Listen to a reading of this article: One of the empire's strongest assets is the widespread assumption that propaganda is something that only happens to other people. Another is the widespread assumption that propaganda only comes from other countries and other political ideologies.
I realize Caitlin thinks we should question all narratives, which I do. Even so, in the last week, Tucker Carlson asked several questions:
* So, it's probably likely that Biden blew up the Nordstream pipeline, right?
* And we lied about expanding NATO in the 1990s, right?
* And his CIA contact pointed out that many congress persons are controlled by the CIA, right?
* And that same contact said the CIA probably killed JFK, because JFK wasn't militaristic enough.
Tucker has been hostile toward this war from the beginning. He's pointed out:
* The AVOZ battalion of Nazis that work for Zelensky;
* Zelensky crushing various churches;
* Zelensky banning Russian when that is what 50% of the Ukrainians speak;
* Zelensky crushing 9 other political parties
You might want a very left wing system, and I might want free markets. You might want something other than transparent elections, while all I want is transparent elections. And you might be in favor of the shot, while I think clots are killing thousands of athletes in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. You might think that ad on TV was a "health message" and I might think Pfizer should be dismantled and its executives should go to jail.
But on Ukraine, I want to avoid nuclear war. I think there ought to be peace talks today, and I'd like to see Biden and Zelensky in prison. And I will take allies on this--the most important problem facing the world--wherever I can find them.
“Generally, intelligent people differ from the less intelligent only in that they have more clever justifications and defenses for the perspectives they've been propagandized into believing.”
-Caitlin Johnstone
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair
“Intelligence isn’t a measure of wisdom, it’s only a measure of one’s indoctrination.”
“Humanity has arrived at this point in history through the worship of the mind, the only way humanity will survive is through empowering its collective heart.”
You will note that Russia is depicted as a racist and reactionary theocracy when the audience are lefties, and as unreconstructed Stalinists, when the audience is more responsive to a "God, guns n guts" type message.
We have fallen so far from grace by now I think we all feel as if we are flying by the seats of our pants. Maybe we had to get this far to understand. May be we will survive to have a planet and each other to depend on. The insanity could not be greater. It is the farthest extension of the path we have all been on. And, yes, none of us has escaped the trauma. Coming together to process the pain is the most significant thing we can do.
“The tendency to meet authority-endorsed information with critical thought and scrutiny seems to have a lot more to do with the dumb luck of having been conditioned to do so by the kind of life you have lived.”
Your comment about the sincere devotion to knowing the truth really hit a chord with me. Remaining a perpetual cynic does come in handy during times like the one we are in
Propaganda is such an important (and humbling!) topic. Others have said it's much easier to train a smart dog than a dumb one.
Humans are funny creatures. Understanding our tendency to be swayed by stories over facts has made a profound difference in my work related to planning & designing infrastructure.
I disagree re intelligence. These people may be, as you say, smart or clever, but they're not intelligent. Intelligent persons are able to think critically. Idiots are not.
Someone can be a scientist, a journalist, an "intellectual" - very smart people - and yet a complete idiot that swallows whole whatever is regurgitated by the media.
Since they can't think critically we should find a way to manipulate them towards a better world. But to do this we must either seize control of the means of communication - meaning the MSM, which is nigh impossible - or of AI/robots. It may seem incredible, but the latter could be easier.
Too right about propaganda being for everyone, good example being the whole AI and automation schtick Wall Street's been running ever since they saw the numbers and realized automation is much more expensive and less reliable than poor people, especially other countries' poor people.
1) There is no such thing as artificial intelligence. What we have are simulators of intelligence, but the most dangerous thing about an intelligence simulator is its total lack of anything approaching intelligence. Yes, we are placing key decision points in the wise hands of the same logic that powers phone menus. AI is a marketing term designed to smooth over the fact that Jeff Bezos has a microphone installed in your living room.
2) That automated McDonalds has the same old crowd of $7.25 per hour workers making food in the back, they just don't have to stop picking their noses when a customer walks in anymore. The people who keep the machinery running out front make a lot more than $25 an hour, and if they're working on something else when your store breaks, you are dead in the water. This is one of many reasons Wall Street decided Thai kids who dreamed of someday owning a pig were cheaper than robots, and moved all the manufacturing overseas.
3) There are two reasons to automate a manufacturing process: speed and repeatability. I have worked in automated factories where bus-sized machinery revolves in a blur: there's more skilled labor per square foot in such a place than there is at Johns Hopkins, and it costs more, in toto. Programming moving machinery in three dimensions is not for the faint of heart, nor yet the weak of mind. The money was why I could retire at 54, losing the edge is why I had to.
4) The basic enclosed washing machine design that does all the scrubbing, rinsing, and wringing out for us is what? a hundred years old? Where's the one that sorts the laundry, moves it to the dryer, then takes it out and folds it? The "Automation is taking all our jobs" story is a scare tactic endlessly repeated by people who've never given a minute's thought to what's involved in replacing human workers. Strictly delimited piecework, yes: but when Mu Li drops the doll head she's working on she bends over and picks it up all by herself. When your robot skips a step, one hundred doll heads smash against the wall before you can blink. Then you get to cuss the technician thirty minutes while he's deciding he needs to call the engineer, who's busy at the other site until two o'clock. Mu Li works all day standing in the filth of your converted chicken house under a forty watt bulb; Mr. Robot don't play that. The fear of automation is aggressively marketed to keep wages low, and it's working champ-wise in the now timeframe, C.J.
5) A few well-aimed french fries will put that McDonalds out of business for a half a day. I urge a little solidarity, here.
"The empire uses ideologies the way we use tools... Don't focus so much on the tools, focus on who's using them, and what they're being used for."
This--focusing on the tools/ideologies used by the status quo to reinforce their propaganda onto the unwitting masses is what can lead more into a true "devotion to the truth" as you call it, Caitlin. Once folks can see the "tool" they'll be better equipped to see who is really wielding said tool and what is the truth behind the tool's use. That's why as hard as it is (and it IS hard) we can't give up on informing, educating and pointing-out the tools of the status quo that wishes to do us all in with killer robo-dogs and/or AI made McDonald's burgers.
To respond to Ben Norton's observation that "There is nothing that US imperialism will not try to co-opt and empty of meaning":
I discovered that the US government has been using the work of the late Dr Gene Sharp - a lifelong advocate of nonviolence - for anti-revolutionary violence in Central America. I started seeing derogatory remarks about Dr Sharp on the internet and tracked them to their source. He must be turning in his grave.
And the reason why intelligence doesn't protect you from propaganda? Propaganda is based on appealing to the emotions. Even in intelligent people, the hippocampus is activated before the pre-frontal cortex.
In addition to a sincere devotion to seeking the truth, I think a healthy level of skepticism helps those who are able to think clearly about what's going on around them.
I would rather have this a private message. A message from a reader who holds you in high esteem.
However, here goes: you speak with great intelligence and discernment in exposing the criminality of the American government. There is virtually no writer today who pierces the many layers of corruption we know and s there.
But you lose me completely when you veer off onto a collectivist, anti-free market tirade. What you’re railing against is NOT free market capitalism, but rather a very corrupt crony capitalism. Very far advanced. It is close to a form fascism. Mercantilism. I would like to speak more of this, but this method is far too cumbrous and slow.
Merry Christmas, dear. May you have all your heart desires on the new year.
We are alive breathing people and the Government isn’t alive . So naturally they will seek / steal our aspirations which create our civilized place . An Empire without a breathing only understands death and misery.
One has to make the decision not to be a child of the Empire and suffer its miserable fate.
Señor Gonzalez was up from Hermosillo at the Tucson Mall for some holiday shopping. Upon entering the J C Penneys, he responded to a friendly wave from an approaching sales associate by stating “Quiere que comprar algunos calcetines.” Unfortunately for Sr. Gonzalez, he’d addressed Wally-probably the only Mall employee who was not bilingual.
As Wally approached closer and considered a response, explanatory of his lack of understanding yet expressive of his desire to be helpful; Señor Gonzalez espied a display of his intended purchase. The shopper pointed and exclaimed “Eso, si que es!”
Meeting at the display, Wally querulously asked “SOCKS? You wanted socks? Gee, Mister, if you can spell it, why can’t you say it?”
Peace.
Western leaders know how to spell it. They’ve known for decades how to obtain it. It’s been spelt out specifically how by their adversaries in the current crises.
Why can’t they say it?
A thought that should give them pause, and maybe all of us paz.
I realize Caitlin thinks we should question all narratives, which I do. Even so, in the last week, Tucker Carlson asked several questions:
* So, it's probably likely that Biden blew up the Nordstream pipeline, right?
* And we lied about expanding NATO in the 1990s, right?
* And his CIA contact pointed out that many congress persons are controlled by the CIA, right?
* And that same contact said the CIA probably killed JFK, because JFK wasn't militaristic enough.
Tucker has been hostile toward this war from the beginning. He's pointed out:
* The AVOZ battalion of Nazis that work for Zelensky;
* Zelensky crushing various churches;
* Zelensky banning Russian when that is what 50% of the Ukrainians speak;
* Zelensky crushing 9 other political parties
You might want a very left wing system, and I might want free markets. You might want something other than transparent elections, while all I want is transparent elections. And you might be in favor of the shot, while I think clots are killing thousands of athletes in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. You might think that ad on TV was a "health message" and I might think Pfizer should be dismantled and its executives should go to jail.
But on Ukraine, I want to avoid nuclear war. I think there ought to be peace talks today, and I'd like to see Biden and Zelensky in prison. And I will take allies on this--the most important problem facing the world--wherever I can find them.
God bless you.
“Generally, intelligent people differ from the less intelligent only in that they have more clever justifications and defenses for the perspectives they've been propagandized into believing.”
-Caitlin Johnstone
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair
“Intelligence isn’t a measure of wisdom, it’s only a measure of one’s indoctrination.”
“Humanity has arrived at this point in history through the worship of the mind, the only way humanity will survive is through empowering its collective heart.”
You will note that Russia is depicted as a racist and reactionary theocracy when the audience are lefties, and as unreconstructed Stalinists, when the audience is more responsive to a "God, guns n guts" type message.
We have fallen so far from grace by now I think we all feel as if we are flying by the seats of our pants. Maybe we had to get this far to understand. May be we will survive to have a planet and each other to depend on. The insanity could not be greater. It is the farthest extension of the path we have all been on. And, yes, none of us has escaped the trauma. Coming together to process the pain is the most significant thing we can do.
The robots will take over, and they are here for your safety.
“The tendency to meet authority-endorsed information with critical thought and scrutiny seems to have a lot more to do with the dumb luck of having been conditioned to do so by the kind of life you have lived.”
Class struggle is not dumb luck.
Your comment about the sincere devotion to knowing the truth really hit a chord with me. Remaining a perpetual cynic does come in handy during times like the one we are in
Propaganda is such an important (and humbling!) topic. Others have said it's much easier to train a smart dog than a dumb one.
Humans are funny creatures. Understanding our tendency to be swayed by stories over facts has made a profound difference in my work related to planning & designing infrastructure.
I disagree re intelligence. These people may be, as you say, smart or clever, but they're not intelligent. Intelligent persons are able to think critically. Idiots are not.
Someone can be a scientist, a journalist, an "intellectual" - very smart people - and yet a complete idiot that swallows whole whatever is regurgitated by the media.
Since they can't think critically we should find a way to manipulate them towards a better world. But to do this we must either seize control of the means of communication - meaning the MSM, which is nigh impossible - or of AI/robots. It may seem incredible, but the latter could be easier.
Too right about propaganda being for everyone, good example being the whole AI and automation schtick Wall Street's been running ever since they saw the numbers and realized automation is much more expensive and less reliable than poor people, especially other countries' poor people.
1) There is no such thing as artificial intelligence. What we have are simulators of intelligence, but the most dangerous thing about an intelligence simulator is its total lack of anything approaching intelligence. Yes, we are placing key decision points in the wise hands of the same logic that powers phone menus. AI is a marketing term designed to smooth over the fact that Jeff Bezos has a microphone installed in your living room.
2) That automated McDonalds has the same old crowd of $7.25 per hour workers making food in the back, they just don't have to stop picking their noses when a customer walks in anymore. The people who keep the machinery running out front make a lot more than $25 an hour, and if they're working on something else when your store breaks, you are dead in the water. This is one of many reasons Wall Street decided Thai kids who dreamed of someday owning a pig were cheaper than robots, and moved all the manufacturing overseas.
3) There are two reasons to automate a manufacturing process: speed and repeatability. I have worked in automated factories where bus-sized machinery revolves in a blur: there's more skilled labor per square foot in such a place than there is at Johns Hopkins, and it costs more, in toto. Programming moving machinery in three dimensions is not for the faint of heart, nor yet the weak of mind. The money was why I could retire at 54, losing the edge is why I had to.
4) The basic enclosed washing machine design that does all the scrubbing, rinsing, and wringing out for us is what? a hundred years old? Where's the one that sorts the laundry, moves it to the dryer, then takes it out and folds it? The "Automation is taking all our jobs" story is a scare tactic endlessly repeated by people who've never given a minute's thought to what's involved in replacing human workers. Strictly delimited piecework, yes: but when Mu Li drops the doll head she's working on she bends over and picks it up all by herself. When your robot skips a step, one hundred doll heads smash against the wall before you can blink. Then you get to cuss the technician thirty minutes while he's deciding he needs to call the engineer, who's busy at the other site until two o'clock. Mu Li works all day standing in the filth of your converted chicken house under a forty watt bulb; Mr. Robot don't play that. The fear of automation is aggressively marketed to keep wages low, and it's working champ-wise in the now timeframe, C.J.
5) A few well-aimed french fries will put that McDonalds out of business for a half a day. I urge a little solidarity, here.
"The empire uses ideologies the way we use tools... Don't focus so much on the tools, focus on who's using them, and what they're being used for."
This--focusing on the tools/ideologies used by the status quo to reinforce their propaganda onto the unwitting masses is what can lead more into a true "devotion to the truth" as you call it, Caitlin. Once folks can see the "tool" they'll be better equipped to see who is really wielding said tool and what is the truth behind the tool's use. That's why as hard as it is (and it IS hard) we can't give up on informing, educating and pointing-out the tools of the status quo that wishes to do us all in with killer robo-dogs and/or AI made McDonald's burgers.
To respond to Ben Norton's observation that "There is nothing that US imperialism will not try to co-opt and empty of meaning":
I discovered that the US government has been using the work of the late Dr Gene Sharp - a lifelong advocate of nonviolence - for anti-revolutionary violence in Central America. I started seeing derogatory remarks about Dr Sharp on the internet and tracked them to their source. He must be turning in his grave.
And the reason why intelligence doesn't protect you from propaganda? Propaganda is based on appealing to the emotions. Even in intelligent people, the hippocampus is activated before the pre-frontal cortex.
In addition to a sincere devotion to seeking the truth, I think a healthy level of skepticism helps those who are able to think clearly about what's going on around them.
I would rather have this a private message. A message from a reader who holds you in high esteem.
However, here goes: you speak with great intelligence and discernment in exposing the criminality of the American government. There is virtually no writer today who pierces the many layers of corruption we know and s there.
But you lose me completely when you veer off onto a collectivist, anti-free market tirade. What you’re railing against is NOT free market capitalism, but rather a very corrupt crony capitalism. Very far advanced. It is close to a form fascism. Mercantilism. I would like to speak more of this, but this method is far too cumbrous and slow.
Merry Christmas, dear. May you have all your heart desires on the new year.
We are alive breathing people and the Government isn’t alive . So naturally they will seek / steal our aspirations which create our civilized place . An Empire without a breathing only understands death and misery.
One has to make the decision not to be a child of the Empire and suffer its miserable fate.
I never heard a Empire laugh.
They pretend to have humour.
Pathetic Patriarch’s Pun Parable Proposes Propagandists Ponder Promoting Pre-existing Peace Proficiency
Señor Gonzalez was up from Hermosillo at the Tucson Mall for some holiday shopping. Upon entering the J C Penneys, he responded to a friendly wave from an approaching sales associate by stating “Quiere que comprar algunos calcetines.” Unfortunately for Sr. Gonzalez, he’d addressed Wally-probably the only Mall employee who was not bilingual.
As Wally approached closer and considered a response, explanatory of his lack of understanding yet expressive of his desire to be helpful; Señor Gonzalez espied a display of his intended purchase. The shopper pointed and exclaimed “Eso, si que es!”
Meeting at the display, Wally querulously asked “SOCKS? You wanted socks? Gee, Mister, if you can spell it, why can’t you say it?”
Peace.
Western leaders know how to spell it. They’ve known for decades how to obtain it. It’s been spelt out specifically how by their adversaries in the current crises.
Why can’t they say it?
A thought that should give them pause, and maybe all of us paz.
ror
Paz,
Donviejo Feogordo del Torpe