Sinister design - part two


You can read part one at this link. 

I'd like to explain more clearly how I think the manipulation of the masses works through polarization on "distant" issues, the ones citizens have no way of verifying directly.

You have to step back from the polarized issues themselves and shift the lens to those with an interest in selecting, fueling and steering them: politics and the media. What matters isn't getting one side or the other to win, but splitting public opinion into opposing factions. Factions that waste time and energy backing one bloc or the other, without, as I said, being able to verify anything.

Whoever picks a side has already been sucked into the whirlpool. They believe the level they've placed themselves on is the one tied to reality, where they would have free choice, and they blindly trust the sources of information they feed on. Of course, this holds for every faction. Everyone is convinced they're right. In reality they're all wrong, not so much about the merits of the issues, but for having swallowed the bait and taken a position at all.

Meanwhile, with the "divide et impera" mode switched on this way, the field is left wide open on the "near" problems, the ones citizens could actually verify and keep in check, but which nobody has the time or the inclination to poke their nose into, given the full-time effort they pour, fruitlessly, into the "distant" crises.

In short, traps are being set for us. Avoiding them would be very easy; all it would take is resisting the temptation to take sides on matters that can't be verified anyway. But we can't resist the temptation. We put our foot in the trap, we waste our energy thrashing about and pummeling one another like Manzoni's capons, pecking at each other on the way. Meanwhile, somebody cleans out our house undisturbed.

No hidden plan is needed: the mechanism just has to work. And it works! Those who feed it profit. But the suckers are always us.

You can find the other installments of the "Sinister design" saga at this link.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

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