Let me toss some sentences at you.
I’M GOING TO HIT YOU.
BOB HATES THE HOMELESS.
JOHN KILLED THOUSANDS.
KARL ROVE SUCKS DICK.
But what if the real sentences, the complete sentences, were these?
I’M GOING TO HIT YOU … up for a favor.
BOB HATES THE HOMELESS … policy in this town.
JOHN KILLED THOUSANDS … of hours playing videos games.
KARL ROVE SUCKS DICK … Cheney into his arguments every time.
I sort of cheated you with those half-sentences, didn’t I? If each of those pieces was a factual news item, and I told you half the story like this, you’d trust me less, wouldn’t you? Because you’d know, on some level, that I had done something to you deliberately. If you sat and thought about it, you’d realize I’d done THREE things to you.
1) I told you half the story.
2) In telling you half the story, I got you to accept something that was not simply incomplete, but perfectly false.
3) In telling you half the story and getting you to believe something false, I manipulated your emotions, making you angry, disturbed, or otherwise outraged, with messages of violence, hate, murder and sexual innuendo (*).
Stated as they are, each half-sentence leads you deliberately in a certain direction, not only misleading you but manipulating you.
Those sentences could extend into paragraphs, whole lengthy articles or televised “news” pieces, each one of which could lead you in a certain direction, each of which could cause you to reach conclusions which were not only divorced from the true story, but that made you angry, furious, dismayed.
But why would anybody do that to you?
Okay, you know that Fox News is a type of entertainment, right? It broadcasts entertaining fictions for well over half of its content. Only instead of making viewers happy and content – or, you know, INFORMING them about things they need to know – their type of entertainment makes people angry, scared and unhappy.
But hey, no biggie, right? Their audience is those right-leaning, brainless Teabaggers. Sure, we have to deal with the way they vote and stuff, but at least it’s not US out there sucking up those manipulative lies.
But let’s talk about Fox News for a second. Why do you suppose they exist? They exist to do what they do, don’t they? They get large number of people to believe certain things – lies – and THEY MAKE THEM ANGRY ABOUT IT.
And they keep them angry and scared, keep them in a state of mind in which it is very difficult to think objectively about things. Believing what they’re being fed, trusting that this reputable person on TV or radio has done the research, they do almost no fact-checking to verify or disprove what they’re being told.
Those people are controlled. They’re puppets. They are sheep who run to and fro at the will of the bosses who own and control Fox News and other such outlets – people who know exactly what they’re doing, and are masters at it.
Do you believe that? Do you really believe it? Then here’s what you believe: There is a CONSPIRACY to brainwash conservative voters.
Wait … really? You really believe in a conspiracy? You? Haw, haw, haw! You’re a CONSPIRACY THEORIST!! Haw, haw, haw!
Except in this case it’s no theory, is it? The lies and half-truths and false stories happen on Fox News, all the damned time. If you watch it over a period of time, it will be impossible to conclude anything but that it’s deliberate, and part of a larger campaign. Powerful right-wingers, billionaires and GOP officials, hugely and shamelessly MANIPULATE their own conservative people with half-truths, falsehoods and deliberate, breathtaking lies. Through a concerted, planned effort, an advertising campaign that runs 24/7 on conservative media, and so closely coordinated that scores of different voices use the same words and slogans in each and every day.
Are there a handful of fat cigar-smoking billionaires who meet in an exclusive resort and decide what lies are going to be told on-air to their viewers and followers? You want to really hope not, don’t you? But however it happens, the effect is the same as if they did. They conspire to keep their conservative audience afraid, angry, confused and CONTROLLED.
Where else have we seen something like that?
I’ll suggest the Catholic Church is exactly that sort of creature. If the RCC didn’t originate it, they certainly perfected the successful model that allows large numbers of people to be frightened into obedience, angered into wars, and outraged into … anything. Betraying neighbors into torture and witch trials. Looking away when priests molest children. Opposing their own best interests, and the best interests of their families and loved ones. And the funny thing is, in the case of the Roman Catholic Church, there ARE a handful of what amounts to fat, cigar-smoking string-pullers who meet in an exclusive resort – the Vatican – and decide things for their billions of followers.
You think what happened with all those molested children, where the church silenced or shamed or paid people off, in recent history but also for generations prior, is some sort of clumsy accident? Did it just sort of happen that almost nobody went to jail? That all those molester-priests retired safe and happy on comfortable pensions?
I can’t even begin to believe that the whole response to the situation wasn’t some sort of coordinated, deliberate campaign, directed from the top office at the Vatican itself. It just worked too well, while so many of us looked on in disbelief.
But all this is not really my main point. It’s a preface to this other thing:
I’ve been worried for some time at how my own people are falling for a sort of mob hysteria, something that makes THEM afraid, angry, confused and controlled. What if we on the Left are just as susceptible to half-truths, lies and manipulative emotional stories?
The Fort Lauderdale story is just one instance, but it seems there are one or more stories every day that sends me – and a lot of others like me over here on the left – into an instant, all-consuming emotional state that is interested in reacting rather than fact-checking and thinking.
Wait, WE are subject to manipulation? No way! We’re the People of Reason! We THINK about stuff, we LOOK INTO stuff! And besides, who would manipulate us? That’s crazy talk!
There’s plenty to be angry and upset about, I’d be the first to tell you. But at the same time, I worry that we’re focusing on silly side-stories, things deliberately created for us, a sort of red-meat Outrage Bait cast in our direction every day to drum up audience.
The truth is, we’re humans, no less susceptible to this sort of stuff than the winger-sheep on the right.
That’s something worth thinking about, all by itself.
And even though there’s no obvious collection of billionaires meeting and deciding which way to herd us today, just the deliberate effort to increase views or hits or clicks can create substantial effects all on its own. (Among bloggers, by the way, if you can keep readers excited / enraged /engaged, it translates into money. I know a few who specialize in stoking constant outrage; whether that’s their main mission or a side-goal to their main mission, I couldn’t say.)
I do think there are forces interested in maintaining the status quo, in keeping reasoning people from thinking very deeply about so much that’s happening, but I can’t say it’s something central.
My own approach, in dealing with outrage stories, is to look past the anger I feel, to see if each story or situation I come across feels too pat, too perfectly outrageous, to be real, or complete. To research it if I can, and to reach my own conclusions.
This can be surprisingly hard to do, especially when some of the people you ordinarily trust are caught up in their own emotional storm, and don’t want you to question or discuss anything beyond their own quick conclusions. I’ve gotten flamed more than once – by my own people – while trying to expand a conversation into areas I felt were ignored.
I suspect this very idea right here, that liberals and science-minded people are susceptible to manipulation, that it happens all the time and that most of us probably seldom even notice, and that this is a bad thing to allow to continue, is going to spark ridicule rather than thought.
Because hey. It’s US.
.
.
(*) Okay, I’ll admit “Karl Rove Sucks Dick” isn’t really ‘innuendo’ – it’s more a flat-out accusation. I still wonder … Remember when that mysterious guy Jeff Gannon got admitted to White House press briefings, and he tossed up those softball questions for Bush and the press secretary? And it turned out he was a buff-bodied gay male escort? SOMEONE got that guy a press pass, and entry past the Secret Service. I’m not the only one who suspected it was Karl Rove, and done for Rove’s own personal reasons as much as public ones. “Secret Service Records appear to show that he checked in, but never checked out on many occasions, and visited the White House on several days during which no press conference or other press events were held.” ~ Wikipedia The story vanished, and the supposed left-wing media let it, when it should have been major front page national news. But hey, there’s no such thing as a conspiracy.