TRMS lays out the reality. Let's start from there.

It's been a rugged couple of decades here in the USA. The transition to a mass media fueled society with an Internet turbo booster has nearly ripped the country apart.

NEW YORK, NY - JULY 14: News Corporation headquarters is seen in Manhattan on July 14, 2011 in New York City. The widening News of the World phone hacking scandal has led to an FBI investigation in the United States. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

In my day job I am part of that Internet Turbo charging phenomenon, pushing change forward, teaching businesses how to use the Internet to reach their objectives. Since most of what I do is set up defenses for organizations to help them fend off criminals and malcontents I don't generally feel too badly about my role in the acceleration, although there are the rare days when my (old style) hacker background reaches out and grabs me by the throat, telling me "Information wants to be free!".

Much like my former work in the US Defense establishment my internet security activities sometimes create a conflict, but in general I have been good with what I've been asked to do. Little did I realize what a poisonous combination the fragmentation of specialty news channels, email, web sites, and blogging could do to wrench a country into pieces.

Over the last couple of decades I've watched, and sometimes inadvertently participated, in ripping our United States into bleeding hunks of a once viable country. I worried about politicians recrossing the Church and State boundary during the late 1970s, not realizing that religious partisanship would begin to raise its blood soaked head again. In the 1980s and 1990s we re-established the witch hunts, but not in the old way. No, now we used mass media as the tool of choice to burn people at the stake.

By the late 1990s it had spread to the once pristine Internet. Now we had mass communication on steroids. Anyone who wanted could put any nonsense up on a web site and claim it was truth, no matter how outrageous. It was like watching the 'Net being taken over by 'snake oil' salesmen. And then in the late 2000s politicians finally overcame their fear of the 'Net and began to employ it to push their agendas.

In our two party system it is terribly important that we have diversity. As most folk who study systems know, diversity is key to any system's survival. Monolithic systems invariably fail at some point from lack of diversity. In the case of a representative federal republic like the United States of America this is particularly true.

In our Republic we permit multiple parties, but we seem to have stabilized around a two party system. We don't form coalitions, we're too combative for that. Instead, it's pretty clearly an "us/them" proposition. When one half of our two party system, a major part of our political system, effectively implodes, turning inward, and begins a pogrom against their own members to root out diversity, it weakens us as a nation. Ideology tests and loyalty oaths have pushed part of the country into an Orwellian nightmare, one that they cannot discriminate from the real world.

We have seen the effects of pogroms on the world stage, in Asia in the 1920s, in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. After a relatively short time those societies were rotting from within because they enforced singular ideologies and suppressed the naturally occurring diversity. Those efforts to "cleanse" their nations of improper ideology resulted in conflicts that the rest of the world has been afflicted with for over 60 years.

We really do NEED the Republican party to return from their bubble of unreality. There are existential threats to our nation out here where the rest of the world lives that must be addressed. Selfishly hiding in their own delusional world is not helping anyone, not even themselves.

The November 7th Rachel Maddow Show aired a segment reviewing the previous nights election results. Part of that episode was a call to the GOP and the Conservative movement to break out of their bubble of self-generated reality and come join the rest of us. Being a fan of Ms. Maddow's clarity of thought and incisive wit I chose a two minute segment of her show that night to summarize our country's situation. Have a look at it here:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Since that broadcast we have seen the same forces, like the Roger Ailes controlled parts of NewsCorp continue efforts to lure members of the GOP and the Conservative political movement back into that alternate reality. They are pushing really hard to keep the "Conservatives" inside their fictional universe. Every tactic is being employed by the "brains" like Karl Rove, and the "leaders" like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, seeking to prove that they were right, and the Liberals are all at fault. They are blaming everything they can think of, even the weather.

We need "real" Republicans to stand up and take back their party. We need them to yank it back out of the grasp of special interests, multinational corporations, extremists, and fools. I can only hope that the Republicans I have met, and those that I work alongside will step up and tell these pretenders like Limbaugh and Hannity to take a hike. The real people need to stand up, take a stand and declare that "the People are back in charge". 

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“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it”

It is indeed fascinating, the things that exist in history. These things are so clear, so lucid, that it's hard to believe that even the most mentally challenged haven't retained some shred of the information.

Hitler is often credited with this statement:

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it”

While the statement above captures the essence of the practice, here's what was really said:

"In the primitive simplicity of their minds, they will more easily fall victim to a large lie than a small lie, since they sometimes tell petty lies themselves, but would be ashamed to tell a lie that was too big. They would never consider telling a lie of such magnitude themselves, or knowing that it would require such impudence, they would not consider it possible for it to be told by others. Even after being enlightened and shown that the lie is a lie, they will continue to doubt and waver for a long time and will still believe there must be some truth behind it somewhere, and there must be some other explanation. For this reason, some part of the most bold and brazen lie is sure to stick. This is a fact that all the great liars and liars’ societies (meaning the Jewish press) in this world know only too well and use regularly." Page 205 Mein Kampf, Ford Translation.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”  ~ Joseph Goebbels

“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”  ~ Joseph Goebbels

This approach is being applied in many areas, facilitated by something Goebbels would have killed a million Romani to have, today's mass media.

Next time you park yourself in front of your favorite cable news channel, try reflecting on what you're hearing. Does it make sense? Does it simply cater to your biases?

Could the "echo chamber" be repeating the same "messaging" for your reprogramming needs? Does the same message come out of the babble box over and over and over? Different words, but the same message?

Think it over.

Crosspost: Top Gear's electric car shows pour petrol over the BBC's standards | updated 15 Aug 2011

Being the pain I usually am, I've provided some "emphasis" for some of the text. George has stopped short of making some comments that he's almost GOT to be thinking, so I'm going to provide a few of my own in the stream of the article. You'll know it when you see it. lwo   :)

Why is Top Gear apparently exempt from the BBC's editorial guidelines and the duty not to fake the facts?

• Tesla sues Top Gear over 'faked' electric car race
• The Nissan Leaf electric car – review

Jeremy "Lying sack of bantha poodoo" Clarkson sabotages 
a test drive of the Leaf electric car  Photograph: BBC

What distinguishes the BBC from the rest of this country's media? There's the lack of advertising, and the lack of a proprietor with specific business interests to defend.

(lwo Note: I now watch Top Gear on BBC America, which does indeed produce revenue for BBC Worldwide; perhaps I should now assume that BBC has no standards for the BBC America services?)

But perhaps the most important factor is its editorial guidelines, which are supposed to ensure that the corporation achieves "the highest standards of due accuracy and impartiality and strive[s] to avoid knowingly and materially misleading our audiences."

Here's a few of the things they say:

"Trust is the foundation of the BBC: we are independent, impartial and honest."

"We will be rigorous in establishing the truth of the story and well informed when explaining it. Our specialist expertise will bring authority and analysis to the complex world in which we live."

"We will be open in acknowledging mistakes when they are made and encourage a culture of willingness to learn from them."

Top Gear Paradise?
Image via Wikipedia

Woe betide the producer or presenter who breaches these guidelines. Unless, that is, they work for Top Gear. If so, they are permitted to drive a coach and horses – or a Hummer H3 - through them whenever they please.

Take, for example, Top Gear's line on electric cars. Casting aside any pretence of impartiality or rigour, it has set out to show that electric cars are useless. If the facts don't fit, it bends them until they do.

Tesla Roadster
Image via Wikipedia

It's currently being sued by electric car maker Tesla after claiming, among other allegations, that the Roadster's true range is only 55 miles per charge (rather than 211), and that it unexpectedly ran out of charge. Tesla says "the breakdowns were staged and the statements are untrue". But the BBC keeps syndicating the episode to other networks. So much for "acknowledging mistakes when they are made".

Now it's been caught red-handed faking another trial, in this case of the Nissan LEAF.

Nissan Leaf
Image via Wikipedia

Last Sunday, an episode of Top Gear showed Jeremy "We're only entertainment so our recommendations are as full of exrement as I am" Clarkson and James "time for me to drink my way across the UK"  May setting off for Cleethorpes in Lincolnshire, 60 miles away. The car "unexpectedly" ran out of charge when they got to Lincoln, and had to be pushed. They concluded that "electric cars are not the future".

(lwo Note: But it's clear from Clarkson's Lists that he will whore out his reputation just to get a self serving edge with whomever he fancies at the moment. Here's a recent and from what I can tell, fairly accurate review of Clarkson's abilities found out on the "Ultimate Car" forum:

People enjoy Clarkson's hard opinions and dry sense of humour. However, they seem to forget that he knows nothing about how cars handle, nor has after 20 years of driving supercars has any skills behind the wheel. A good example is when he put the current ZR1 against an Audi R8 and constantly said that the ZR1 was impossible to drive faster than the R8. Then in the hands of the stig it blitzed the R8.
I also remember him slagging off the Carrera GT calling it bland and uninteresting, reviewing it against the Enzo Ferrari.

and

AND Clarkson's comments are about getting readers/viewers attention and to sell his column, mag, book, video, tv show.

and

This guy has driven every major badass ultimately exotic supercar on this planet and he puts a Mazda CX7 on his top 25? Nothing against the CX7, is a nice SUV or crossover, or whatever, I drove it myself when I was checking them out a few months ago while considering one for my wife, but come on... Jeremy Clarkson's top 25?

In short, Jeremy Clarkson seems to emerge as the combined Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh of the automotive

House "Gang of 70-Plus" to Senate "Gang of Six": We Outnumber Your Plan to Slash Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 19, 2011

Press Contact: Adam Sarvana (202) 225-2435

                                                 (202) 573-2562 cell

House "Gang of 70-Plus" to Senate "Gang of Six": We Outnumber Your Plan to Slash Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security

Washington, D.C. – Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) co-chair Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva today released the following statement on the Senate “Gang of Six” budget proposal:

“This terrible plan could cut Medicare and Medicaid to unsustainably low levels and put seniors’ well-being at risk. Anyone who wants to pass it through Congress should remember that more than 70 House Democrats have already pledged their opposition, and more are signing on every day. The letter we sent to Leader Pelosi July 8 vowing to oppose any cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid as part of these budget negotiations has become a growing wave of House resolve to protect these programs. We’re keeping it open for more signatures, and our Gang of 70-plus has the ‘Gang of Six’ completely outnumbered. Newly minted Rep. Janice Hahn signed on as one of her first official acts as a Congresswoman – that’s how quickly it’s picking up momentum.

Republicans have already said they won’t vote for any package, period, because of their opposition to a functional economy. House Democrats hold the key to whatever plan can pass Congress. That’s why the Senate ‘Gang of Six’ proposal is dead on arrival. Instead of toying with ways to slash vital programs in just such a way as to make different budget numbers align on paper, Congress and the White House should follow the path of our People’s Budget: creating jobs, protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, ending corporate subsidies and millionaire tax giveaways, and ensuring our economy works for everyone rather than a greedy few.”

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Commentary: The dumbing down of America | McClatchy

Maybe we, the people, have lost the intellectual capacity to manage a workable democracy. How else do you explain why nearly one in five Americans believes that President Barack Obama is a Muslim?
A recent poll by the nonpartisan Pew Forum found that 18 percent of all those polled -- and 31 percent of Republicans -- believe the president is a Muslim. That is up from 11 percent of all Americans last year.
Obama's faith is not a matter of public opinion. He's a baptized Christian who routinely prays with fellow Christians and invokes his "risen savior" when speaking of his faith.
He does not practice the Islamic faith. He has never been seen performing the ritual prayer, which Muslims do five times a day. He is not observing Ramadan, which requires Muslims to fast each day from Aug. 11 to Sept. 10. Nor has he made the required pilgrimage to Mecca.
It is ironic that many of the same critics who excoriated Obama for his close ties with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright now are accusing him of being a Muslim.
I suspect that a lot of people enjoy calling Obama a Muslim because they think it marks him as an outsider, an imposter, someone who assumed the presidency illegitimately. Many of those who call Obama a Muslim undoubtedly are "birthers," too, the ones who believe Obama was not born in the United States.
Or perhaps they aren't aware that Hawaii is a state.
That wouldn't surprise me. As noted, it seems that a significant number of Americans are losing the capacity to accept facts, sift through valid evidence and come to reasonable conclusions about things.
Of course, we always have had wacky conspiracy theories and always will. Some people still believe that the Apollo moon landing was a hoax, that someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK and that the government is covering up evidence of UFOs.
A 2007 New York Times-CBS poll indicated that 22 percent of Americans thought President George W. Bush knew of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in advance. A Newsweek poll that same year found that 41 percent of Americans still believed that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in planning and carrying out the Sept. 11 attacks.
Those are disturbing statistics, but the flood of misinformation has only risen, topping the levees of rationality at every turn. To a large extent, we can blame the Internet and the ease with which all the false rumors, misstatements, nutty conspiracies and outright lies are disseminated.
I am bombarded with this stuff all the time, accompanied with urgent pleas to write my congressmen, alert my friends and neighbors, send money and lock and load. Here is one example: Obama has ordered the Justice Department to immediately bar all public broadcasting of Christian religious services because they violate the separation of church and state.
Did any of the people spreading that rumor stop and think before pressing the "send" button that the president might not have the authority to do that? Religious services have been broadcast on radio and TV for decades with no constitutional challenge. In fact, wouldn't any attempt by the federal government to interfere with religious broadcasts be a violation of the separation of church and state?
Some of these rumors have a shred of truth that has been distorted to ridiculous extremes. Others are merely fantasy, the equivalent of the urban myth about alligators in the sewers of New York City.
While the Internet has been the source of many of these tall tales, it also can serve as the source of real information to dispute them. One invaluable source is snopes.com.
Go there and learn that President Bill Clinton never tried to fire "half the cattle guards" in Colorado, that Obama hasn't signed an executive order allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to resettle in the United States, and that the artificial sweetener Aspartame is not responsible for an epidemic of cancer, brain tumors and multiple sclerosis.
But even with Snopes and other legitimate sites, the misinformation continues to flow. And if we can't resolve the really stupid disputes -- like whether Obama is a Muslim or not -- then how are we going to resolve the important issues that require some nuanced thinking?
How can we talk sensibly about complex issues such as health care reform, Social Security, Afghanistan, taxes, anything that can't be summarized on a bumper sticker? How do we get past the anger and the empty-headed slogans?
How do we counteract the cynical willingness to exploit baseless fears for political gain? How do we get back to having a national discussion instead of a national shouting match?
Maybe we could start by acknowledging that Obama isn't a Muslim.

via mcclatchydc.com

I'm directly quoting the entire text, which violates fair use, but I'm thinking the comments here are important enough to make available without anyone having to do another click. Yes, I'm trying to push everyone who encounters this to actually read it.
I'd be interested to know, and I suspect James Werrell would appreciate it as well,, what do people think is the cause of something like this? Intellectual laziness? Bad genetics? Media hypnosis?
Maybe I'll find a way to set up a poll...

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