Who is telling you what - propaganda, conspiracy, and critical thinking
We are at the precipice of a great choice in human history...however, this is not a new thing.
Every human before us has been at the same precipice...strive for a better world, or submit your children to slavery. For some generations, the choice was open and their actions easy due to their cultural conditioning, as it was for the Patriots of the American Revolution. For others, the circumstances misinformed or subverted their choices, as in the French Revolution and The Terror that followed. Most of the time, throughout history, humans have chosen slavery willingly; it is an easy choice. Striving isn't guaranteed to succeed, your fellow humans are not likely to back you up,and there are very often harsh consequences for resisting the path to slavery.
These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country
Thomas Paine
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Liberty or slavery are your only choices. Every subversion of liberty is a step towards the collar and chain. While there are benefits to a balance between liberty and governance, the tool of governance is always poised to strike at the hand that wields it
Government is not reason, it is not eloquence — it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action
Attributed to George Washington
We can talk about bravery, but we can not forget purpose. Purpose is driven by knowledge, and accurate knowledge is very hard to obtain. The people that wish to own slaves will always employ the lie to make the Choice lean towards slavery...for example, the end goal of cultural Marxism is that people will vote themselves into the chains of "democratic socialism"
We need to talk about three things in making our choice:
- Propaganda
- Conspiracy
- Critical Thinking
Propaganda
This is nothing more than the manipulation of truth. It does not require that the propagandist lie. In fact, one of the best propaganda pieces I have ever seen is based upon nothing but the truth:
Propaganda is a tactic.
It is apparent to most Americans now that the mass media, with its #fakenews, is the propaganda arm of the democrat party. This isn't new either. In Soviet Russia, the news was so obviously not the truth, that Russians started to believe that anything that was the opposite of what the news told them was indeed true.
This is a huge error in critical thinking.
Conspiracy
If what you are told is a lie, then who lied to you, and why did they lie?
If the #fakemainstreamnews lies to you about Clinton's security breaches, and lies to you about Obamacare, and lies to you about murder committed by illegal aliens, and lies to you about the polling data in an election, then why are you going to believe them when they tell you that Pizzagate has been debunked?
The problem with a lack of credibility is that it creates uncertainty, and humans will create their own explanations in the attempt to resolve that uncertainty. And if a source proves itself to be reliably dishonest, then explanations that are provided by an alternate source that has always questioned the dishonest source become defacto credible.
This is binary thinking.
Critical Thinking
Binary thinking is just one of the thousands of kinds of error we can commit in accurate thinking. If you have the time, then check out Critical Thinking and Human Governance for an overview of HOW to employ critical thinking.
But for now, let's go back to the question I ask in the Conspiracy section,
If what you are told is a lie, then who lied to you, and why did they lie?
Let's define the range of possibilities (mix and match as applies):
- Someone is telling the truth
- Someone is telling the part of the truth that helps their own argument
- Someone is trying to convince you that the Choice of slavery is the , cough cough, reasonable choice
- Someone is telling what they think is the truth
- Someone is telling lies for shits and giggles, or trolling.
- Someone is mentally ill, and how dare you question the One and Only Truth
- Someone is trying to sell you something
- Someone has based their self-worth on conformity to the herd
I am sure you can come up with other possibilities for the why of the lie.
So then, who is lying to you?
Well, don't make the mistake of thinking that there is a world simply divided into Good Guys and Bad Guys (Democrats GOOOOD, Republicans BAAAAAAD....or...American Government EVIILLL, Wikileaks AWESOME). This is binary thinking.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts. He ascribes all his failure to get on the in the world, all his congenital incapacity and damfoolishenss, to the machinations of the werewolves assembled in Wall Street or some other such den of infamy. If these villains could be put down, he holds, he would at once become rich, powerful and eminent.
H.L. Mencken
(but don't let me pretend that Wall Street is free of culpability, either!)
Instead, let us think in terms of people that seek liberty, people that want to keep their head down and just get by, people that want to rule the world, and people that want to see the world burn.
Good Guys vs. Bad Guys turns very easily into Good Guys vs. Leave Me the Fuck Be Guys vs. Bad Guy Variety 1 vs. Bad Guy Variety 2 vs The Guy who is Only Bad on Tuesday vs. That Psycho That Likes to See People Hurt.
Each one of these groups can tell lies. Even the Good Guy. Remember, propaganda is a tactic. The #fakenews you are reading may be propaganda, counter-narrative, conspiracy, or hoax...it may even have some Truth to it.
It is up to you to use your eyes and your brains to suss out enough Truth for you to decide how to handle the Choice
Suggested Reading
"Fake News" and the Political Class
"All free men fight, all fighting men are free" - A look at the news industry and politics
Pizza Gate, Satanism, and the Holy Grail
Utopia ALWAYS leads to Dystopia
Every good lie has an element of truth. (I didn't say that, someone much smarter). There's a reason the USSR called their news agency Pravda. I think the vast majority of people don't mind being lied to- or, slavery for that matter as long as you don't call it that. People mind discomfort. There's a saying in politics that as long as Bubba can make the payments on his bass boat, he'll put up with almost anything.
the reason that socialism never succeeded in the U.S. is that Bubba has almost always had the opportunity to get that boat...and even the opportunity to move up in economic class to buy a bigger boat if he worked hard enough, smart enough, and was lucky enough.
Now the rent-seekers and do-gooders want to take that away from Bubba to make it easier to"control" him.
But in their own pompous stupidity, they won't acknowledge that Bubba's contentment in life is also a major hindrance to getting their own necks stretched.
They will never reprogram enough of American culture to make it safe to disarm us. They might still try to disarm us, but that won't work out so well for them.
Amen Brother...Bubba's waking up! They've destroyed the economy enough that people are becoming afraid and that leads to being pissed. There are enough people aware now that's what the last election showed. I just hope Trump's the right guy for the job.
Great stuff, upvoted, followed, resteemed.
thanks, re-followed!
Great!
p.s. remove your last tag as the glitch continues and you can't use 5 tags currently or only the first one will show up, plus you used the same tags twice
will do, thanks!
Excellent post Steve, always good to be reminded of the importance of critical thinking. Confirmation bias has caught me out more than once. Enjoyable read and followed.
and followed back!
I don't have much to add but I wanted to let you know that I love this post Steve.
thanks, man.
thinking is HARD to do, and we, myself included, are easy to trick.
but we can NOT stop trying, and striving