Blaming the Victims (Guilty as charged.)

This is a theme to which I have returned often:

In reply to a post on MyLeftWing, a commentor repeated a common complaint, one which I too have occasionally descended:

So, Dear Grand-da-da, we became by default a nation of ignorant and largely intellectually lazy fucks which were--surprise! surprise!, easy fuckin' picken's for the better organized and determined fools of the Neo-Con right-wing who were patiently preparing to steal our lunches and eat them.

While this is an entirely comprehensible sentiment (I have myself fallen into it), it is, I believe, wrong. It wasn't/isn't laziness, or even rank stupidity, which turned the trick. It wasn't by default. It was by design.

The metastasizing turgidity of the public mind was the inevitable, predictable result of a phenomenally expensive, incredibly extensive, permanently pervasive, enormously effective, incredibly durable, almost invisible campaign of propaganda begun almost a century ago by Woodrow Wilson, first to create support for his war, then for his (Capital "L")Liberal agenda.

It began when Edouard Bernays noticed that it didn't matter what people thought as long as what they thought about could be controlled and manipulated. This is the fundamental insight of the subsequent propaganda assault, which was designed to engineer the complacent complicity of the "people" with the fascist/corpoRat agenda.

Through a regime of carefully orchestrated lies (e.g., ALL advertizing/public relations and civic propagandas), the CorpoRats developed an almost infallible program designed to undermine, disable, and/or undo any and all democratic institutions and/or instruments which might avail the People in resisting the attack on their sovereignty by the elites, plutocrats, oligarchs, and their (highly paid) minions.

And, through the incentives provided by CorpoRat consumerism (the "American Dream"), to not only make 'em like it, but to make them (us, all) enthusiastic participants in their/our own enslavement.

It worked, naturally, because the assault was so totally unprecedented in size, scope, and resources. And it is working still.

Of course, there is no record for this project; or at least there is no KNOWN record. But one need only observe the objective circumstances and the myriad, obvious consequences and it is evident that this is not an accident. And there is tremendous resistance to admitting the truth of it, too, because no one wants to admit they have been so totally "pwn3d". We all want to think we're immune to such things, even if they were practiced here. Which everybody know isn't the case. It's only our 'enemies' who are so foolish as to be led around by their noses by official propaganda.