1. Start while they’re young.
2. Create the illusion of political freedom.
3. Use simplistic stereotypes to sway public opinion.
4. Mix facts with lies.
5. A big lie is more convincing than a small lie.
6. Give the masses “bread and circuses” to keep them well-fed and distracted.
7. Simplify complex issues by portraying them as dichotomies. Eliminate nuance.
8. Spread propaganda by all means possible.
9. Ostracize dissident voices through ridicule or defamation.
10. Faith in the correctness of a religion or ideology is more powerful than force.
11. Manipulate history records to support your religion or ideology.
12. Control different sides of the same debate and you control the outcome.
13. The masses are less swayed by reason than by stirring their emotions.
14. Drive the opposition in a corner. When they fight back, act like a victim.
15. Label all non-conformistic behavior as pathological and promote “cures” for them.
16. Use rituals and mass events to keep people occupied and strengthen their faith.
(For more of this kind of thing, see Aspie Savant)
Blogarification: This is a typical internettish-Facebooky-Twitterish thingammy that goes all over the place and has everyone all exercised. It has some truth in it, but suffers from the same kind of heavy-handed, what? Fist-pounding, or whatever-it-is, that it decries. But it still makes some interesting, nay, important points.
The small drowned child has been a universally-embraced image which is supposed to spur humanity on to ever-greater heights of awareness and compassion in the refugee crisis, but it won't. When it comes to refugees and the chaos they could create in the developed world, we ain't seen nothing yet. Climate change is going to create unfathomable numbers of displaced peoples, perhaps in the millions, not just because their home countries are uninhabitable but because the food is going to run out. When the food runs out, humanity is not at its best and has been known to rip out the throats of its competitors. That's really the only reason homo sapiens exists.
The small drowned child has been a universally-embraced image which is supposed to spur humanity on to ever-greater heights of awareness and compassion in the refugee crisis, but it won't. When it comes to refugees and the chaos they could create in the developed world, we ain't seen nothing yet. Climate change is going to create unfathomable numbers of displaced peoples, perhaps in the millions, not just because their home countries are uninhabitable but because the food is going to run out. When the food runs out, humanity is not at its best and has been known to rip out the throats of its competitors. That's really the only reason homo sapiens exists.
THEN we'll see how much good a sensationalistic and tasteless photo of a drowned kid will do.
