The Propaganda Department Needs Better Internal Logic [UPDATED]
anne applebaum, wow
At the Atlantic, the former journalist Anne Applebaum sounds the warning about Trump and Russia, which is a fresh new election-year theme that no one has ever tried before.
If you can read this and not howl with laughter, you’re a better person than I am. There are a dozen-plus self-refuting paragraphs here, and a giant pile of nakedly insane nonsense, but you don’t need to eat a whole rotten egg to find out that it’s rotten. Let’s just juxtapose two screenshots, straight from the article. First:
See, the way you know you’re in the presence of a dangerous autocrat, and in the presence of dangerous autocratic propaganda, is that you see someone depict all internal political dissent as the product of manipulation by outsiders. A person is a threat to democracy if they smear political critics as tools of foreign manipulation. Then she says this:
The self-awareness of a rock.
Autocrats always say that popular opposition leaders are puppets of foreign governments, so anyone who makes that kind of claim should be regarded with deep hostility. Also, MAGA Republicans are puppets of foreign governments.
Anne Applebaum, I agree with you. Anyone who tries to delegitimize the popular political opposition by smearing them as puppets of foreign governments is dangerous, and acting in bad faith.
UPDATE:
"I am concerned about our rapidly growing federal debt."
"Oh, did PUTIN tell you to pump nihilism and cynicism into the brains of your fellow citizens!?!?!?"
It's political delegitimization 101. Your concerns are preemptively invalidated. You can only cheer and obey, or else you're working for Russia. Anne Applebaum is literally an aspiring autocrat.
Super super subtle, for sure.
One of the downsides of democracy and liberalism is that the elite class has to pay lip service to these concepts and twist themselves into mendacious pretzels to pretend that they actually care about the country and its people, even when it's become blatantly obvious that they would smother and immiserate all of us for another hot insider trade, another vacation home, another promotion or sinecure or another phony award for best moralistic circle-jerk.
My point is that Anne Applebaum is a born aristocrat who has lived her entire life inside castles and mansions, who has multiple homes in multiple countries and who knows nothing about real life except for whatever words she may overhear coming from her servants' quarters.
Wouldn't it be better for all of us if she just trimmed her prose to its essentials and spoke honestly from the heart? At this point it would be refreshing to see the masks drop and hear what we all read between the lines: "Will you filthy peasants just shut up and do what we tell you to do?! Let them eat fentanyl!"
Make aristocrats great again!