Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky used the phrase “manufacturing consent” to describe how the media acts to garner the consent of the governed for policies and actions to which an objectively informed constituency might not consent. This builds on the premise by the great and precocious Étienne de La Boétie that government always requires the consent of the governed. The media, Herman & Chomsky’s theory holds, manufactures this consent.
Recently, however, I have noticed that the phenomenon goes beyond manufacturing consent and now qualifies as manufacturing advocacy. I have noticed that when I try to tell people one-on-one about the truth behind the propaganda, (most recently, for example, with regard to the Ukraine), the majority of people don’t evaluate the new evidence they had been previously shielded from, they actually argue against it! The responses differ between left and right, but the result is the same: irrationally advocating the unprincipled behavior of our agents in government against our own interests as tax-paying citizens who value liberty and justice for all.
