catherine Lucey on Air Force One. Her crime? Asking why he was fighting the release of the Epstein files if he had nothing to hide. A simple, necessary question, the kind that is the lifeblood of a functioning democracy, and is now treated as a capital offence.

And here is the truly terrifying part, the bit that should have us all checking our own backyards: it barely made a sound.

The clip didn’t break the news cycle. It didn’t lead broadcasts. For four days, this moment, this stark, unvarnished reduction of a woman to livestock, drifted in the digital void. It took an army of creators and strategists in a burgeoning left wing media ecosystem, stepping into the vacuum where institutional courage once lived, to finally make a nation see what happened.

YouTuber Hank Green voiced the collective exhaustion: 

“I’ve been mad about it for like 12 straight hours… It’s one more unforgivable thing in a list of 20,000 unforgivable things.”

Twenty thousand. That number isn’t hyperbole. It’s the documented, grinding reality of the American descent. And to understand why this particular horror stuck, we must first understand the highly sophisticated machinery that was designed to make them forget it entirely. Because that machinery, the industrial scale production of amnesia through strategic flooding and algorithmic distraction, is how democracies die in the age of infinite content. And don’t for a second think it can’t be imported. It’s already with us.

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The Flood the Zone Doctrine: Why This Horror Almost Disappeared

Steve Bannon told them the strategy years ago, back when people still thought he was just a provocateur rather than an architect: “Flood the zone with shit.”

The idea is brutally simple. Produce so many outrages, so many scandals, so many norm violations that the human brain simply cannot hold them all. By the time anyone’s organised a proper response to Monday’s atrocity, Wednesday’s fresh hell has already made it yesterday’s news.

This isn’t a bug in the Trump presidency. It’s not the entire operating system but it’s certainly a major feature.

Consider what else happened in the same week as the “quiet piggy” incident:

· Trump threatening a naval blockade and military action against Mexico, a World Cup co host nation, with his secret invasion of Venezuela proceeding in the background.

· The ongoing battle over Epstein files implicating powerful men.

· Economic turbulence as his policies spook markets.

· Democrats sweeping off year elections.

· A legislative battle over the filibuster.

Each one of these would have been a defining crisis in a normal administration. Each would have dominated news cycles, spawned investigations, triggered resignations.

Under Trump, they’re just Tuesday.

The flood the zone strategy weaponises cognitive limitations. The human brain evolved to track perhaps 150 relationships and handle immediate, local threats. It never evolved to process 20,000 presidential atrocities spread across nine years. They’re simply not built for this volume of horror.

And that overload isn’t accidental. It’s engineered.

When citizens are overwhelmed, they stop tracking individual crimes. They can’t maintain the spreadsheet of horrors necessary to hold power accountable. We develop a kind of learned helplessness: 

“Well, he’s terrible, but what can you do?”

The answer democracy requires, organise, resist, vote, prosecute, never normalise, becomes functionally impossible when you can’t remember which outrage to organise around because seventeen new ones arrived since breakfast.

The “quiet piggy” moment almost disappeared entirely. No major outlet jumped on it initially. The White House knew it wouldn’t stick. They’ve learned that in a flooded zone, individual turds either sink or are displaced quickly.

That “quiet piggy” resurfaced four days later through social media rather than traditional journalism tells you everything about which institutions still have a pulse and which are already dead, they just haven’t stopped moving yet.

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The Attention Economy Wants You to Forget This Tomorrow

But the flood the zone strategy only works because it’s swimming downstream in an economy already designed to destroy sustained attention.

Social media platforms have rewired our brains to crave novelty over depth, reaction over reflection. Every scroll is a tiny gamble. Every refresh might bring that dopamine spike of fresh content, new outrage, novel stimulation.

We’re not reading anymore. We’re hunting, hunting for the next hit.

Trump didn’t invent this economy, but he’s one of its most skilled operators. Or he has an intuitive flair. Every outrage triggers a dopamine spike. Every fresh horror gives us that addictive little jolt. We scroll, we react, we share, we move on. The platforms profit. The attention moves. Nothing sticks.

By the time “quiet piggy” went viral, four days later, remember, Trump had already generated seventeen other provocations. The algorithm had already served up a hundred other reasons to be furious. American brains, desperate for the next hit, were already moving on. Australians have Murdoch’s mob to help normalise the monster. 

Plus the nine trillion dollar net zero diversion.

This is why authoritarian movements thrive in the age of TikTok and Twitter. Not because social media spreads propaganda, though it does, but because it makes sustained attention to any single outrage nearly impossible.

We consume cruelty the way we consume cat videos: as content, as entertainment, as momentary engagement before the next scroll.

Think about what that means. Footage of the President of the United States calling a female reporter a pig should be career ending, regime toppling material. Instead, it’s competing for attention with dance videos, celebrity gossip, and whatever fresh hell Trump generates tomorrow.

Your fatigue isn’t a side effect. It’s the goal.

When citizens are too overwhelmed to focus, too tired to organise, too addicted to the next dopamine hit to remember yesterday’s crimes, democracy doesn’t need to be overthrown. It just needs to be ignored long enough to die of neglect.

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The Press Gaggle That Stood There and Took It

Here’s what gnaws at you when you watch the footage: the silence.

Trump points his finger. Barks his command. And the other journalists in that Air Force One cabin, professionals, colleagues, people who supposedly believe in a free press, stand there like statues at their own profession’s funeral.

Not one voice speaks up. Not one person says, “That’s out of line.” Not one, single, colleague.

You can understand the calculation, can’t you? It happens in milliseconds.

Jump to Lucey’s defence and you’re next. You’ll be “piggy number two.” Your outlet loses access. Your editor gets a call. Your name goes on the shit list.

Perhaps you’ve got a mortgage. Perhaps you’re one bad assignment away from a restructure. Perhaps you’re just tired, so tired of fighting battles you know you’ll lose.

So you stand there. Pen poised. Recording device running. Bearing witness to nothing you’ll actually challenge.

The Society of Professional Journalists issued a statement days later, days, calling it “part of an unmistakable pattern of hostility, often directed at women, that undermines the essential role of a free and independent press.”

Impeccable sentiment. Strongly worded. Completely irrelevant.

Where was that spine in the moment? Where was it when it might have cost something?

The truth is, the media’s backbone has been liquidated by exhaustion, by Trump friendly billionaire owners, by the dawning realisation that this particular president doesn’t care whether you respect yourself or not.

The corruption isn’t individual journalists’ cowardice. It’s the structure itself. Access journalism in an authoritarian era becomes state propaganda with extra steps.

You don’t need to formally censor the press when they’ve censored themselves out of professional survival instinct. Our own Canberra Press Gallery is mostly similarly embedded.

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Why Understanding the Machinery Matters

So we’ve mapped how the machinery of forgetting operates. The flood the zone strategy overwhelms cognitive capacity. The attention economy addicts us to novelty over substance. The press corps has learned silence is safer than courage.

This machinery is why “quiet piggy” almost disappeared. It’s why 19,999 other outrages have disappeared. It’s why systematic attacks on democratic norms can proceed in plain sight while we scroll past them looking for the next hit.

Understanding this machinery is essential because it explains how authoritarianism succeeds in the digital age. Not through dramatic coups or midnight arrests, but through exhaustion, distraction, and the manipulation of our own attention spans.

The machinery is designed to make us forget. To make us move on. To make us too tired to fight back.

And it’s working.

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In Part Two, we’ll examine why women, and particularly women journalists who ask uncomfortable questions, have become the specific, systematic targets of this machinery. We’ll trace the nine year escalation and show how women who speak have become canaries in the coalmine of fascism.

For now, understand this: the “quiet piggy” moment resurfaced despite the machinery, not because the machinery failed. It took four days, alternative media channels, and millions of people deciding this particular outrage deserved attention.

Next time, we might not be so lucky.

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