Announcement Next week I am on vacation as I prepare for the Cultural Event of the year. There will be no new posts: there may be classic reposts.
You have heard that we live in an “our democracy”, a form of government in which rulers insist people vote on as many things as possible, at the highest level possible. If people must vote, they must be given ideas about the things on which they are to vote. Which therefore necessitates the populace must suffer constant propaganda to ensure that the votes come out the right way.
NYT Health tweet: “So you want to go outside — despite the heat, heavy rainfall and poor air quality affecting millions this summer. Here’s how to determine whether it’s safe to leave the house.”
Clicking brings us to the headline “Is It Safe to Go Outside? How to Navigate This Cruel Summer.”
An Expertocracy guarantees a steady stream of advice propaganda. Married to the effeminate Cult of Safety First! we get the NYT Health section.
The authoress of the article is nervous lest someone venture outdoors and die instantly from, well, what? She mentions wildfires. Do many people stumble blindly into wildfires? Did people forget, and need to be reminded, that walking into a wall of smoke or strolling into a copse of flaming trees is unhealthy?
She goes on to warn that if it’s hot, you, too, may become hot from the heat! She discovers there is an Expert in weather-that-might-be-harmful. “The best way to navigate a flood situation is to prepare early, Mr. Lamers said, and being aware of your risk levels will help you prepare better.” Who knew?
Anyway, why does she assume it’s safe inside? Because it’s cooled by electricity produced by burning oil, gas, or coal? Never mind.
This is low-grade propaganda, yes, but it’s also constant, of the same idiot kind in which the radio has been warning us forever to put on a sweater when there’s a chill in the air. Here it’s exacerbated by throwing in “climate change”, to impress the false idea that bad weather was never as prevalent as now.
There are, though, much better examples of propaganda.
We’d be forgiven for believing there is a secret contest among propagandists to produce the most hideous provocative frightening map of routine summer temperatures. Here are a couple of entries, from a large and growing field.
Cerberus—not my name: the name propagandists gave it: they are now naming heatwaves!:
After sputtering in rage after seeing that, I predicted “Since these propaganda maps began appearing a few years ago, all shades of red have been used. Next step: drawing flames on the maps.”
It was not long after this that this map appeared.
Flaming British Bundle of Sticks (source):
Yet worse were still to come.
The Gates Of Hell Opened (source):
Spanish Hades (source; note the clever legend of temperatures exceeding 60 C, or 140 F in civilized units, which are nowhere on the map):
A gentleman who lives in the part of France pictured above sent this photo of the day as it was in Reality (source):
My next prediction was: “Now that red is exhausted, and flames have been used, the next step in weather maps is animation using writhing-bodies in agony, drawn from Hieronymus Bosch. On TV they’ll add screams of the damned. For anything over 85.”
Then we have this tweet:
My predictive powers are spent. Perhaps you can foresee what will come next. Maybe they’ll dispatch screaming female members from the Cult of Safety First! to come to homes and screech that it might hit 80. EIGHTY!
This prophecy is also fulfilled in your hearing: “BBC viewers have been left baffled by ‘misleading’ weather maps that appeared to show Britain among European countries experiencing scorching temperatures – despite below average temperatures across the UK.”
Propagandists are not chosen for their intelligence. That is to say, propaganda spokesmen and spokeswomen are not that bright. They will read whatever is given to them in complete sincerity and conviction. They can be most convincing. Three years of coroandoom panic should have convinced you of that. Propaganda works, and works well, which is why it is used, and guarantees it will continue to be used.
The big question is how much of this is directed, and how much the natural simpleton behavior of chasing the other guy. One nitwit tries to panic the audience, the other propagandists gaze in wonder at the effort, and rush out to best it? Or do the oligarchs behind the media company agree on the message “Scare them”? Some combination, likely.
The real difficulty with propaganda is backing away from it. Using a normal weather maps would be like admitting there is no reason to panic over “climate change.”
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We need fecal-focused maps to depict the Vesuvius-effects of "pile it higher" propaganda. Brown-to-black will do nicely for coloring people who lives were buried in the lava of propaganda. The monochromatic base layer of POC will underlay the blue of political disfiguration beneath the Death Valley-red of fake journalism's dessicating effects. Depicting writhing bodies is optional for displaying the Inferno of our carbonized damned (inequitably distributed, of course.) Hence, e.g., the map of the victims in the capital of our democracy, the "No taxation without representation" DC, will be black/brown, with a deep blue overlay and a hot red overlay on top of that. (Truly, truly People of Color! How explicable! Oh, say can you see!)
BTW: if we Americans in the fifty once-free states were truly, truly to have what enslaved DC residents protest, which is "No taxation without representation," then unenslaved Americans would have no taxation. With that felicitous achievement, Congress would have nothing to do, and Members of Congress would take even more extended breaks from doing even less and devote even more time to getting re-elected, so they can continue to do nothing with more time off for their families and for fund-raising to get re-elected, which is good because a "do nothing Congress" is a safe Congress.
I am absolutely blown away by the first map. I know that it didn't have all of the flames and that kind of thing, but the heatwave it showed was IN THE SAHARA DESERT. I want to apologize profusely for the use of all caps. That being said, you are warning me that because of climate change going into the Sahara in summer might have to get crossed off my list? Because of Climate Change, the Land of the Pharoahs is sorta hot and dry. Because of Climate Change, if I make a pilgrimage to see where St. Simeon and the other Stylites tortured their bodies to profit their souls I might be a scosche uncomfortable. Breaking news, Climate change is causing the sphinx to have dry skin.