I am often reminded of the difference between how we like to think the world works, and how it really works.
Years ago when we were doing some work for a public pension fund I learned that in some government jobs there’s a standard racket.
Pensions are set off their final year income, so it’s standard to jack up your overtime in your final year before retirement, so you not only earn more that year, but every year for the rest of your life.
To those who do it, it’s just part of the racket, it’s normal. It’s still wrong.
When you hear stuff like that you think, ugh, it just sucks that otherwise ethical people accept that as truth.
What is Truth?
There’s a lot of that in this election.
It’s a real mess. I keep getting asked what I think about it, and the best I can say is, “a lot.”
I wrote a book about MASS INFLUENCE using Trump thrashing the GOP as my canvas, but that is very different to what we have experienced in Trump vs. Clinton, and the power of the propaganda machines.
It’s epic. Out of proportion.
Just watching the election through either the lens of Drudge or the New York Times you would think you were watching a different race.
Obviously, none of it is any more real than the Kardashians, yet it’s hard not to get swept up in the propaganda machines.
Take this latest controversy with Podesta and the performance artist.
Read an article on Huffington Post and it’s laughable that anyone would take it seriously, but check out Drudge and it’s clear fact that HRC is in bed with the devil.
Who do you believe? All of them. And none of them. See it for what it is.
Propaganda
This morning I got an email from a fellow I greatly respect proclaiming to share with his big audience of thoughtful people the “facts” of the election.
But as you read down the page, you saw it was mostly filled with his opinions.
If you ask yourself how you can possible know anything about this election, it becomes obvious that you only know anything through some form of propaganda.
That author’s “facts” looked more like those of the New York Times, than of Infowars.
And just like you picked up an opinion or two from your parents, who you listen to is creating your “facts,” which are merely your filtered version of reality.
Either way, you’re just repeating someone else’s propaganda.
Pass the Propaganda, Would You?
We eat it up. Pass it around. Comment on it. Share it. Make it “fact.”
We somehow look past the fact that Fox is serving us its own brand of facts relative to say Oprah, and either way it’s propaganda.
It’s not our fault we don’t see it. It’s by design.
A fish doesn’t notice the water.
Today I reminded myself of what we’re swimming in by reading the propaganda playbook that was written by Edward Bernays nearly 100 years ago.
Bernays, the nephew of famous psychologist Sigmund Fraud, is known as the father of modern public relations.
Bernays designed the model that has been used to “sell” to the public every modern day war, and the ideas he propagated way back then have nicely taken hold in our sheeple-filled modern day society.
Like this one from his famous book Propaganda:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.
Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.
This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.
Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.