{"id":67580,"date":"2024-04-25T16:22:46","date_gmt":"2024-04-25T21:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67580"},"modified":"2024-04-25T16:22:46","modified_gmt":"2024-04-25T21:22:46","slug":"divide-and-conquer-the-governments-propaganda-of-fear-and-fake-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67580","title":{"rendered":"Divide and Conquer: The Government\u2019s Propaganda of Fear and Fake News"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Divide and Conquer: The Government\u2019s Propaganda of Fear and Fake News<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cIt is the function of mass agitation to exploit all the grievances, hopes, aspirations, prejudices, fears, and ideals of all the special groups that make up our society, social, religious, economic, racial, political. Stir them up. Set one against the other. Divide and conquer.\u00a0That\u2019s the way to soften up a democracy.<\/a>\u201d\u2015 J. Edgar Hoover,\u00a0Masters of Deceit<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cNothing is real<\/a>,\u201d observed John Lennon, and that\u2019s especially true of politics.<\/p>\n

Much like the fabricated universe in Peter Weir\u2019s 1998 film\u00a0The Truman Show<\/em><\/a>, in which a man\u2019s life is the basis for an elaborately staged television show aimed at selling products and procuring ratings, the political scene in the United States has devolved over the years into a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population.<\/p>\n

Take the media circus that is the Donald Trump\u00a0hush money trial<\/a>, which panders to the public\u2019s voracious\u00a0appetite for titillating, soap opera drama<\/a>, keeping the citizenry\u00a0distracted, diverted and divided<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is the magic of the reality TV programming that passes for politics today.<\/p>\n

Everything becomes entertainment fodder.<\/p>\n

As long as we are distracted, entertained, occasionally outraged, always polarized but largely uninvolved and content to remain in the viewer\u2019s seat, we\u2019ll never manage to present a unified front against tyranny (or government corruption and ineptitude) in any form.<\/p>\n

Studies suggest that the more reality TV people watch\u2014and I would posit that it\u2019s all reality TV, entertainment news included\u2014the\u00a0more difficult it becomes to distinguish<\/a>\u00a0between what is real and what is carefully crafted farce.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe the people\u201d are watching a lot of TV.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Divide and Conquer: The Government\u2019s Propaganda of Fear and Fake News \u201cIt is the function of mass agitation to exploit all the grievances, hopes, aspirations, prejudices, fears, and ideals of all the special groups that make up our society, social, religious, economic, racial, political. Stir them up. Set one against the other. Divide and conquer.\u00a0That\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2779,302,379,6420,31177,655],"class_list":["post-67580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-fake-news","tag-fear","tag-government","tag-john-whitehead","tag-nisha-whitehead","tag-propaganda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67580"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67581,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67580\/revisions\/67581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}