“This is a consent form to stick a wire into your brain. It’s important for hospitals to get these signed for procedures that are completely unnecessary.” – House, M.D.
Anyone else see a pattern here?
The Mrs. and I were both leaders (once upon a time) in that Paramilitary Organization, Boy Scouts of America®. We were leaders before the lifting on gay membership was removed.
During that time period, we were asked to participate in a (rather) lengthy survey of leaders. One night over a bottle of wine we started and finished the survey, working together. There was question after question, and there was scenario after scenario presented, as well as spots for written answers. In the end, we were firmly against inclusion of LGBTQXYZ children into Scouting™. We were also against LGBTQXYZ leadership.
And, we really, really thought about it, and tried to see the situation from different perspectives other than our own. Regardless, in the end, our feeling was shared and simple: Boy Scouts™ had been doing fine for a hundred years holding the same membership standards, and changing them for 1-2% of the population (that probably wouldn’t join anyway) didn’t make any sense.
One thing that I notice while taking the survey, was that it was quite biased. In question after question, it presented “edge” cases. “A boy, having completed everything required for his Eagle® rank, admits he is gay. Should he become an Eagle™ Scout®?”
Well, how many cases like that would there be? In reality, nearly zero. But scenario after scenario was presented, showing gay Scouts in the most flattering light possible in carefully crafted questions that were designed to evoke positive emotions for poor gay kids who just wanted to hike and have fun, darn it. We didn’t come down against gay Scouts® because we hated gay people. We came down against gay Scouts™ because it violated a basic principle of the program.
Simple as.
Hmmm, another pattern?
It came out that the national Scouting® decision had already been made before the survey. The entire survey was just an attempt to change the opinions of leaders and parents. The purpose of the survey was not to legitimately understand what the adults involved in Scouting® wanted, it was to get them to consent to the preordained change.
The BSA™ was engaged in Manufacturing Consent. The response from the Left after every retreat from principle by the Boy Scouts©? “It’s not enough.” It will never be enough.
Manufacturing Consent is a book by a communist named Edward Herman and the much more famous communist Noam Chomsky. Their primary idea was that the news media was beholden to special interest groups, and would gang up with capitalists to make sure that True Communism© would never be tried.
Those poor communists couldn’t get an even break! I mean, Chomsky and Herman had to get by working in coal mines in cushy professorships, while scoring book deal after book deal and getting fawning reviews from an admiring press. Chomsky and Herman argued that “the man is keeping me down” while, indeed, they were pampered pets continually sucking blood like a parasite from the civilization they were intent on destroying.
That doesn’t mean that they were wrong – the media was quite busy Manufacturing Consent, but the consent they were manufacturing for was Global Leftist State Control, the same people who bribed the Boy Scouts™ into giving up long held positions based on morality in exchange for big bux from corporate sponsors.
We see that today, as well. News is elevated when it serves the purpose of the Global Leftist State Capitalism. News is depressed when it doesn’t. Even news of a sensational nature becomes muted outside of local boundaries when it doesn’t serve the purpose of Global Leftist State Control.
The Mrs. did that. The Mrs. used to be in radio. She got to put together the news, sports, and weather for a regional network. She had fun at the job, but one thing she did that made me laugh was that she wouldn’t cover NBA® scores. Football? Sure. Baseball? Of course. But no the NBA™. When it was winter, she only provided . . . hockey scores. It wasn’t (particularly) a hockey region, but she didn’t like the NBA™.
So, for her news segments, the NBA© didn’t exist.
The news media does that on a national basis. Sensational stories are elevated to cover news stories. There was a missing toddler who apparently lived with wolves during the weekend in Houston and then was found alive and well. Sure, that’s wonderful, but why on Earth was this a national story on the news? A local story, sure.
But national? What story did that take the space of?
It’s not just in news, although certainly you’ve noticed that in “mass shooting” events that the story is very, very quickly covered up if the shooter isn’t a white guy. It has to be both – the reason is that is the group that the Left wants to disarm. If there’s a problem with the shooter, the case quickly disappears from the narrative.
Beyond the news, it’s also on social media. Twitter® and Facebook™ are used on a regular basis to amplify Leftist views. The recent “whistleblower” to Facebook’s© free speech “problem”? She was apparently involved in the decision to censor information from Hunter Biden’s laptop before the election. Her complaint is that Facebook™ doesn’t censor enough viewpoints of the Right.
Bots and/or paid users are used to put up comments that are supportive of whatever narrative is being sold. Of course, the jab is the big one, and the first one to attract those sorts of shills to this blog. Again, the concept is to create a situation where any idea opposed to the narrative is ridiculed.
Where do you think the phrase “conspiracy theorist” came from? It was created in the 1960s to discredit anyone who had a narrative that was counter to the mainstream narrative. It has become especially apparent in the COVID era, since any opinion counter to the narrative as it is known on that day is ridiculed by politicians on the Left and the full might of the news media.
Likewise, Google™ actively suppresses opinions it doesn’t agree with. Google™ used to give this blog about ten times the traffic of DuckDuckGo®. Now? They’re about the same. That was about 10% of my traffic, and when it dropped, I noticed it, since it all happened at once. I’ve since recovered (and then some!) from that suppression.
Additional narrative suppression comes from, surprise, academia. MIT just canceled a speech by a pro-climate change geophysicist because (drumroll) he was against race-based affirmative action. Now, he wasn’t going to talk about affirmative action, he was going to talk about climate change, and follow the Leftist line there. But to allow people who challenged another part of the narrative to talk?
Nope. To be on the Left, understand you’re all in, or you’re out. Will that shut up the next academic with politically unpopular views?
This brings us back to the Scouts®. They had made a choice, and agree or disagree, that was where they were going. The collapse in membership from around 2.9 million when the decision was made to 760,000 or so today (despite adding kindergarteners and girls) is nothing short of catastrophic.
That, in the end, is the problem with manufacturing consent. It isn’t real consent, and it ends up destroying the thing it was trying to influence. The parents and kids voted with their absence – regardless of the attempt to influence them.
The first step in not being manipulated by Manufactured Consent?
Be aware.
