caitlin has some thoughts about how we get where we are and decides the answer is bullshit;

The problem that underpins most other problems in modern times is that human minds are highly hackable, and that the science of hacking them at mass scale has been advancing since Bernays over a century ago. This is what keeps people consenting to the destructive and exploitative agendas of the powerful against their own interests.

The fact that our minds are being manipulated at mass scale throughout our civilization is the most significant thing happening in the world by far, but hardly anyone talks about it, because hardly anyone knows it’s happening. And a lot of power rides on keeping it that way.

Step 1 is learning that minds are very hackable, and are being hacked constantly at mass scale.

Step 2 is learning that your own mind is included in this.

Step 3 is unpacking the implications of Step 2 (Step 3 never really ends).

Step 4 is helping others get to Steps 1 and 2.

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It works like this:

• As many people as possible are herded into two mainstream political factions who pretend to oppose each other while in reality working together to advance the interests of the powerful.
• Those who can’t be herded into the two mainstream factions are herded toward fake “populist” factions, who then herd them into the mainstream factions.
• Those who can’t be herded into either category are marginalized into invisibility.

By the time you get down to that bottom tier, their numbers are so inconsequential that you can keep them from having any impact by simply refusing them platforms on mainstream media and letting “democracy” do the rest, because you’ve got the majority right where you want them.

Most propaganda goes not toward the glaring, obvious lies like the Iraq invasion, but toward mundane control systems like the ideological herding funnel I just described. Really ham-fisted propaganda is the exception, not the rule in the west; the lion’s share of the empire’s manipulations just go toward keeping people marching to the beat of the imperial machine..........more.........