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In reply to the discussion: I'm Not Sure How To Ask This... But... Is Anybody Else Feeling A Great Nauseous Forboding About... [View all]mojowork_n
(2,354 posts)There are certainly hardened, hard-line, implacable types on both sides of the ideological divide.
But I think it's a mistake to characterize it as propaganda being "spewed" from both sides.
We 'vent' (often under conditions of explosively high pressure) in response to the deliberate,
manufactured distortions that dominate 'their' media.
But it's not really head-to-head, locked-horns, direct debate:
That would look like this:
--------------> <----------------
What's going on looks more like a perpetual motion machine, with the curves looping
around a circle.
It's hardly ever Problem > Solution vs. Alternate Problem > Solution. The debates
that exist are more childish than that, revolving around Identity Politics. "I'm
Rubber and You're Glue..."
But -- that there is a Right Wing Noise Machine / Echo Chamber goes without saying.
Faux News + Hate Radio AM + the 'official' news channels and PR outlets. Think
of an upside down pyramid, or a funnel. Gatekeepers at the top control the news
flow. With fewer and fewer (but always bigger and bigger) news companies running
the show, it's easier & easier to keep conservatives on all the Sunday AM chat shows.
It's easier to screen out comparably liberal spokespeople -- unless they're set up as straw
men.
Leading the parade is that whole cavalcade of clown car presidential candidates,
on the Republican side. Their debates are squarely aimed at the Freeperville /
Looney Tune right wing hard-line True Believers. That echo chamber resonates
with boos, hostility and rage, with the slightest provocation. It's not representative
of the American voting public, as a whole, but successes and failures are gauged by
their 'reactions,' in the Republican debates.
Goebbels and the Cold War Stalinist propagandists would be jealous with admiration.
if they could see the extent to which those folks have been programmed to respond,
to all the talking points, and Pavlovian bells and whistles.
But the reason for optimism is that it really is a weapon of Mass Deception.
"Psy. Ops." military grade psychological warfare. Plus a lot of persuasion through
straight brand marketing, fear and intimidation.
Miles wide but skin deep.
Under the surface, the physiological response mechanisms for pain and stimuli
are intact, even when they're being bombarded with fake stimuli.
Their nightmare is that we -- Americans, all of us -- will wake up to the extent to
which the mutual assured destruction, the demonization of both sides by the other,
is intentional. A tactic to divide and conquer and maintain rule.
So the few, at the top of the pyramid, can stay there.