Propaganda

We Are Going The Wrong Way

So many things are mutating into the opposite of what they should be

Are you with me on any of these?

When I see a house with a big flag out front, I question the residents’ actual patriotism.

When I hear people talk about their Christianity, I hope they’re good people anyway.

When I hear people talk about freedom, I wonder if they’re willing to sacrifice mine.

How do you define freedom? Do you want “freedom to” or “freedom from?” I want freedom to live my own life in my own way as long as I’m not harming others, but I take exception to those who think their freedom allows them to take my freedom from me.

The obvious example of this? People who think wearing a mask during a pandemic makes them less than free. Their insistence that they be allowed to run around maskless stole freedom from others to enter public spaces safely.

You aren’t free to drive drunk or keep a cow in your suburban backyard because these things infringe on others’ freedoms. How did we forget that we all need to show a little bit of consideration to the others who share our space?

The American flag used to be a symbol of freedom, but it’s morphing into a symbol of oppression, and this makes me mad as hell. The flag is supposed to be a symbol of unity to all Americans, but instead, it’s often used now to signal far-right or even fascist support.

You saw all the flags being waved around during the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection — and in one case an American flag reportedly being used to beat a cop. Good people still display flags, too. But I’m dismayed to see how often an American flag is displayed alongside a Confederate flag or a Trump flag. It’s sick and disturbing. I have a very liberal friend who believes in flag-waving as an antidote to those folks. I myself handed out miniature flags on the street on the day the former president left office. I was making a point about patriotism and reclaiming the flag as a symbol of freedom — and maybe forcing people who think liberals are unpatriotic to think again.

For most of my life, I thought of the phrase “good Christian” as being almost synonymous with “good person.” Now? It’s demoralizing to know that the majority of Christians supported Trump. Many of them approve of racist policies or discrimination against people of other faiths or of LGBTQ people. It broke my heart when someone I grew up in church with expressed great satisfaction that our country was deliberately breaking up families at the border. I could not conceive of anyone not being horrified by such a thing. I am happy to know a handful of good Christians who are just as horrified. One older woman I know, a retired pastor, decries the damage the previous president did to Christianity. I wish she weren’t such a lone voice.

I hear a lot of ultra-conservatives talking about how many police officers are dying. Many of those folks attribute this to a crime wave, but the leading cause of death for officers in 2021 was Covid. Police officers as a whole tend to be more right-wing, and many of them felt the government should not tell them what to do even though a cop’s entire job is pretty much forcing people to follow government rules. How many times has the law enforcement community said that if people would just follow the rules they’d be fine? Officers who refused to wear masks or get a vaccine put themselves and others at risk. Some of them died for it.

I’m not against conservatism. Traditional conservative values are fine and I share some of them. But what we’re seeing now isn’t traditional conservatism. It’s much darker and it’s harming everyone, including its practitioners.

It’s an old trick to disguise a thing by calling it the opposite. The Defense of Marriage Act didn’t defend anyone’s marriage; in fact it attacked some marriages. The Patriot Act was an unpatriotic act that undermined many American freedoms.

The Nazi Joseph Goebbels, a propaganda master, recommended accusing the other side of doing whatever you’re doing. Start looking around and you’ll see examples everywhere. Putin says he has to attack Ukraine to defend it from Nazis, even though the country is led by a Jew who lost family members in the Holocaust.

Truth only matters if people care about it. It’s astonishing to me just how gullible people are. Many people will latch onto an idea and never let it go, regardless of how much evidence they might later see that contradicts their original belief. They internalize a belief and it becomes part of them. I suppose this is why advertising works. (I worked as a copywriter at an advertising agency for several years.) There are many people who need only be told Brand A is better than Brand B to believe it forever. No evidence required.

There are many scary things the world is facing now — climate change, war, the pandemic — but the worst one (that makes all the others worse) is the general inability of people to think critically and be willing to change their mind. Can you think of at least a couple of big things that you’ve changed your mind about in your lifetime? Congratulations: You probably are not part of the problem. But if you are certain that you have always been right about everything, you could not be more wrong.