If you learn nothing else from 2020 (a year which is now 23 months long) it’s this:
Propaganda works on you even if you know it’s propaganda.
We’ve all experienced it. You spend all day in a world where the sky is blue and gravity points down. Everything seems normal.
Then the folks in power squat over your house and dump propaganda through electronic devices* into your mind. It’s a brutal assault!
Some pinhead on TV says that virtually every voter in creation wants free shit from the government and they’ll burn their own neighborhood to get it. You’re reminded that this is a good thing. Your vote is important, unless you vote wrong, in which case it’s bad. Morality is outdated. God is dead. Earning things is bad. Having them granted to you is good.
Ads feature lesbian plumbers, black fly fishermen, and everyone who doesn’t buy a particular product is racist. Subarus are made of love and electric cars run on magic. Every corporation loves you. Every fictional CEO is a white male amoral monster. Every actual CEO wants to fix your bad mentality. The former spends his spare time tying widows to train tracks and and the latter is saving dolphins from climate change. Politicians accused of sexually assaulting empowered women who are completely helpless is sorted based on party. Believe all women, unless they accuse a Clinton.
Your sports team is taking a knee for… you have no idea. Their name is racist, millionaire players are victims, and they play in a stadium named by a corporation that’s morally superior to you.
The president announces a huge infrastructure bill is “free”. The “press” nods in agreement like they actually believe it. If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. Enjoy your $2100 savings.
Facebook labels any doubt about any pronouncement by any bureaucracy “misinformation”. Nobody’s fat on Instagram.
Your kid’s homework would make RuPaul queasy. You examine closely and realize your kid’s teacher is nearly illiterate. Any kid that takes this shit seriously is going to become a basket case and your kid will be there for 13 years. You start to panic and you’re called a domestic terrorist because you questioned the numbskull education majors that march in great herds.
Arson is peaceful protest. Speech you might agree with is violence. Violence against someone like you is free speech.
“News” tells you that inflation doesn’t exist, store shelves are not empty, the climate is affected by tax policy, a zillion illegal immigrants is going to improve your life, and worrying about your winter heating bill means you hate nature.
You’re told that printing unlimited money is just fine. You’re told that parking a $60,000 car in front of a $400,000 house is completely normal. You’re told that it’s completely normal that you’ve financed them all.
Then… the clock ticks and it’s minute two.
It’s relentless. It never ends. Each glimmer of truth comes with a truckload of lies.
The whole situation was designed. It serves a purpose. It’s targeted and delivered by the truckload. Lies this pervasive and endless are almost irresistible. They percolate through the most armored mind and take root in a weary soul.
Soon you feel despondent. Everything is hopeless. This is the new normal. It’ll never get better. You’ve become demoralized… as was intended.
The miasma of failure is a dense fog. It interferes with your thinking. From within, you cannot navigate out. As was also intended.
The best solution to this is a great big laugh. It’s all ridiculous. Quit taking any of it seriously because not a damn part is true or real. Once you step out of the onslaught you see how dumb it is. Under the earth’s true sun, you see the horizon again. Up is once again up. Down is once again down. Anytime you laugh it breaks the spell.
The defeat for evil is not hate… it is mockery.
The thing bullies and tyrants fear most is being made fun of. They don’t fear war, famine, and death… they fear being ridiculed. They fear it because it exposes them as what they are… empty failures.
Which brings me to this:
When I’m feeling down, nothing warms my heart more than a good loud round of Fuck You Biden (or the PG version, Lets Go Brandon). That’s not the sound of crass misery, it’s the sound of American Citizens acting with the irreverence and spirit that marks a free people. Humor, as much as guns and laws, is what made our nation free. Without it, we are already in chains.
The power of humor to defeat asinine bastards is as old as time. Remember this?
I’ll also point you to one of my favorite blogs, The Ultimate Answer To Kings:
“It finally came to me – and that’s when I abandoned the city and most of my stuff, and gave all that was behind me a good stiff Randian Shrug.
The ultimate answer to kings is not a bullet, but a belly laugh.”
Also, I’m working on my contribution to humor. I’m 3/4 of the way through a book. It’s a combination satirical allegory and my unified field theory of the most powerful force in the universe: bullshit. Feel free to read the as yet unfinished but definitely not forgotten Attack Of The Lesbian Activist Squirrels.
Whenever modern politics gets you down, just chuckle and say “Let’s Go Brandon”.
A.C.
*While 99% of propaganda is delivered by electronic devices, it’s harder to dodge them than you think. I will go days and weeks without media or internet only to get nuked by society the instant I make contact. Unless you’re Amish, you don’t have a society free of propaganda in which to take refuge. You’ll be surrounded by people in the thrall of electronic “media” and they’re hooked deeply. They’re junkies. They can’t quit. When a junkie meets a person who’s “clean” (like yours truly at times) they are programmed to download everything… and they will… instantly! They literally cannot help themselves. If there’s a popular show they’ll turn into a Meat Tivo and tell you the plot… as if you somehow don’t have the ability to watch TV if you want. They’ll repeat CNN talking points or what they heard on NPR as if it’s vitally important you know the same bullshit that was crammed onto their tiny little hard drive. This isn’t by accident and it’s very distinctive behavior. One example; I could not avoid listening to a dozen recounts of “Game Of Thrones” from HBO. I don’t have HBO and I didn’t want some yo-yo’s rendition. I’d read the fucking books. It didn’t help. I couldn’t stop them. They couldn’t stop themselves.
(P.S. This post’s title is in honor of the American Revolutionary War’s Continental Navy captain John Paul Jones. During a pitched sea battle, he was taunted by British Captain Richard Pearson. Pearson asked “Has your ship struck?” Jones replied “I have not yet begun to fight!” As banter goes I’ll give that 3 out of 4 Klingons, an honorary Churchill cigar, and a Viking seal of approval. Within 12 hours, after a desperate battle, Pearson surrendered. Jones took Pearson’s ship. This is fortunate because the American’s ship was mortally wounded and sunk before it could be repaired.)