Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Propaganda and the Death of Truth

In an age of 143 character quips and 10 second sound bites, the one yelling loudest and longest supposedly "wins". But what do they win? Has anyone ever really changed their opinion on an issue on the basis of tweets and sound bites? Look at who the social media blurbs are addressed to. "Liberals are really going to be mad when they see this!" "Conservatives just don't understand x, y, and z." Ninety nine percent of such social media sound bites are preaching to the choir. Liberals will not be mad, because they will not see the blurb, and if they did, they will not care. Conservatives will not be reading your brilliantly contrived propaganda sophistry, and if they did they will pick it apart in other blurbs you will probably not see, let alone read. Watching all of this going on in social media is like watching a comedy, but sadly, as with much comedy, the roots of that comedy are found in tragedy.. Welcome to the post-modern world. Behold the fruit of your post-modernity...

So this week, once again as they have done so many times before, the propaganda machines from all sides of the political fence are generating "drama" out of some issue or other; said drama calculated to advance the specific agendas, goals, and world views of the groups behind those propaganda machines. Emotions are appealed to on both sides and critical scrutiny and careful dispassionate rational thought and discussion is the casualty of the sophistry and "new speak" used to bend popular political and cultural will and thought into channels that feed the never ending lust for power and control of said groups. ...and all under the rubric of "news"... Of course "propaganda" is a word little used or understood. We can't talk about the nature of propaganda lest we expose the house of lies and deceit the propaganda machines have created. May God Almighty have mercy on us and deliver us from this scourge...

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