03-23-2021, 11:01 AM
I think the issue is that propaganda has a powerful new tool: social media. It serves a laundering function for, as well as providing realtime metrics to ascertain the efficacy of, their narratives. I think that's (one of) the issue(s): the Propagandists have not yet taken the fatal step of believing their own propaganda, but their flying monkeys certainly seem to.
I think it goes like this: The educational complex cultivates the psychological terrain very thoroughly, while actively culling those who will not or can not be so cultivated from itself. Thus, the media finds very credulous objects on which to work--and some of these objects, owing to their gullibility and intellect, themselves acquire a variety of titles and honors which serve to magnify the apparent veracity of the media as these gullible academics and professional lend the ethos of their titles to the message (whatever that message happens to be). Those who resist the manipulation will not typically obtain any success (not in the usual usage of the word, titles and what not) so their resistance and arguments are handicapped: When a Harvard professor of law waxes eloquent about the obsolescence of the 2nd amendment, Joe the plumber's counter arguments (even if accurate) are not effective.
When people are deprived of their God given talent to think critically, they are in the unenviable and vulnerable position of having to have reality interpreted for them. This interpretation I dub the message, and anything that threatens the message, to these people, actually threatens reality. Threatens their psychological existence, or else integrity. Imagine how pleasant it must feel to "know" exactly what one is doing here (in existence) to be blissfully unaware of the existential anxiety that accompanies not knowing. Combine this with a prevalence of hedonists, and its little surprise just how intransigent most people are.
Indeed, I would hazard that this relationship with reality is the only pleasure that is actually available to most of these people, and they will kill to keep it.
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