The Man of the Hour
If I could summarize what Stefan Molyneux has been saying about politics for quite some time is that, for him, politics is over. All there is to look forward to is increasing tyranny. He hasn't been wrong if you've been observing the trends in Western nations’ politics. Particularly in the United States, our government’s only hope to preserve itself is through increasing amounts of explicit totalitarianism (as its malfeasance is revealed). Because its hand has been unveiled by God, because its dark powers are being exposed, it can no longer hide its malicious intentions from the public.
It's taken a couple years, but I've more or less arrived at the same conclusions as Molyneux though I don't share his politics. The spectacle of politics is no longer interesting. Governments that are based on public participation (voting) will influence the will of the public through mass media propaganda efforts as they've been doing for decades now. One of Noam Chomsky’s best ideas, unveiled in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, is the main tool that the government uses to get support for its efforts. It synthesizes enemies, shifts blame, magnifies other stories (involving Submarines…) to downplay relevant political news, and uses fog of war media tactics to obfuscate its true dealings.
The book, Unrestricted Warfare (written by 2 Chinese military strategists), remains true in that war has transitioned from the level of munitions and battlefields between nations and between blocks of nations to warfare taking place in unexpected places. In our case, an idea suggested by Semiogogue, it’s taking place between individuals now, often within the same nation. The war is at the level of the lexicon that we use to describe the world. The attack is bitter and intimate, between you and a once good friend perhaps—maybe even between you and yourself. What’s the difference between the truth and the Truth when everyone on all sides saw the video where it happened? Was George Floyd murdered or did he die by fentanyl overdose? I mean…we all saw the video, right?
In a time when abuse and narcissism by those close to you are at the height of “self-care” conversation, no one seems to realize that the government is gaslighting all people at all times on a mass scale. It sucks individuals into fake conversations with fake conclusions and fake opposition. For example, on dating apps like Hinge, you can say whether or not you are vaccinated. The options are “vaccinated” or “not vaccinated yet.” There is no option to say, “I will never get the vaccination.” You are either vaccinated, or you will be. There is no between. This is a small example of the manipulation in language taking place.
If you’ve ever taken a call from pollsters, you’ll notice that they will only offer you multiple-choice options for your responses. It’s often the case that your opinion is not included in those options. The very questions and answers are geared to produce a particular result by using leading questions and providing answers that are not quite right. The apparatus that gauges public opinion is deliberately broken so that your opinion never bubbles up to the top, so you and everyone gets trapped in a fake conversation.
An obvious issue where this occurs is on the issue of the Student Debt Loan crisis. The media opinions on this are: the government should pay for it or the individual should pay for it. Almost no one who truly ponders this crisis will come to either of those solutions. This is a fake conversation. The solution that most would agree on is that governments should not be able to give 18-year-olds with no credit hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans. The laws that support this should be repealed. This is the reasonable answer (there are a few other versions of this idea floating around as well), but it’s not even an option in the conversation when the issue arises. You are caught in a dialectic about student loans that does not address the real issue. No one has a right to a secondary education. No one should support government-subsidized student loans.
Now to the question that started this all: Trump or DeSantis?
Is it possible that even this conversation is a fake conversation as well?
Perhaps we should all spend some time pondering this question…
In regards to the student loan crisis no one brings up the fault of bloated administration in college or how they hook impressionable kids into worthless degrees.
They're absolute schemers and somehow liberals only want to blame government and conservatives only will blame the individual
Ahh, so that's why you were on hinge