Tagged: mass manipulation

On Popular Intellectuals

Being a popular or public intellectual, particularly in this era of digital communication and global fora, demands two things above all, namely that you tell your audience what they want to hear, and that you phrase your every statement with the kind of absolute certainty and lack of circumspection that reassures the audience that they need not have any reserve, hesitation, or doubt...

What An Echo Chamber Is For

“We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!” So everyone says these days, quoting a character no one remembers from a movie no one has seen — repeatedly, incessantly, droningly, ad nauseam. Our performative riling up, on cue and at the cracked whip of our preferred “news sources,” is not a call to action, let alone to serious reflection,...

Two Reflections on a Passing Hearse

Donald Trump has announced that he is running for president in 2024, because Americans just don’t realize how much they are suffering yet, and how terrible things have gotten under the Democratic White House. That’s precious coming from the man who almost singlehandedly created the current Democratic power lunge. After all, it was Trump who lost the popular vote in two consecutive elections,...

Advertising

The reason advertisements consistently portray everyone as a smiling idiot, a self-absorbed advantage-seeker, a gushing sentimentalist, a self-righteous slogan-spouter, a hypersexual poseur, or an all-knowing and assertive fake expert, is that professional advertisers know how to do their job. The essence of their job is to attract the greatest number of targeted consumers by appealing to the most common tastes and tendencies of...

Alien Logic, Part Five: The Disturbing Truth

The New York Times, followed by its usual partners in crime, CNN and The Washington Post, has “learned from high-level sources” — i.e., received a memo from its employer, the government — that the UFO report due in Congress this month will claim to have no direct evidence of alien spacecraft. The mainstream media, eager to maintain both its revenue stream and the...