The Role of the Media In the Post-Democratic Era
To the degree the media is an institution for influence instead of informing, what is its role in the post-democratic era?
A glance at headlines from your news feeds over the past few weeks (or, for that matter, the past five years) gives you the distinct impression that (1) the media does not like President Trump and (2) they very much wish you would share that opinion. Their histrionics, to date, have crescendoed to a narrative that President Trump had ordered a failed coup by his supporters on January 6, 2021, by which he must be held accountable for the same via impeachment, and, then, that impeachment for inciting the aforesaid attempted coup was the pinnacle of shame in his legacy. It's hard to imagine a more damning narrative to run with. Such a narrative must have made a dent in his popular support, no?
Fascinating [*1], isn't it? This Rasmussen tracking poll shows an increase in President Trump's popular support among likely U.S. voters, 47% for the day of and day before his alleged incitement of a coup and 49% the next day. As of publication of this piece, it further rose to 51%.
And Rasmussen isn't exactly known for being a pro-Trump polling organization [*2].
The public's refusal to bend its opinion to the cries of the media should come as no surprise. As Scott Rasmussen himself stated regarding his poll on public trust in the media in September 2020,
Mistrust extends internationally. Consider 59% of the public among these 28 countries think "journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations," and 59% of the same think "most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public."
Note the international trend towards distrust in the media, from 61% the prior year to 53%.
Only 10% in these countries will see a media report and automatically assume it is true without corroboration from other media sources.
This all begs some questions. Does the media still have power to change the opinion of likely voters? If not among voters, can they change the opinion of the general public? And which set of opinion matters going forward?
Most recognize the media as inherently biased against President Trump. A poll by the Shorestein Center (via Harvard University) on the tone of media coverage for the first 100 days of the Trump administration revealed shocking bias, generally over 80% negative [*6].
Just three months into the administration, a strong majority of mainstream outlets pushed a unified narrative that Trump was not fit for office, again, mostly hovering over 80%.
Not even the boomer-adored Fox News netted consistent positive coverage for President Trump and not even in regards to the infamous Russian-collusion probe, a three-year $25-million investigation which yielded no evidence of "collusion," despite over a thousand interviews and subpoenas issued [*7].
The negative tone transcended almost all topics. Immigration stood at 96% negative. Not even the economy received a majority, at only 46% with a positive tone. Most topics hovered around 80% negative in tone [*8].
And the bias was particularly acute toward Trump compared to past presidents, averaging 80% negative in tone.
Note the below deviation on one particular topic: the cruise-missile attacks President Trump ordered on Syria. We have an inversion in coverage, from 80% negative to about 80% positive. Curious.
This missile attack was a response to an alleged chemical-weapon attack the Syrian government launched on its own citizens. Debate ensues on whether chemical weapons were actually used, as a whistleblower-letter published on Wikileaks evidenced doctoring of the test results to reach the chemical conclusion [*9]. Of course, your Google-fu will yield cries from the media that this letter is inconsequential, assumed, perhaps, Russian propaganda, with no evidence, much like the aforementioned "collusion" probe, to support such a claim.
Regardless, the media jumped on the narrative that executive action amounting to an informal declaration of war was a good response before independent findings of fact were released on the matter. If the media is mainly a leftist ideological enterprise, we'd naturally suspect a little hesitation in using a positive tone for a Republican president opening another theater of war. Instead, we see a shocking reversal in the media's general attitude toward President Trump, so long as his actions are serving an agenda to expand theaters of war around the world. This agenda Trump steadfastly opposes (e.g., firing John Bolton and other hawkish figures), scaling back lucrative international business and politics more neo-conservative and neo-liberal globalist-oriented forces would want for more nation-oriented policies.
What is the nexus of the media's bias? Is it simply left-wing politics? Certainly this fuels some of their bias. I needn't waste your time convincing you the media promote a left-wing agenda politically, as this reality has been accepted for decades. The more interesting question is this. Is a desire to promote left-wing politics the proximate cause of the extreme bias toward President Trump outside the norm of other Republican presidents? Or is it something else?
Media has long been known as a tool for governments to convince the public to support or oppose certain political actions. The U.S. has a supposedly independent and free press with the First Amendment to protect it, so we might suspect the U.S. would be the least-likely country to control or manipulate the media for political purposes. But when we use the noun "U.S.," who are we talking about?
An appendage of the U.S. called the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has a legislative mandate to engage in covert operations of seemingly limitless breadth [*10].
While, in theory, subsequent laws limit the scope of CIA operations to outside the U.S., this wasn't historically the case or even always followed, and exemptions from prosecution of CIA assets are common. Note, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and/or CIA director may engage in acts independent of a U.S. president's knowledge. While subsequent rules have attempted to reign in this power, how would a president know if all intelligence and/or information pertaining to these "other functions and duties" were disclosed to him? For that matter, how would the DNI and/or CIA director even know all "other functions and duties" were disclosed to them?
The CIA's role in American media manipulation is admitted on record, and they impliedly have agents in American newsrooms and for the Associated Press, per the 1975 testimony of then-CIA Director William Colby [*12].
There is an eerie homogeneity in messaging by American media. Multiple phrases, such as "a child's happiness is priceless, especially on a birthday [*14]" and "millions of Americans staying at home [due to the COVID-19 pandemic] are relying on Amazon [*15]," are uniformly parroted by multiple local TV news broadcasters. It's also curious that Amazon is a Jeff Bezos operation, which has/had a $600-million contract with the CIA. Bezos owns the Washington Post [*16], a news organization dedicated to fear-mongering over COVID-19 and the ills of Trump over all other outlets (and topics), profiting off the stay-at-home culture imposed on the world in 2020 and beyond.
Do we know for sure that the media is a controlled operation by the intelligence community(ies)? What degree of control is needed to conclude it is "controlled?" Does the DNI need to make a public confession to reach that goal post? Is anything short of that to be derided as "conspiracy theory," requiring intervention by government agents in the comment section to steer my fair readers back to a socially acceptable narrative, as advocated in a 2008 paper, published in multiple prestigious law journals, by the then-Obama administration's Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Cass Sunstein [*17]?
At minimum, I've shaken your assumption that the media's raison détente is left-wing enterprise. It consists of left-wing people who would prefer to promote left-wing values for sure. But interests pertaining to global military expansion in theaters of conflict, or anything in the future aligning with desires of intelligence contractors and/or controllers, are prime. Left-wing causes are ancillary and only temporarily align with controller interests. That can change. And it most certainly will in our post-democratic era.
As I've discussed in a prior piece, the comically-obvious fraud that transpired in the U.S. 2020/1 elections marks the beginning of the post-democratic age [*18]. Since elections are now manipulated by machines and coordinated with on-the-ground deliveries of last-minute ballot dumps, using media to persuade people to vote for or against particular politicians is irrelevant, at least in the U.S.
Thus, the new purpose of media in 2021 is convincing the public to voluntarily engage in what their masters want with as little force as possible. Once a cabal effectively has control of elections for the world's foremost military authority, manipulation of their chosen candidates is the obvious next step. But a harder task is getting the population within the controlled jurisdiction to comply with the new rules.
People comply with rules for three reasons.
(1) The rules are moral. You refuse to enter your neighbor's unlocked home and steal a teaspoon of sugar without his consent, because such an act offends his dignity. Morality is the primary motivation for most people to obey rules. If it wasn't, enforcers would be on-the-ground, constantly monitoring a population's every movement to ensure compliance.
(2) You fear the consequences of failure to follow the rule. For most libertarians, perhaps, paying taxes is done out of fear of prosecution by the government. Since, as they say, "taxation is theft," paying taxes is not a virtuous act. This reason begets the need for the very system of enforcers we refer to as "the state."
(3) You recognize the rule you are following is irrational, but you accept the system of governance in your jurisdiction and obey out of respect for "the rule of law." While such obedience doesn't come directly from a moral authority, we recognize the moral place it comes from. You recognize a system of rules benefits you and your loved ones and that obedience to those rules allows civilization. Thus, you obey even-irrational rules, to a reasonable degree, out of your desire to continue civilization.
If half of a jurisdiction does not recognize its government as legitimate, the third reason should no longer have rational power over the same half. Thus, to be obeyed, rules would have to either come from a place of morality or be enforced by fear of consequences.
As I've written on in more detail before, it is impossible to run a functional civilization if too many people obey rules only out of fear of consequences [*19]. The enforcers of rules coming from the same body of people who largely obey only out of fear will naturally be corrupted. One who obeys laws solely out of fear of facing a consequence is likely monitored by people who obey the law for the same reason. Thus, using enforcement for personal gain (e.g., accepting bribes for particular action or inaction) becomes too common to keep a functional civilization with too large a populace without a moral compass.
Thus, the role of media, for a system of controllers, would be to match the rules they want people to obey with a moral code that people will follow. A person ordered to turn over a fugitive slave, for example, might do so out of fear of being prosecuted, but, if the public can be convinced slaves are property and that it is just to ensure property is returned to its lawful owners, compliance with that rule is far more likely.
We anticipate a pivot in media from pushing narratives about who to vote or not vote for to moral arguments for why populations should comply with certain rules.
For one example, the British government recognizes the role of media manipulation to effect good public policy, at least in regards to propagandizing fear of COVID-19, in this government paper [*20].
Note how the tactic of government using the media to promote "hard-hitting emotional messages" for compliance with COVID-19 regulations like lockdown orders is discussed in a clinical manner, devoid of ethical considerations, with the option "[u]se media to increase sense of personal threat." The government paper recognizes that exaggerating the negative impact of the COVID-19 for moral posturing might backfire and cause distrust. The deontological ethical dilemma of using the media to exaggerate and manipulate (lie) is not weighted, only the utilitarian consequences of the tactic.
What agendas should we anticipate being propagandized on in 2021 and going forward? Public support for expanding theaters of war? Vaccination-record passports for public travel (or even travel as outside the home), as being pushed in Ireland in this now-taken-down (moved to private) message after receiving over 11,000 dislikes?
We can't say for sure. To the extent the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, how much vigilance is needed to win freedom back?
We must not allow the media to manipulate our sense of morality. The new rulers must be made to accept that compliance with new rules we deem irrational will only come out of fear of consequences and not any sense of duty to the corrupted institution or place of morality. As the controllers are forced to dial up consequences and more heavy-handedly monitor us, opportunities for freedom will emerge.
Recognize that the media is not an institution to inform you but to, instead, influence you. Your sense of truth comes primarily from your own observations in the material world. When the media advise you of a certain fact, without independent examination of that purported fact, you do not know it to be true. You are choosing to trust that the purported fact is true, because you trust the media enterprise telling you. We do the same with our lawyers, doctors, scientists, and countless other professionals we rely on to plan our day-to-day living. This method is how we obtain most of what we call knowledge and is the bedrock of what we might call civilization.
It's not that we trust X fact is true. We trust Y individual. And we accept X as fact as a symbol of our trust in Y individual. Most of us trust the plane we are sitting in will take off not out of our independent knowledge of the mechanics of aviation but out of our trust in the crew maintaining and operating the plane.
But what happens when we can no longer rely on simple trust for knowledge? Our inability to trust these Ys for information we use in planning our day-to-day lives begets the breakdown of civilization.
We must build new institutions, communities of people we trust, to reestablish civilization and begin a divorce into separate jurisdictions, independent from the controllers of our corrupted institutions we often call "governments." A new dichotomy must emerge. Some information will come from what we'll call "the U.S. media." It may be true. It may not be. But we can't rely on it.
Separate knowledge that comes from "the U.S. media" from other sources. And recognize that their aim, whether wittingly or not, isn't to inform but to influence.
-----
FOOTNOTES
[*1] https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/trump_approval_index_history
[*2] https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2020/09/03/media-malfeasance-rasmussen-reports-creates-hideously-biased-image-of-trump-and-biden-for-new-poll-n885596
[*3] https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/08/18/rasmussen_new_poll_shows_voters_trust_national_political_media_about_the_same_as_they_trust_wikipedia.html#!
[*4] https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2021-01/2021-edelman-trust-barometer.pdf
[*5] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2021/01/planning-for-post-democratic-divided.html
[*6] https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-donald-trumps-first-100-days/
[*7] https://infogalactic.com/info/Special_Counsel_investigation_(2017–2019)
[*8] See FN 6.
[*9] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/25/chemical-weapons-watchdog-opcw-defends-syria-report-after-leaks
[*10] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/3036
[*11] This course is taught by Hugh Wilford, available on the Great Courses and via Amazon, who gives a clinical and overall favorable take toward the CIA. The referenced-page is screenshot and taken from his companion course book. https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Agency-A-History-of-the-CIA-Audiobook/1629976563
[*12] Pike Committee testimony circa 1975: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfGxQdc0Kg8
[*13] https://www.gaia.com/article/6-corporations-control-most-scientific-publications
[*14] Media parroting same canned phrases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZVv2AOCnaA
[*15] Media parroting Amazon propaganda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6U2Un5kEdI
[*16] https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-cia-amazon-cloud-computing-20190403-story.html
[*17] Paper published in 2008 in law journals at Harvard and University of Chicago.
https://ia800304.us.archive.org/22/items/CassSunstein/cass_sunstein_infiltration.pdf
[*18] See FN 5.
[*19] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2020/12/election-fraud-law-violations-should.html
[*20] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/options-for-increasing-adherence-to-social-distancing-measures-22-march-2020
A glance at headlines from your news feeds over the past few weeks (or, for that matter, the past five years) gives you the distinct impression that (1) the media does not like President Trump and (2) they very much wish you would share that opinion. Their histrionics, to date, have crescendoed to a narrative that President Trump had ordered a failed coup by his supporters on January 6, 2021, by which he must be held accountable for the same via impeachment, and, then, that impeachment for inciting the aforesaid attempted coup was the pinnacle of shame in his legacy. It's hard to imagine a more damning narrative to run with. Such a narrative must have made a dent in his popular support, no?
Fascinating [*1], isn't it? This Rasmussen tracking poll shows an increase in President Trump's popular support among likely U.S. voters, 47% for the day of and day before his alleged incitement of a coup and 49% the next day. As of publication of this piece, it further rose to 51%.
And Rasmussen isn't exactly known for being a pro-Trump polling organization [*2].
The public's refusal to bend its opinion to the cries of the media should come as no surprise. As Scott Rasmussen himself stated regarding his poll on public trust in the media in September 2020,
78% of voters say that what reporters do with political news is promote their agenda. They think they use incidents as props for their agenda rather than seeking [to] accurately record what happened. Only 14% think that a journalist is actually reporting what happened... If a reporter found out something that would hurt their favorite candidate, only 36% of voters think that they would report that. ... So voters are looking at them as a political activist, not as a source of information [*3].The Edelman report, a survey with over 33,000 respondents in 28 countries, taken October 19 through November 18, 2020 and through December 18, 2020 in the U.S., revealed a drop in trust in the media by Biden voters by three percentage-points and a drop by fifteen for Trump voters from November to December in 2020 [*4]. This was precisely the time we saw an incessant push by the media to declare Joe Biden the winner of the U.S. presidential election despite legal challenges and suspect circumstances (e.g., how did Biden get 10.5 million more votes, 13% more, than the previous record-holder, Obama in '08, did with 398 less counties, 45% less, and excess votes coming mostly in four cities, many containing precincts with more votes than possible voters, that shut down counting operations and found last-minute Biden ballot dumps in the next-day early-morning hours?) [*5].
Mistrust extends internationally. Consider 59% of the public among these 28 countries think "journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations," and 59% of the same think "most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public."
Note the international trend towards distrust in the media, from 61% the prior year to 53%.
Only 10% in these countries will see a media report and automatically assume it is true without corroboration from other media sources.
This all begs some questions. Does the media still have power to change the opinion of likely voters? If not among voters, can they change the opinion of the general public? And which set of opinion matters going forward?
Most recognize the media as inherently biased against President Trump. A poll by the Shorestein Center (via Harvard University) on the tone of media coverage for the first 100 days of the Trump administration revealed shocking bias, generally over 80% negative [*6].
Just three months into the administration, a strong majority of mainstream outlets pushed a unified narrative that Trump was not fit for office, again, mostly hovering over 80%.
Not even the boomer-adored Fox News netted consistent positive coverage for President Trump and not even in regards to the infamous Russian-collusion probe, a three-year $25-million investigation which yielded no evidence of "collusion," despite over a thousand interviews and subpoenas issued [*7].
The negative tone transcended almost all topics. Immigration stood at 96% negative. Not even the economy received a majority, at only 46% with a positive tone. Most topics hovered around 80% negative in tone [*8].
And the bias was particularly acute toward Trump compared to past presidents, averaging 80% negative in tone.
Note the below deviation on one particular topic: the cruise-missile attacks President Trump ordered on Syria. We have an inversion in coverage, from 80% negative to about 80% positive. Curious.
This missile attack was a response to an alleged chemical-weapon attack the Syrian government launched on its own citizens. Debate ensues on whether chemical weapons were actually used, as a whistleblower-letter published on Wikileaks evidenced doctoring of the test results to reach the chemical conclusion [*9]. Of course, your Google-fu will yield cries from the media that this letter is inconsequential, assumed, perhaps, Russian propaganda, with no evidence, much like the aforementioned "collusion" probe, to support such a claim.
Regardless, the media jumped on the narrative that executive action amounting to an informal declaration of war was a good response before independent findings of fact were released on the matter. If the media is mainly a leftist ideological enterprise, we'd naturally suspect a little hesitation in using a positive tone for a Republican president opening another theater of war. Instead, we see a shocking reversal in the media's general attitude toward President Trump, so long as his actions are serving an agenda to expand theaters of war around the world. This agenda Trump steadfastly opposes (e.g., firing John Bolton and other hawkish figures), scaling back lucrative international business and politics more neo-conservative and neo-liberal globalist-oriented forces would want for more nation-oriented policies.
What is the nexus of the media's bias? Is it simply left-wing politics? Certainly this fuels some of their bias. I needn't waste your time convincing you the media promote a left-wing agenda politically, as this reality has been accepted for decades. The more interesting question is this. Is a desire to promote left-wing politics the proximate cause of the extreme bias toward President Trump outside the norm of other Republican presidents? Or is it something else?
Media has long been known as a tool for governments to convince the public to support or oppose certain political actions. The U.S. has a supposedly independent and free press with the First Amendment to protect it, so we might suspect the U.S. would be the least-likely country to control or manipulate the media for political purposes. But when we use the noun "U.S.," who are we talking about?
An appendage of the U.S. called the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has a legislative mandate to engage in covert operations of seemingly limitless breadth [*10].
While, in theory, subsequent laws limit the scope of CIA operations to outside the U.S., this wasn't historically the case or even always followed, and exemptions from prosecution of CIA assets are common. Note, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and/or CIA director may engage in acts independent of a U.S. president's knowledge. While subsequent rules have attempted to reign in this power, how would a president know if all intelligence and/or information pertaining to these "other functions and duties" were disclosed to him? For that matter, how would the DNI and/or CIA director even know all "other functions and duties" were disclosed to them?
Using special funds, immune from congressional oversite, a network of shell companies and private contractors have historically engaged in most of these "other functions and duties," which include 81 known overt or covert election-influence operations around the world since the CIA's inception in 1947 to 2000 [*11]. How many after 2000? Maybe there are less than 81. Maybe there are even more we don't know about. But, certainly the CIA has some experience historically in manipulating elections.
The CIA's role in American media manipulation is admitted on record, and they impliedly have agents in American newsrooms and for the Associated Press, per the 1975 testimony of then-CIA Director William Colby [*12].
U.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Otis Pike: Do you have any people being paid by the CIA who are contributing to a major circulation or American journal?
By one estimate, six corporations (GE, Disney, Time Warner, Viacom, and News Corp) control about 90% of media and publishing, including that of scientific journals [*13]. Maybe it's only 70%. Maybe it's 95%. Regardless of whether done illegally by the CIA or legally by an intelligence agency of a foreign country, targeting assets within these corporations effectively controls the majority of American media. To the extent an intelligence agency desires to control behavior with as little violence as possible, why wouldn't an agency set up media assets for control of information?CIA Director William Colby: We do have people who submit pieces to American journals.
Pike: Do you have people paid by the CIA who are working for television networks?
Colby: This I think gets into the kind of uh, kind of details I’d like to get into at an executive session.
Pike: Do you have any people being paid by the CIA who are contributing to the national news services, AP and UPI?
Colby: Well again, I think we are getting into the kind of detail, Mr. Chairman, I’d prefer to handle in an executive session.
There is an eerie homogeneity in messaging by American media. Multiple phrases, such as "a child's happiness is priceless, especially on a birthday [*14]" and "millions of Americans staying at home [due to the COVID-19 pandemic] are relying on Amazon [*15]," are uniformly parroted by multiple local TV news broadcasters. It's also curious that Amazon is a Jeff Bezos operation, which has/had a $600-million contract with the CIA. Bezos owns the Washington Post [*16], a news organization dedicated to fear-mongering over COVID-19 and the ills of Trump over all other outlets (and topics), profiting off the stay-at-home culture imposed on the world in 2020 and beyond.
Do we know for sure that the media is a controlled operation by the intelligence community(ies)? What degree of control is needed to conclude it is "controlled?" Does the DNI need to make a public confession to reach that goal post? Is anything short of that to be derided as "conspiracy theory," requiring intervention by government agents in the comment section to steer my fair readers back to a socially acceptable narrative, as advocated in a 2008 paper, published in multiple prestigious law journals, by the then-Obama administration's Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Cass Sunstein [*17]?
At minimum, I've shaken your assumption that the media's raison détente is left-wing enterprise. It consists of left-wing people who would prefer to promote left-wing values for sure. But interests pertaining to global military expansion in theaters of conflict, or anything in the future aligning with desires of intelligence contractors and/or controllers, are prime. Left-wing causes are ancillary and only temporarily align with controller interests. That can change. And it most certainly will in our post-democratic era.
As I've discussed in a prior piece, the comically-obvious fraud that transpired in the U.S. 2020/1 elections marks the beginning of the post-democratic age [*18]. Since elections are now manipulated by machines and coordinated with on-the-ground deliveries of last-minute ballot dumps, using media to persuade people to vote for or against particular politicians is irrelevant, at least in the U.S.
Thus, the new purpose of media in 2021 is convincing the public to voluntarily engage in what their masters want with as little force as possible. Once a cabal effectively has control of elections for the world's foremost military authority, manipulation of their chosen candidates is the obvious next step. But a harder task is getting the population within the controlled jurisdiction to comply with the new rules.
People comply with rules for three reasons.
(1) The rules are moral. You refuse to enter your neighbor's unlocked home and steal a teaspoon of sugar without his consent, because such an act offends his dignity. Morality is the primary motivation for most people to obey rules. If it wasn't, enforcers would be on-the-ground, constantly monitoring a population's every movement to ensure compliance.
(2) You fear the consequences of failure to follow the rule. For most libertarians, perhaps, paying taxes is done out of fear of prosecution by the government. Since, as they say, "taxation is theft," paying taxes is not a virtuous act. This reason begets the need for the very system of enforcers we refer to as "the state."
(3) You recognize the rule you are following is irrational, but you accept the system of governance in your jurisdiction and obey out of respect for "the rule of law." While such obedience doesn't come directly from a moral authority, we recognize the moral place it comes from. You recognize a system of rules benefits you and your loved ones and that obedience to those rules allows civilization. Thus, you obey even-irrational rules, to a reasonable degree, out of your desire to continue civilization.
If half of a jurisdiction does not recognize its government as legitimate, the third reason should no longer have rational power over the same half. Thus, to be obeyed, rules would have to either come from a place of morality or be enforced by fear of consequences.
As I've written on in more detail before, it is impossible to run a functional civilization if too many people obey rules only out of fear of consequences [*19]. The enforcers of rules coming from the same body of people who largely obey only out of fear will naturally be corrupted. One who obeys laws solely out of fear of facing a consequence is likely monitored by people who obey the law for the same reason. Thus, using enforcement for personal gain (e.g., accepting bribes for particular action or inaction) becomes too common to keep a functional civilization with too large a populace without a moral compass.
Thus, the role of media, for a system of controllers, would be to match the rules they want people to obey with a moral code that people will follow. A person ordered to turn over a fugitive slave, for example, might do so out of fear of being prosecuted, but, if the public can be convinced slaves are property and that it is just to ensure property is returned to its lawful owners, compliance with that rule is far more likely.
We anticipate a pivot in media from pushing narratives about who to vote or not vote for to moral arguments for why populations should comply with certain rules.
For one example, the British government recognizes the role of media manipulation to effect good public policy, at least in regards to propagandizing fear of COVID-19, in this government paper [*20].
Note how the tactic of government using the media to promote "hard-hitting emotional messages" for compliance with COVID-19 regulations like lockdown orders is discussed in a clinical manner, devoid of ethical considerations, with the option "[u]se media to increase sense of personal threat." The government paper recognizes that exaggerating the negative impact of the COVID-19 for moral posturing might backfire and cause distrust. The deontological ethical dilemma of using the media to exaggerate and manipulate (lie) is not weighted, only the utilitarian consequences of the tactic.
What agendas should we anticipate being propagandized on in 2021 and going forward? Public support for expanding theaters of war? Vaccination-record passports for public travel (or even travel as outside the home), as being pushed in Ireland in this now-taken-down (moved to private) message after receiving over 11,000 dislikes?
We can't say for sure. To the extent the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, how much vigilance is needed to win freedom back?
We must not allow the media to manipulate our sense of morality. The new rulers must be made to accept that compliance with new rules we deem irrational will only come out of fear of consequences and not any sense of duty to the corrupted institution or place of morality. As the controllers are forced to dial up consequences and more heavy-handedly monitor us, opportunities for freedom will emerge.
Recognize that the media is not an institution to inform you but to, instead, influence you. Your sense of truth comes primarily from your own observations in the material world. When the media advise you of a certain fact, without independent examination of that purported fact, you do not know it to be true. You are choosing to trust that the purported fact is true, because you trust the media enterprise telling you. We do the same with our lawyers, doctors, scientists, and countless other professionals we rely on to plan our day-to-day living. This method is how we obtain most of what we call knowledge and is the bedrock of what we might call civilization.
It's not that we trust X fact is true. We trust Y individual. And we accept X as fact as a symbol of our trust in Y individual. Most of us trust the plane we are sitting in will take off not out of our independent knowledge of the mechanics of aviation but out of our trust in the crew maintaining and operating the plane.
But what happens when we can no longer rely on simple trust for knowledge? Our inability to trust these Ys for information we use in planning our day-to-day lives begets the breakdown of civilization.
We must build new institutions, communities of people we trust, to reestablish civilization and begin a divorce into separate jurisdictions, independent from the controllers of our corrupted institutions we often call "governments." A new dichotomy must emerge. Some information will come from what we'll call "the U.S. media." It may be true. It may not be. But we can't rely on it.
Separate knowledge that comes from "the U.S. media" from other sources. And recognize that their aim, whether wittingly or not, isn't to inform but to influence.
-----
FOOTNOTES
[*1] https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/trump_approval_index_history
[*2] https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2020/09/03/media-malfeasance-rasmussen-reports-creates-hideously-biased-image-of-trump-and-biden-for-new-poll-n885596
[*3] https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/08/18/rasmussen_new_poll_shows_voters_trust_national_political_media_about_the_same_as_they_trust_wikipedia.html#!
[*4] https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2021-01/2021-edelman-trust-barometer.pdf
[*5] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2021/01/planning-for-post-democratic-divided.html
[*6] https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-donald-trumps-first-100-days/
[*7] https://infogalactic.com/info/Special_Counsel_investigation_(2017–2019)
[*8] See FN 6.
[*9] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/25/chemical-weapons-watchdog-opcw-defends-syria-report-after-leaks
[*10] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/3036
[*11] This course is taught by Hugh Wilford, available on the Great Courses and via Amazon, who gives a clinical and overall favorable take toward the CIA. The referenced-page is screenshot and taken from his companion course book. https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Agency-A-History-of-the-CIA-Audiobook/1629976563
[*12] Pike Committee testimony circa 1975: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfGxQdc0Kg8
[*13] https://www.gaia.com/article/6-corporations-control-most-scientific-publications
[*14] Media parroting same canned phrases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZVv2AOCnaA
[*15] Media parroting Amazon propaganda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6U2Un5kEdI
[*16] https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-cia-amazon-cloud-computing-20190403-story.html
[*17] Paper published in 2008 in law journals at Harvard and University of Chicago.
https://ia800304.us.archive.org/22/items/CassSunstein/cass_sunstein_infiltration.pdf
[*18] See FN 5.
[*19] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2020/12/election-fraud-law-violations-should.html
[*20] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/options-for-increasing-adherence-to-social-distancing-measures-22-march-2020
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