Friday, April 3, 2020

Pandemic Propaganda: The Lie Machine Does Not Stop

Once you start the lie machine, you can't just flip the off switch. If you watch Fox News you are viewing a real-time, 24-7, lie machine. There is less news in Fox News than any other channel, less fact less objective reporting than any media outlet. In the food terms, it is grape drink: less than 1% real but packaged under the guise of being news-like. It is without question that Fox News is going to get people killed during this global pandemic.

The catastrophe of the coronavirus is the perfect storm of misinformation, lies, and propaganda combined with bad pandemic preparation. Since the early 1990s, scientists have been warning that we were entering the age of viruses that were going to come in waves. Usually governments follow the same pattern of reaction: they set up these pandemic response teams, no visible pandemic occurs that year, and then disperse the funds and scientists to other fields. Trump followed the same short-sighted thinking of many leaders. The greater threat is that we are living in an age of disinformation promoted by leaders.

It's not just the Republican party and Fox News. There are alt-right strongmen in Brazil, China, and many nations who depend upon a steady stream of Orwellian propaganda to brainwash the public. The danger is that when a crisis arises like a virus threatening to kill millions, it's almost impossible to get an honest assessment of what is going on. In China, the initial whistleblowers of the corona virus were punished and forced to apologize. The gov policy is to project strength and positive energy. The approaching Chinese New Year is a boon to businesses and nobody wanted to hear about a deadly virus. This trickles down to the province officials who are told that their careers might be harmed if they don't project positive energy. This same policy reaches the local officials, hospitals, and officers: project positivity. Any negative energy is Western decadence and trying to undermine the government. The Chinese gov is notorious for lying about numbers but by the time the coronavirus exploded they could not get an accurate read, even if they wanted to get truthful. The lie was soaked into the system. No one wanted to be the first to tell the truth, so numbers are suppressed, claims are underestimated, experts trim the rules to reduce the deadliness of the virus. And then the Chinese president assures the rest of the world that this will 'die down in the spring because it's like the flu.' The American president picks up on this lie because it's what they want to hear. He repeats this lie over and over again, through January and February. All the way into March, his policy men and media sycophants repeat the lie that this is another attempt to weaken the president.

A virus which could have been stopped in January flows into the America unchecked. The death count could have been in the dozens with immediate action, or in the thousands with quick steps taken within the first month. Now we are looking at 200,000 deaths due to neglience and lies. A week ago, when the Trump administration truly saw that their actions have led to the next Great Depression, they tried to switch gears and warn Americans about the seriousness. But the lie has soaked down through hundreds of levels of government and media.

Once the misinformation, his followers take to it because they have been well-trained in the methods of brainwashing. Anything negative is an offense against Trump and he -and only he-  is what is most important to preserve in the nation. So the death count is fake news, the hospitals are exaggerating, the left-wing media is doing a red flag operation, the deep state is plotting to hurt...Trump. Even as the body bags pile up in hospitals and the death toll surges to a 1,000+ every day, there are still conservative pundits who demand evidence. But no evidence will satisfy them because -if it doesn't fit within their worldview- they dismiss it as fake news. So the virus spreads more rapidly in conservative states because the brainwashed refuse to believe anything that conflicts with their hardened view. 

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