Stupid Russians!
I first became aware of just how serious this problem is years ago, watching the main evening news on Channel One, in Moscow. However, I don’t need to look elsewhere to see the harm so-called news does, few do it better than the Americans.
Before Trump you could have friends you didn’t agree with politically. Years ago, I was talking to my friend, Ron Nease and the subject turned to politics. I became aware that Ron started talking at me, not to me. He had ready answers, neatly bullet-pointed. A memorized list he could run down quickly.
I was fascinated. Here was a successful, smart business man who seemed to be regurgitating verbal bullet points… unaware.
Over time, it has become apparent how this works. Please open your mind now and allow other ideas in; you may not like what I am about to show you.
I recently read an article on the BBC website where the reporter ask some American conservatives about the new administration. I’m not so much interested in the answers as I am in the exact wording and facts presented in their responses. Read with an open mind:
I don’t understand how giving a path to citizenship for 11 million illegals in the country is going to unify us. It’s allowing people who have broken our laws to stay here and become citizens when they got here illegally.
I do not support a pathway to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants; that is an invitation to break into the country.
Notice they both used the exact same phrase: “pathway to citizenship for 11 million illegal…” followed by the same objection: giving citizenship to people after they broke the law is wrong. Perhaps you think this is a simple coincidence? Keep that mind open!
I’m not opposed to the Paris climate agreement, but it’s just a piece of paper; it fails to hold leading polluters, China and India, accountable.
The problem with the Paris climate accord is that it doesn’t hold China and India accountable.
Are you starting to see the pattern yet? How likely is it that random people would use the exact same phrase: “China and India accountable”? I can go on, in fact I did but it made the article too long. You can see these patterns for yourself – go look.
So if I repeat the same thing 274 times, at what point will you learn that phrase? Harvard says it takes 5 ½ impressions to commit something to long-term memory. So what would happen if I talked about holding China & India accountable as a reason to not take part in the Paris Climate accords six times? That reason would be committed to your long-term memory, right? How about 274 times?
How likely is it that all Fox News Commentators just happen to hit on the same phrases and talking points on topic after topic? Night after night saying the same things… Being true patriots (ask them), it’s simply not possible they are using the Spaced Repetition theory to mold their viewers.
That would be like turning people into zombies who would attack their own Capitol on command. Such a thing is simply not possible, we are Americans and we don’t fall for propaganda like those stupid Russians.
Hitler rules ok? I can prove it.
“You know, Hitler was a good egg really; don’t believe all the hysterical rubbish you’ve heard and read – it’s all lies, fake history created by the establishment just because he built a society totally different to anything around at the time. He inherited a country that was bankrupt, had the highest suicide rates, drug use, prostitution, inflation and unemployment rates in Europe in the 1930s. From that rock-bottom position, he made Germany self-sufficient after improving working conditions and halving the unemployment rate in just three years. In fact, he did such an outstanding job, other countries started buying German machinery. He invented the Motorway, for goodness sake. Autobahns were being built long before Britain opened its first one in 1959.”
Of course, I don’t believe for one moment that history has been altered at all, but if I started a campaign on all available media platforms based on the above, added some monstrous untruths to better illustrate my stance, and included, say, several links to well-known holocaust denial sites, you bet I would be able to garnish a huge following, particularly among the disgruntled, the bored, and of course, the millions of extremists that plague our planet.
I think today, it’s far too easy, and certainly politically beneficial, to institute a sense of irresponsible entitlement among those who believe, rightly or wrongly, that they have been denied whatever it is they think they should have. Add to that dangerous mix a conspiracy theory or five, and put the blame on some minority group, and there you have a pretty fast-track approach to power. Yes, that’s how stupid too many folk are these days, they just suck it up and take it all in.
Hitler did it (brilliantly, without any of today’s tech), Trump did it, many other corrupt governments do it, and Boris Johnson and his band of over-privileged bubble-wrapped Tory twats did it with Brexit. The Vote Leave” mob, led by Boris and his cohorts, simply lied to the public during the build-up to the Brexit referendum, claiming that the UK paid £350m each week for membership to the EU, and then, unbelievably, said that money would go, instead, to the brilliant but seriously underfunded National Health Service. They displayed this on their campaign bus, and all over the media platforms. All complete bollocks of course.
It happens all the time, all over. Create mistrust to start with, add several layers of misinformation, make sure you have found a scapegoat, and then, as an encore, use well-disguised manipulation tactics. Go on, try it. It’s so easy.
Media manipulation?
Sure. Let’s take a look how U.S. media treated Donald Trump. He is no angel but this was the end of American journalism, to me. The rotten investigation led by Bob Mueller. Hello? Did it lead to anything tangible? Did anybody bear any responsibility for initiating it?
But if you’d listened to the most of the US media back then, you’d believe that he was guilty long before the investigation report came out. Shame… and, yes, manipulation. But Trump’s is out and who cares now: the mission’s accomplished.
Of course, I’m not talking about any Russian journalism: there’s no such thing now, only propaganda. With very rare exceptions. But it is not Russia but the US media that claim to have moral superiority and professionalism. True, it once had it, but no more. The biggest US networks except for Fox are now subdivisions of the Democratic party, even worse, of its left-wing.
They truly don’t speak for the whole nation, only for the small chunk of it, but trying hard to put its own agenda and make opinions look like facts. Example? The Trump’s ‘Russian connection’ investigation plus the failed impeachment effort too. Everything they did talk about wasn’t confirmed even by loyal investigators eager to please the radical left.
I’m saying that now it looks like the US has kind of gotten back to the McCarthy’s era but in new packaging. Now it is the media that rule the country and the picture is not perfect: they don’t represent the people. The left-wing media did elect Joe Biden, with his competence and skills under a very big question mark. Let alone the corruption charges played down by the ‘fake news’ people. If it was OK to investigate Trump, why it is not OK to investigate Biden and Pelosi??? Isn’t it a manipulation?
I guess, from the left’s point of view, it was the right decision to get him into the White House: unlike Trump, Biden is very weak both mentally and physically, he is an easy target to be manipulated. He’s an object, not a subject. He is in no way would re-unite the country as this simply is not his goal.
So now the media king-makers have got it: they got the weak, incapable ‘basement president’ into the Oval office to rule instead of him.
Donald Trump was a president you might not like or even hate. But he was a president. With his ideas, his vision, his agenda.
Now the US has Joe Biden, a puppet who confuse his sons/niece’s names when talking before the audience.
So let’s buy some pop-corn: the Big Manipulation time in America has just begun.