We deserve better propaganda
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
One cannot help but be a little envious of the Chinese and North Koreans.
Their people are made to consume the wildest, most extreme forms of political propaganda, some of the most fantastic unintentional absurdist humor you will ever see. Their agitprop has a certain panache and creativity, elements that transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.
It's something you can't quite look away from — like a trainwreck.
In contrast, America's propaganda is as flabby and lethargic as its electorate. Whether this is because U.S. propagandists are themselves lethargic or because tricking people requires such little effort is yet to be determined.
Note: I do not actually envy the victims of North Korean and Chinese communism. Just play along for a moment.
In the United States, people are exposed to less political propaganda than their communist counterparts. We're bombarded mainly during election cycles. It's especially intense every four years during the presidential election.
Aside from the volume, another key difference between American newspeak and that of the CCP or the Hermit Kingdom is that the stuff produced in the U.S. is lifeless. It's drab, uninspired nonsense — the equivalent of political gruel. It's as if the powers that be aren't even trying.
Consider the crusade to undermine the conservative majority Supreme Court. Though this disinformation campaign isn't specifically an election-year affair, it's similar in that its chief focus is power. The Left lost the court recently, thus the concerted attempt to gut or expand it. And like most agitprop operations in the U.S., the attack on the court is of a particularly low quality.
For example, the Left and its allies in the press, including the New York Times, are trying to pressure Justice Samuel Alito from the court with an uninspired, sad-sack propaganda narrative involving flags. Yes, flags. Martha-Ann Alito flew an inverted U.S. flag during a dispute with her neighbor's unemployed grown child. An inverted flag means the Alitos are sympathetic to, if not fully supportive of, the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, according to the current anti-Supreme Court movement.
In New Jersey, the Alitos flew the Appeal to Heaven revolutionary era flag designed by George Washington. Apparently, this flag appeared at the Jan. 6 riot. Therefore, an appearance at a residence owned by the Alitos suggests they are sympathetic to, if not fully supportive of, the Jan. 6 riot.
I say "apparently" because no one, including the New York Times, cared or noticed an Appeal to Heaven flag on Jan. 6 until the crusade against Alito began in earnest. Before then, no one at the Times or elsewhere had an opinion on the Appeal to Heaven flag. Now? Well, we all know it's a symbol of insurrection, right?
It has been several days since the crackerjack reporters at the New York Times published anything on the Alitos' flag preferences. A breathless nation eagerly awaits the paper's next big flag scoop. Who knows? Perhaps the Times will catch the Alitos flying a Yankees flag, an obvious nod to upstate New York's Anti-Rent War of the late 1830s.
Elsewhere, in an even dimmer and more pitiful effort, Rolling Stone tried, and failed, to whip up a scandal against Justice Amy Coney Barrett by revealing her husband, who is an attorney, has clients. Unsurprisingly, the "scandal" didn't go anywhere.
Then, there are the endless hits on Justice Clarence Thomas, who has committed the great sin of having friends who make money.
Look, for a propaganda push to work, it must tease the imagination. It must have a little flair, something bold and daring to seize and hold the attention. It also helps if the targets of the endeavor, the public, don't have memories, access to the internet, or books. If you're going to fool people into believing a smear campaign, you're going to have to do better than, "This flag is bad now because we said so" or "This judge is married to an attorney with clients."
Now, to be fair, the Left did have a stroke of creative genius in 2018, back when it insisted, with a straight face, that Justice Brett Kavanaugh enjoyed a past life as the alcoholic, hard-partying leader of a high school gang rape squad. That hitjob had legs. It was also a terrible, unconscionable slander, which it ran simply because it feared losing control of the court. But hey — points for creativity. Even Chinese communists couldn't have done better.
Yet the Kavanaugh incident was the exception to the norm. American agitprop today is typically so dull that it is insulting, not even entertaining.
Where China pumps out ludicrous large-scale "war epics" that are merely peans to Chinese greatness and communist civic virtues — see the mawkish The Eight Hundred — the best that Americans get is some half-baked conspiracy regarding the Alitos and flags.
Where North Koreans have the Juche idea and all the laugh-out-loud tall tales involving Dear Leader's supernatural charisma, physical abilities, and daring exploits, Americans get CBS News, the Associated Press, and others declaring the 81-year-old president, who clearly struggles to articulate himself and perform even basic physical functions, does not actually struggle to articulate himself and perform even basic physical functions.
Political disinformation doesn't work if we can all see evidence to the contrary.
On a more serious note, the attempts to undermine the court and dismiss legitimate questions about Biden's health are some of the worst, most lamebrained efforts to deceive the public in recent memory. One is hard-pressed to think of similar episodes in which success depended so entirely on the ignorance of the public or voters simply not asking questions.
It's disturbing, then, to ponder whether these campaigns are phoned in because their creators are layabouts or because they require so little to dupe people. If it's the former, there isn't anything to worry about. Lying political operatives will always be with us. Ever was it thus.
However, suppose it's the latter, and episodes such as the wholly invented Appeal to Heaven "controversy" exist precisely because it's so easy to trick people. If this is the case, we're in far worse shape than I imagined.
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I am told that Supreme Court ethics reform is a must in order to reestablish trust in the court, apparently the American people are demanding this...? ... Congress is getting bold in its power grab .. by what stretch of the imagination is a self-policing Congress qualified to impose ethic reforms on the Supreme Court...?
Especially one that shows no concerns about reigning in the executive outside of obvious partisanship.
I think that is going hand in hand with what Sean posted:
Congress is getting bold in its power grab .
what’s funny is that congressional democrats accuse the court of power grabs when it says “we can’t do this, it’s up to congress”. Actually voting on legislation is the last thing congress wants to do.
If there is actually a threat to democracy that we keep hearing about, a dysfunctional government, especially a dysfunctional congress has to be the greatest threat to it.
Seems as if Congress is conceding powers to the executive branch while trying to gain more power over the judicial branch.
The Left lost the court recently, thus the concerted attempt to gut or expand it. And like most agitprop operations in the U.S., the attack on the court is of a particularly low quality.
Every May/June, the left wing special interests launch dishonest, partisan attacks trying to delegitimize the court as the Court publishes its opinions for the term. As predictable as the equinox at this point.