"Nothing is real," observed John Lennon, and that's especially true of politics."It is the function of mass agitation to exploit all the grievances, hopes, aspirations, prejudices, fears, and ideals of all the special groups that make up our society, social, religious, economic, racial, political. Stir them up. Set one against the other. Divide and conquer. That's the way to soften up a democracy."โ J. Edgar Hoover, Masters of Deceit
Much like the fabricated universe in Peter Weir's 1998 film The Truman Show, in which a man's life is the basis for an elaborately staged television show aimed at selling products and procuring ratings, the political scene in the United States has devolved over the years into a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population.
Take the media circus that is the Donald Trump hush money trial, which panders to the public's voracious appetite for titillating, soap opera drama, keeping the citizenry distracted, diverted and divided.
This is the magic of the reality TV programming that passes for politics today.
Everything becomes entertainment fodder.
As long as we are distracted, entertained, occasionally outraged, always polarized but largely uninvolved and content to remain in the viewer's seat, we'll never manage to present a unified front against tyranny (or government corruption and ineptitude) in any form.
Studies suggest that the more reality TV people watch โ and I would posit that it's all reality TV, entertainment news included โ the more difficult it becomes to distinguish between what is real and what is carefully crafted farce.
"We the people" are watching a lot of TV.
Comment: By this point the few institutions and figureheads denying the genocide, are the ones facilitating it, or directly responsible for it: UN special rapporteur: Israel is deliberately starving Palestinians and it should be held accountable for genocide
Notably, Goldberg is also known for saying that the 'the Working Definition of Antisemitism "has become a tool to silence any criticism of Israeli politics, it has become a tool to silence free speech".
A statement which, a number of years ago, was also highlighted by former Israel MP Shulamit Aloni, who pointed out that accusations of antisemitism are "a trick we use" to suppress criticism of Israel coming from within the United States, while for criticism coming from Europe "we bring up the Holocaust."
See also: Israel's red heifers and the looming sacrifice at Al-Aqsa mosque to bring about the 'messiah and end times' - CBS
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