I call it the #illusion of #freedom
Why #Propaganda Works
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/06/16/why-propaganda-works/
The same #post in #audio format:
https://soundcloud.com/going_rogue/why-propaganda-works
> It’s not really deniable that western civilization is saturated with domestic propaganda geared toward manipulating the way the public thinks, acts, works, shops and votes.
> It’s just an uncomfortable fact that as much as we like to think of ourselves as free-thinking sovereign agents immune to outside influence, human minds are very hackable.
> Our worldview is formed when we are young in the interests of our rulers, and from there cognitive biases take over which protect and reinforce that worldview, ...
> Modern psychology tells us that people don’t just tend to hold onto their propaganda-induced belief systems; people tend to hold onto any belief system. Belief perseverance, as the name suggests, describes the way people tend to cling to their beliefs even when presented with evidence disproving them.
...
>"...people tend to cling to their beliefs even when presented with evidence disproving them."
The most dramatic evidence that I've seen for this recently is the fact that people still support the US even after their country just killed a million of its own citizens.
WTF?
It means that people are still clinging to the belief that they should support their country in the face of the fact that their country just killed over a million of their own citizens. Either they don't believe that it happened, or they don't want to believe it happened, or they're just ignoring it and continuing on with their preexisting support just because it's easier than having to change such a long-held belief.
@Pat
I will presume that you would not want them to support some other country... So you're in utopian mode?
https://yewtu.be/YkgkThdzX-8?t=49
Also, that youtube video, YkgkThdzX-8, is John Lennon performing "Imagine". I don't think the world described in that song is a utopia.
When China tried to implement communism (which is what that song is about) they killed more than a million of their citizens, only to later drop that economic system for a more capitalistic system.
I agree with your original toot, by the way. My response was an example of how people are resistant to change their minds about big things like support for their country.
@Pat
You're right, of course. Many other countries did it, and do it even now.
1 John 5:19
@mc
There's a hell of a lot of room between utopia and a county that is so evil that it kills more than a million of its own citizens. (And then virtually everyone in the country thinks that that is just fine.)