Yep. The interesting thing about propaganda is that it doesn’t even need to openly agree with the current regime.
You can have superficially critical media, who none the less support the regime they criticise through things like framing, the agenda setting effect, or promoting apathy/hopelessness to suppress voter turn out.
With that last thing in mind, I should say that Americans are not fucked, that the result of the next election is not a foregone conclusion, and that they should vote… but even I am having trouble believing it and not falling into cynicism or nihilism.
The best thing that can be said about media that’s “critical” of MAGA these days is that’s it’s functioning as entertainment for people who will ultimately do nothing. All this hand-wringing and wondering if Trump is evil or not does his bidding…puts people to sleep. We’re long past the point where civilized people should have revolted.
Nah, we’re fucked. The best we can hope for is a Democratic “landslide”…where a bunch of centre-right capitalists get rewarded for waiting around doing nothing. They’ll prove to be corrupt, feckless and ineffective…because they are…and whatever MAGA morphs into will be acting like Stalin was in charge and we’ll get MAGA 3.0. We’re very far off from a proper revolution…which is necessary to stop this constant slide into unrestricted capitalism.
Yep. The interesting thing about propaganda is that it doesn’t even need to openly agree with the current regime.
You can have superficially critical media, who none the less support the regime they criticise through things like framing, the agenda setting effect, or promoting apathy/hopelessness to suppress voter turn out.
With that last thing in mind, I should say that Americans are not fucked, that the result of the next election is not a foregone conclusion, and that they should vote… but even I am having trouble believing it and not falling into cynicism or nihilism.
The best thing that can be said about media that’s “critical” of MAGA these days is that’s it’s functioning as entertainment for people who will ultimately do nothing. All this hand-wringing and wondering if Trump is evil or not does his bidding…puts people to sleep. We’re long past the point where civilized people should have revolted.
Nah, we’re fucked. The best we can hope for is a Democratic “landslide”…where a bunch of centre-right capitalists get rewarded for waiting around doing nothing. They’ll prove to be corrupt, feckless and ineffective…because they are…and whatever MAGA morphs into will be acting like Stalin was in charge and we’ll get MAGA 3.0. We’re very far off from a proper revolution…which is necessary to stop this constant slide into unrestricted capitalism.
Yeah. Social media and doom scrolling are the new opium of the masses.