During my years of political involvement, I have grown expert in ways that the media lie and manipulate.
It disgusts me to see.
I am not talking about what people usually mean when they make statements like that — paying close attention to the media for some years or fan-boying some YouTube goo-roo, thereby learning to mimic his observations.
No. My experience with the evil perpetrated by the media is very different. I studied under true experts in the field in structured classes for many hours a week for years, surrounded by fellow elite students, while constantly doing work that forced me to use those skills day-in-and-day-out in epic jousting matches.
When I turn on the TV — especially the news — it takes seconds for me to start to see the manipulation taking place. It is not a single isolated instance, but layer upon layer of obviously carefully constructed manipulation. The trained eye knows it is no coincidence. Though I did not understand him or his potential as a candidate until some time after his June 2015 announcement, I felt great appreciation the day I heard Donald Trump first utter the words fake news.
His ability to speak viral phrases that impact the population and carry ideas through society is unparalleled in any candidate I have ever known, observed, or read of. The study of the spread of viral ideas is called memetics. That idea that has the potential to go viral is called a “meme.”
This is the term often used to describe funny images found on the internet. Those funny images are a minor subset of memetics, but to stop the thought process on memes with that definition is to shortchange yourself about a truly important and significant field that likely impacts you every day of your life.
The courses I have studied are generally not available to the public. The combination of material I have studied in this subject and the experts I have studied with — sometimes through impromptu classes, sometimes in intermittent intervals, during my nights, on my weekends, and sometimes over long days for stretches at a time — is a unique course of study, with world class experts, unlikely to have ever been duplicated by anyone. Similar concepts, are clearly studied by many in the media, just not to the level of depth I have studied them.
When I watch the news I see two things that can, at times, really tear at my heartstrings.
1.) How prevalent this manipulation is among virtually everyone in the media and how well trained they are in manipulation.
2.) How effective that manipulation is in capturing the mind of almost everyone subject to it and often without any realization of self-awareness that it is happening.
Allow me to offer examples:
Friday morning, as I spoke to one traveler, I learned about the super-cyclone or cyclono-rama or whatever idiotic sounding term so many Americans were convinced to memorize this past week in fear and terror.
(Notice I said “the super-cyclone” or “cyclono-rama” and that in response to that you almost certainly bristled and obediently used the correct term that you were trained by the news to use this week.)
Did you convince yourself to memorize terms that the media tried pounding into your head this week?
“Cui bono?” I am led to ask. “In whose interest?”
It is not likely to be in yours.
Or how about this one — A single out of date imagine flashed on TV got a loved one to cancel Christmas plans. Two days after a very minor snowfall of 3 or 4 inches, the news showed an obviously out of date photo depicting a major interstate highway with only one lane open due to snowfall.
Did the news train you to be afraid of the weather over the Christmas holiday?
Last Christmas they got you or your family members to avoid family because of biological nonsense. This Christmas did they get you or your family members to avoid family because of meteorological nonsense?
Lake Michigan didn’t even freeze. That’s how much of a non-event this weather was. It got down to zero in Chicago. Big whoop! A few inches of snow fell.
Yeah. It was cold. Yeah it snowed. Yeah it was windy.
That’s called winter weather.
Just like last winter and the winter before, we experienced something called cold and flu season, except they convinced you to call that by a different name, and to then act like an expert, and to then alter your behavior, and to then belittle those who wouldn’t go along with your perceived expertise.
As a man who has shoveled several driveways this week, in places where travel was brought to a halt, this week’s winter weather was honestly nothing to write home about and certainly nothing to move the trillion dollar media machine into service over.
Unless . . .
It was not about the weather at all.
So why else would the media speak about this weather? I couldn’t tell you. But I know this much. Cui bono? Not yours. Not mine. Not my neighbor’s. Not my family’s
Fake news is gonna be fake.
Nothing else should be expected of them.
As the new year approaches, I would like to ask you to consider a resolution: cut the cord. Throw the TV out the window. Get rid of your streaming service subscriptions.
I hope you will take back your time and give it to more meaningful and more edifying activities.
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It edifies me to immerse myself in the classics. Join me in reading the most timeless of those classics — the Bible — cover to cover in 2023 at 55hours.org/lrc. That takes less than 15 minutes a day.
