Battle For The Minds
Over the past few years, I’ve been engaged in a propaganda war. That hasn’t been my narrative. I was trying to engage honestly with my fellow Americans. Over time I realized that honest engage wasn’t the *only* thing going on around me.
When I began my journey, I was an engineering manager at a big tech company. I’m used to living in a world of logic and reason. Code intended to perform a particular function in a straight forward manner. Trying to understand a fight for top down power in that lens is apparently naive.
A political system where honest engagement is naive is corrupt.
Sophistry: a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning.
So what was I missing? Narrative.
The world is driven by narrative more than power.
Convince the population their your political rivals are evil, then they will treat them as evil. Would you listen to honest engagement from evil? Would you pay attention to what your own politicans and people are doing when you believe they are fighting evil?
It’s not all propaganda. Some people honestly believe their opposition is evil, due to actions they’ve seen taken in the past. There is usually an element of tribalism in that behavior though, as the actions get projected onto everyone the individual associates with, instead of just the individuals.
Tribalism leads people to embrace collective blame and the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. Evil on their side means *they* are evil. Evil on our side isn’t really on our side. It’s a false flag or a lone wolf. In reality, collective guilt is bullshit.
Someone on the “left” (Tribalism) leaking the address of a Supreme Court justice is used as evidence that the “left” is collectively evil. The individual taking the action likely feels justified, without recognizing the damage that they personally have inflicted on their own cause.
The same pattern exists on the “right”.
The idea that there is two sides is an illusion though. Instead we have hundreds of millions of unique individuals trying to use force through a two party political party.
The country is divided because the government is divided.
The government is divided because the parties are divided.
The parties are divided are divided because the politicians are divided.
The politicians are divided because the people are divided.
You can’t get enough power to unite the people.
That requires developing and spreading new narratives, which is hard, when everyone is focused on fighting evil.
That’s the type of situation that makes some men justify hiring a foreign military contractor to use psyops on their fellow Americans.
That’s the type of situation that justifies the use of Propaganda to manipulate the people.
That’s the type of situation that justifies trying to make the tail wag the dog.
Combating propaganda requires Truth, not Power.
Changing minds requires honesty and love, not division state violence.
What we are experiencing now is just more pieces of our collective Fascism.
