Language and Propaganda - an example

When we look at what happened in several countries - especially during WWII, we can see how the general populace can be manipulated. Those are sad chapters in human history, because we all believed they were well developed countries like Germany and Japan with good education and industry.
Even the US with our Constitution put us Japanese Americans into concentration camps without being charged with any crime.

We cannot let Trump treat Muslims the way our country treated other minorities in the past. If Trump gets his way with Muslims, we might as well just chuck the Constitution into the circular file.

The sad fact is that many Muslim (and others) are being treated badly in our country. Even a white woman with a bandana was treated badly. These kinds of bigotry is based on ignorance.

My brother and sister-in-law are presently on holiday in Palm Springs. A week ago, my brother wrote to let me know of a conversation they'd had with an American couple in the hotel hot-tub. They were informed that numerous individuals connected to the Clintons had died mysteriously and that some of them had all the blood drained from their bodies.

Humans, effectively propagandized for decades can, apparently, come to believe anything. So, yes, we have to fight against this kind of insanity and evil but it's no quick or easy fight. And we might not win it.

Unfortunately, we've gone through all that in Germany - 90 years ago - with the known result

Yes, I saw that. It's an extremely dangerous time right now in the US and whether or not America slides into the status of a failed democratic state seems to be the key question. As just one example, Trump has expended almost no effort at all to criticize the racist/white nationalist forces that have welcomed his candidacy and election and in doing so has emboldened these forces in the US while expending far, far more effort in trying to crush criticism of him in news media and even taking the time to try and bully the cast of Hamilton and SNL. It's all very ugly.

Add in the choices for cabinet positions he's made or is about to finalize. What happens when an administration with such totalitarian methods of governance and information control gets control of the Justice Department and the intelligence community? Authoritarian/totalitarian personalities don't shrink from moving towards police-state systems - that's a natural step.

It's bloody frightening.

Certainly not if tRump is allowed to control the media which as I understand it he tried to do today. I am afraid we are about to become another Nazi or Soviet country.

Not to worry; Trump can't hide from the media if he plans to be out in public.
It's in his DNA to be out in the public; to be acknowledged and praised. His ego demands it.

Please believe mey, CI, I answered your PM before reading blatham's reply above. I did not copy his thoughts.

Let's acknowledge first of all that the distance the US would have to travel from where it is now to that sort of future you point to is rather a great distance. But these things rarely happen quickly. Consensus has to be altered and existing institutions that had proved a bulwark against totalitarianism have to fail broadly and significantly. The first is well underway and the second is indeed the target of much modern conservative activity (Norquist: "make the government so small it can be drowned in a bathtub"). But all is definitely not lost even if threatened in a way we've never seen before.

Well Rabel, in his expressed fears about Nazi or Soviet tyranny, at least implicitly acknowledged that the danger is from the possibility of authoritarian rule by a self appointed elite of any political persuasion, whether left or right. Oddly, the implicit assumption in this thread appears to be that the only real danger is from political conservatives. However, the history of the last century or so amply testifies to the contrary. From Lenin to Stalin, to Mao and Pol Pot and on to the somewhat comical but nonetheless dangerous figures like Castro, Chavez and the thuggish Maduro, the most frequently occurring authoritarian movements have come from the left with tyranny deceitfully rationalized in the name of the people or working class.

That said, most of us recognize the danger is from tyranny of any stripe, however it may be rationalized.

I believe the risk in the U.S. is very remote, and the recent election should remind us of that. One of the chief factors in the election result was a widespread perception that the current administration had overreached its mandate; gone too far in efforts to impose policy through executive or bureaucratic action; and had assumed too much that it alone understood what was good for everyone else. The election reversal reflects the essence of Democracy and a hallmark of a healthy republic, in that it demonstrates the existence of internal processes to limit excesses of any type.

It appears that, from his perch in Vancouver BC, Blatham still sees dark right wing clouds on our horizon - as he always has done. Nothing new there.

A propagandist operation will not just be a matter or forwarding falsehoods or character smears, etc. It will also work to inhibit communications and ideas and information sources which the propagandizing entity finds inimical to the notions, values, and worldview that entity is promoting.

Thus, for example, here in Canada, the prior conservative government under Harper moved to put a very tight lid on communications from scientists working in or for the government and cut funding to science research that might produce findings that the Harper government deemed inconvenient for political purposes.
http://bit.ly/2giTKU7

And now Trump is apparently going to proceed along the same lines.
http://bit.ly/2giTIvO

This is a propagandist move and it is not at the behest of citizens but rather the petroleum and energy industries. As I've noted earlier, this adminstration is about to give the Koch and related operations pretty much all they want.

Ya think? According to your link:

"In an interview with the New York Times Tuesday, Trump acknowledged that there may be some "connectivity" between human activity and climate change....The advisor, Bob Walker, said that the research "has been heavily politicized" and "Mr. Trump’s decisions will be based upon solid science, not politicized science.”

Anyone who thinks this isn't a political issue aint payin much attention.

"Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University [said]...“It would be a blatantly political move..."

The same Michael Mann whose "data" created the now-thoroughly discredited "hockey stick graph" at jump street, eh?

Vox has a very good piece on this and on the wide benefits of this NASA program http://bit.ly/2giPrbA

I read it. Likely accurate, but it missed the essential point. NASA is loking for a new mission and in this area is reaching into another existing agency's proper domain. Though I don't know all the details, it appears some in the Congress believe NASA may have some bureaucratic turf and/or political ambitions in this area that need taming.

While I understand why you do it, could you stop posting links as bit.ly links? I think it's a bad habit for people to become accustomed to clicking such links but unless I can hover over a source and see where it is actually leading me I will not follow them. People should never follow blind links.

Using http://checkshorturl.com/ might be helpful.

Study of earth's atmosphere has been part of NASA's role since 1960.

Here's the problem for the people who want to kill or supress these studies
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/about/

About fifteen years ago, I noticed that the Republican Party of Texas had included as a platform plank that global warming was a hoax based on junk science. That, of course, had nothing whatsoever to do with the power and influence and vast lobbying/PR initiatives of the petro-chemical industries resident in Texas. Heck, a lot of those folks down there invite Rick Hansen over for dinner when he's in town, to talk about good science and how humans and dinosaurs lived together after god created the world in 4004 BC.

One of my all-time favorite lists is this one:
http://bit.ly/2gBmpUL
It's a fun read for a ton of reasons. I'll list them off but one should go read at the link because of the reasons given for choices.
1. Communist Manifesto
2. Mein Kampf
3. Quotations from Chairman Mao
4. The Kinsey Report
5. Democracy and Education (John Dewey)
6. Das Kapital (deemed less dangerous than Kinsey or Dewey, we'll note)
7. The Feminist Mystique (Friedan)
8. The Course of Positive Philosophy (Compte)
9. Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche)
10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (Keynes)

Below that list of 10, Honorable Mentions are awarded. They're all fun but I've bolded one particular nominee:

The Population Bomb
by Paul Ehrlich
Score: 22

What Is To Be Done
by V.I. Lenin
Score: 20

Authoritarian Personality
by Theodor Adorno
Score: 19

On Liberty
by John Stuart Mill
Score: 18

Beyond Freedom and Dignity
by B.F. Skinner
Score: 18

Reflections on Violence
by Georges Sorel
Score: 18

The Promise of American Life
by Herbert Croly
Score: 17

The Origin of Species
by Charles Darwin
Score: 17

Madness and Civilization
by Michel Foucault
Score: 12

Soviet Communism: A New Civilization
by Sidney and Beatrice Webb
Score: 12

Coming of Age in Samoa
by Margaret Mead
Score: 11

Unsafe at Any Speed
by Ralph Nader
Score: 11

Second Sex
by Simone de Beauvoir
Score: 10

Prison Notebooks
by Antonio Gramsci
Score: 10

Silent Spring
by Rachel Carson
Score: 9

Wretched of the Earth
by Frantz Fanon
Score: 9

Introduction to Psychoanalysis
by Sigmund Freud
Score: 9

The Greening of America
by Charles Reich
Score: 9

The Limits to Growth
by Club of Rome
Score: 4

Descent of Man
by Charles Darwin
Score: 2

But I'm sure you are right, george, when you insist that modern conservatism is not packed with raving ******* lunatics.

You are overwrought. I read the list and find most of it it to be apretty good collection of now widely discredited works, many which have arguably induced some harm. I would remove Darwin from the list. In the case of Rachel Carson I have read materials that fault her seriously for exaggerations and numerous overstatments, but I don't have a stong opinion on the matter.

Generally I'm as indifferent to such lists as I am to sweeping, unqualified criticisms offered by somewhat irrational self-appointed commentators involving assertions they cannot possibly substantiate, such as yours above. Attempts to suppress ideas and their authors, however foolish they may be, are generally unproductive. whether by the authors of such lists or by those who so vociferously work to suppress them, such as yourself.

Quote georgeob1, to blatham:

Here's a meeting of georgeob1's type of folks. Wonder if george was there:


The best lines start at 2:45, when the speaker is telling everyone to get their kids out of college if they are there.

You are bashing something that exists only in your imagination. Evidently you don't read very carefully.

exactly