I wonder how far did Carlson’s soul went during the seconds after it.

    • supersolid_snake@lemmygrad.ml
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      5 months ago

      Yep, when the question arises of whether libs are stupid or evil, they are stupid in the service of evil is the conclusion I have come to. They don’t want to learn anything that might make them reflect on anything counter to their self-interests.

      They are also nationalists and American exceptionalists like trump supporters, it’s just they realize you should hide it.

      • casskaydee [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        Talk of “manufacturing” and “inventing” suggests an imposition over and against the individual’s will. I believe that, on the contrary, the process of Western propaganda is better understood in terms of “licensing”: the issuing of moral license for the bourgeois proletariat to profitably go along with bourgeois designs without the feeling of shame overwhelming. In this alternative account people aren’t “brainwashed” insofar as they don’t actually believe the lies, not in the way that we generally understand belief. It’s more correct to say that they go along with them, whether enthusiastically or apprehensively, because it’s actually their optimal survival strategy. When we concede that the time horizon and scope of responsibility within which we all make our decisions varies, it becomes much easier to see how their choice could be smart and intelligent. The enlightened critic can plead that if we all agreed to denounce the status quo in unison we’d be immensely rewarded, but the average worker in the first world cannot be accused of naiveté for preferring to keep a low profile, particularly after being subject — very often by that same critic — to so many grim stories of murder and of punishment and of how any attempt at radical change always goes awry.

        Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing” (2022)