Possibility of “polite” protest reducing:
There’s another discussion to be had on that post.
I’m putting it here rather than there, because I’d rather keep this aimed at a more reliable audience. Nothing secret, but best done away from the increasing swarm of Nazi trolls on BB.
Anyway:
The podcast linked at the start of that thread is not just a very good demonstration of how to detect and resist propaganda. It’s also a very good demonstration of how to do propaganda.
Those guys sound like they’re chatting, but they aren’t: every word of that was carefully chosen. Note the bit where they’re advising the Nazis to show up unarmed? Note the gradual ramp-up of the seriousness of content? Note how they begin by discussing their own failings, from a centrist-friendly POV, then gradually move to leftist critique?
The reason that it is so good is that it is completely honest. There’s nothing false in there; all they are doing is choosing their content and framing well.
People have this idea that propaganda is bad. It isn’t; it’s neutral. Propaganda means nothing more than the use of communication to achieve political goals. It’s no more innately unethical than rhetoric.
It’s a tool. The ethics all depend upon how and why you use it.
The fact that propaganda has a bad reputation is itself the result of propaganda. Folks have been told that the culture and society that they grew up in is natural and normal, and that all other views are an attempt at propagandistic subversion.
But most of them don’t realise that they’ve been swimming in propaganda for their whole lives. Everyone does.
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To go meta on this for a moment:
Among the classical arts, rhetoric is infamously ethically dodgy. It isn’t innately bad, but it lends itself easily to bad ends, and it always involves at least some degree of social manipulation. It’s a dangerous tool, best used sparingly.
But notice how what I said about propaganda and rhetoric in that quoted paragraph wasn’t actually false? The final sentence was not intended to mislead, but it was intended to present the truth from a deliberate perspective.
And there’s a rhythm to it. Setup the target, knock it down, elaborate, finish with a punchline. Kinda the reverse of 4/4 time; emphasis on the final beat instead of the first. You need to keep the ideas in digestible chunks; 1-2-3-finish, then start again.
Good threads following this about the ethics of camera-smashing:
Unsurprisingly, I tend to fall on this side of that debate:
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Vox is starting to wake up:
A week-old article, but they’re repromoting it.
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Bernie’s playing it delicately, but the old dude knows what he’s doing:
Maggie’s in top form:
Keeps Liberal hopes up and gives Trump an excuse to fire Rosenstein.
I wonder which faction Kelly is loyal to? He sure as fuck isn’t working for the good of the country.
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Another thread:
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Kelly is loyal to the general cabal hoping to invade Iran. That’s what I keep telling you, the generals have taken over the control of the White House from Bannon et al to bring things back around to promoting war in the Middle East.
War on Iran appears to be one of the few goals that unites the factions. The Bannonites want it, and it looks like Javanka does as well. The RNC/Pence faction seems increasingly irrelevant.
As you suggest, there may be a separate faction of military fascists based around Kelly and Mattis. I’m not sure, though; as usual, internal West Wing stuff is the hardest to decipher.