General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The real reason a very loud few are posting hostility toward Glenn Greenwald at DU: [View all]woo me with science
(32,139 posts)and wild conspiracy theories depend on the flatly absurd suggestion that governments and corporations do not spend millions, billions, to advertise, propagandize, and shape public opinion.
That the programs already exist is not in dispute. That the motivation to use them is strong is not debatable. Nor are the deep pockets of those whose interests they serve.
A primary goal of any group that seeks to impose major policy against the will and interests of the majority is to manage public opinion and public response so as to reduce the likelihood of pushback and revolt. Millions of us are being driven into poverty, and our Constitutional protections are being stripped. Of course great attention and money will be poured into managing public opinion and creating the illusion that the people support what is being done to them.
We already know these programs exist and are being used, not only within smaller political groups but also at the very highest levels of government, thanks to Sunstein's writings and the leaks by Snowden. They are a wholly predictable extension of the advertising and propaganda that already deluge our media and that are inherent in any major political struggle for power. Before we had the technology for interactive propaganda on the internet, we saw the cable news channels twisted into a steady diet of distractions, misrepresentations, and corporate talking points.
History shows that the tactics available to be used, will be used, in the struggle for political power and wealth. We have been carefully taught as Americans that it couldn't happen here; we are taught to associate these kinds of direct manipulations of citizens with totalitarian states, not ostensibly "representative" governments like our own. But we really aren't special, and what is happening in America right now is just one more example of the battles for power we have seen throughout history, by those who invariably claimed they were working in the best interests of the people.
Of course it exists, and of course it is here.
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