tillingborn wrote: ↑Fri Oct 07, 2022 10:15 amNo doubt there are people who wish only to bicker, but when you "try to understand", you do so within your own context. Everybody does. You are more nuanced than some on this forum, but there is a butterfly effect that afflicts those who think in 'essay form'. If you create a character for me, based on false premise, I quickly become unrecognisable. It is not bickering, in my view, to point out flaws in your creation.
No, of course you are right. I mentioned 'bickering' because, so often, conversations devolve to that.
So, speaking as myself, rather than who you think I am, Bernays was one of the most influential thinkers of the last century. He didn't really say anything that wasn't expressed by Plato or Machiavelli; manipulating others is old hat and can be done for good or bad. Take smoking. Bernays is notorious for his 'Torches of Freedom' campaign; good for tobacco companies, bad for the women who died of cancer as a result. On the other hand, people's attitude to public smoking, certainly in western Europe and North America has been deliberately and largely successfully engineered by respective governments. One theory being that the change in attitude came about when the cost of treating illness associated with smoking, overtook the revenue earned from the sale of cigarettes.
I brought up the notion of "the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses" and that "those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country" in order to contextualize the conversation that might develop in respect to what you wrote:
I'm surprised you think it so recent for a country that went to war with itself over slavery, and enforced segregation until the 1960's.
You were commenting on my statement that recently the issue of *race* and *ethnicity* has so strongly come to define the present, and I am referring to Critical Race Theory, to the introduction of this social-political ideology deeply into pedagogy, and indeed what I understand as a branch of the élite manipulation of public opinion "largely by men we have never heard of".
I am interested in your phrasing "for a country that went to war with itself". (Sorry, I can't help but focus on this since the War Between the States was for a time an area of study for me). That phrasing is an example of manipulation of idea. A war was waged by the North against the Southern sections for a range of different reasons. There are entire sets of false-premises and false-assertions, concocted by the power that waged the war, which now are accepted as 'the truth of the matter'. These are lies and mis-truths that operate, profoundly, within America and in America's self-conception. It is not so much that I reject those war propaganda claims as it is that I am interested in élite manipulation by those people and forces we often remain unaware of -- and of course I assume that you get where I am going here. For you perhaps there is no conversation to be had here (?) yet for me there very much is: it all
begins here in my view.
The title of the thread is
Trump Derangement Syndrome and I certainly assert that reaction to Donald Trump by the "establishment", as well as the reaction to 'élite processes of social manipulation' among the demographic that elected Trump, is a topic worthy of conversation. You are writing here so I assume you are interested in the conversation.
What I have done, and I think much more than many, is to study by directly reading the writing of those who are opposed to the present outcomes in American culture. I am interested in 'dissident opinion' and the ideas or assertions upon which this dissident opinion is based. My assertion is this: If someone interested in the upheavals in American culture does not do this they will not be able to accurately see and understand what is taking shape today. They will misunderstand, certainly, and they will also mis-see.
I am aware, and it has become very apparent to me, that in the present political climate any reasoned and reasonable approach to examining the ideas of those I call the Dissident Right, and which they call Nazis & Terrorists (note the ultra-hot term) is understood to be a form of
complicity. The level of polarity, and the level of intensely hot rhetoric must be cut through as an initial act to attain clarity. If you speak
reasonably about the ideas & opinions of those who have been branded Nazis and Terrorists, you are by that act committing a moral wrong. This is in fact how the game is played.
Naturally I reject this absolutely. Now who then is forming these images of wickedness? and to what end and what purpose? These are the questions that must be asked. So I say that we must desist from focusing on
surface and must attempt to penetrate
depth. But again
that itself will be seen as a wicked-leaning endeavor. To try to see
in depth is described as "falling in with conspiracy theory'.
With regard to the WEF, yes of course they have as much power to mould views as any organisation. The thing is they don't always do it very well. What is, in my view, a completely benign promotion of initiatives like the Toronto Tool Library or London's Library of Things has been manipulated by groups opposed to the WEF into being a threat to our rights of ownership. Who might be behind such a move? Well, huddle round; Black and Decker won't sell as many power tools; it is very much in their interest to persuade us that tool libraries are a threat to our freedom.
Here I would say, if you will permit me, that you are seeing surface when a depth-approach and endeavor is needed. So let me clarify: I am asserting that those who handle power have the tools and control the tools to manipulate and direct public opinion. As you well know, because you know of Bernays and about the development of PR and techniques of mass-manipulation, there certainly does appear to be 'élites' who have interests in doing so. If we make a reference to the WEF we are making reference to those people, those groups, but also to something a bit more abstract: to the fact that such manipulation does indeed occur. Indeed if Bernays is correct it is the "unseen mechanism of society [which] constitute[s] an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country".
If that is true then the existence of a para-governmental body that devises the futuristic models should become for us an object of concern. And we have two poles of choice, no? One is agreement, the other disagreement and opposition.
