When we think of oppressive regimes, we immediately think of the Stalinist model portrayed in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the heavy-handed thought control associated with Hitler’s Reich or Mao’s China. But where the old propaganda was loud, crude and often lethal, the contemporary style of thought control takes the form of a gentle nudging towards orthodoxy – a gentle push that gradually closes off one’s critical faculties and leads one to comply with gently given directives. Governments around the world, including in the UK, notes the Guardian, have been embracing this approach with growing enthusiasm.
Nudging grew out of research into behavioural economics, and was popularised in Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler’s 2008 book, Nudge. It now has widespread public support and has influenced everything from health warnings for cigarettes to calorie counts for fast food. Yet nudging also has an authoritarian edge, employing techniques and technologies that the Gestapo or NKVD could only dream about to promote the ‘right behaviour’.
Tech firms, both in the US and China, already use messaging nudges to ‘control behaviours’. They use their power to purge their platforms of the wrong messages, as both Facebook and Twitter did when they censored the New York Post’s pre-election story about President Biden’s dissolute son, Hunter.
They’re garbage, and this shouldn’t be tolerated.
Go here to comment. Fight them until Hell freezes over, and then give them rounds on ice. This is kinder, gentler totalitarianism and I say to Hell with it.
The second part of that section of Lewis’ essay would be more fitting– where he outlines that the usurped power over the individual will not be exercised by people who Mean Well. It will be used by people who see no need to justify their means by the end because they LIKE the means employed.
Worthwhile comment from the source.
Of course “nudging” is what I’ve been on about for awhile now and I despair because I remember things like this blog’s reaction to Jan 6th. So I know now “resist” has a big ole asterisk to it, one which is random and you’re never told about.
And so they’ll just keep right on, steadily steamrolling the opposition.
I disagree with the last part Nate. More and more people are choosing to believe their lying eyes rather than the media and government narrative. Sticker shock, especially at the gas pump, is a heckuva reality wake up call. As for January 6, I said that it was idiotic for Trump to hold a rally asking that Pence pull a deus ex machina at the last moment during the electoral ballot count. I stand by that. Trump has a bad habit of blaming other people for his foul ups, and that was what the rally was all about, which set the stage for the debacle.
See zerohedge, THE NEW NORMAL: An opportunity to rule the world only comes along once in many generations…
What’s tiring, @Don is that for every bit people wake up about, there’s three other bits they remain ignorant of. That’s how nudging works – you run pressure on a thousand different avenues so even if people resist a dozen here or there, the tide overall is still pushing in the direction you want.
Let’s just take a look at Trump here. What was he supposed to do once the courts declare, “Nope, we’ve decided you can’t win” and won’t even allow the contest? Because that’s another form of nudging: Have 90 out of 100 cases go the way you want it, let the opposition win 10 minor cases to placate them. It’s exactly how casinos work. We’ll allow you the illusion that you were just about to win, maybe even give you a pittance now and then, but the House is always the victor.
Let me quote my favorite page from Order of the Stick:
“The con isn’t in getting you to pick the wrong shell. The con is in getting you to accept that the basic premise of the game is still being followed. The con is in getting you to pic a shell at all.”
Nudging works by getting you accept the rules of the game.
“Nope, we’ve decided you can’t win” and won’t even allow the contest?”
Maybe had lawyers who weren’t complete jokes? Maybe having had an effective judicial and legislative strategy prior to the 2020 election to combat changes in voting rules in the states? Maybe having had federal marshals impound the ballot boxes prior to midnight on election night? Maybe not depending upon Pence to assume powers which he did not have, with a certainty that Congress would have overruled him? Maybe having spent more time thinking and acting and less time scribbling stupid tweets? Maybe having set up alternative platforms to get news out after it became obvious that the media was going to do all they could to sabotage him in 2020?
Trump’s policies overall were good. He never took control of the Federal bureaucracy. He surrounded himself with fifth raters who were worse than useless. He assumed bluster and bloviation were an effective substitute for planning and carrying out plans.
He surrounded himself with fifth raters who were worse than useless.
Not sure to whom you’re referring. Rex Tillerson wasn’t a fifth-rater. He was just insubordinate. Wm. Barr wasn’t a fifth-rater either. He just had his own (lousy) agenda. Trump had some fifth-raters around him (Michael Cohen, Stephanie Wolkoff), but I do not think they were in consequential positions. The seediest character in his cabinet was Alexander Acosta, a man very much a part of the Washington nomenklatura in the Republican Party.
No president ever has faced the kind of contrived sabotage from the permanent government that Trump did. He was also bedeviled by the Republican congressional leadership, who are a collection of parasites. The man elected on a platform of immigration control had to contend with Paul Ryan (open borders extremist) and Bit* McConnell (mouthpiece of the Chamber of Commerce).
He was negligent in re the election law shenanigans. One does have to ask, though, why members of Congress and state-level officials were dropping the ball. One thing that impresses one about Republican politicians is how little they seem to accomplish in any venue.
The current senile poser and the ruling CCP-controlled junta wrecking America are composed of imbecile Obama-alumni morons.
The legacy, lying media ONLY reported the Russia hoax, etc. That doesn’t mean President Trump was not [until the Dem/CCP bioweapons attacks in 2020 facilitating the necessary economic lockouts/ruin and tens of millions of fake mail-in and Zuckerberg drop-box bogus ballots] the most beneficial to ordinary Americans POTUS since Reagan.
“He assumed bluster and bloviation were an effective substitute for planning and carrying out plans.” As if.
In January 2017, the glib Muslim told President Trump there was no economic magic wand. So, in January 2021, President took the economic magic wand to Mar a Lago.
@Don – I’m certainly not going to argue that he’s any kind of perfect general. But as you pointed out on the site many times, at least he tried fighting. Can we find any other Republican who would have put up a challenge and tried even half of your suggestions? Or would they have just lost harder?
I do take issue with 1 point:
Maybe someone knows more than me, but what possible “strategy” could Trump have used? From what I’ve heard and had an initial reading of many of these instances in the states were built around a plan of, “Sure we’re breaking the law and may even go to jail but by the time they do anything about it, we’ll have the outcome we want.” What tactic is one supposed to utilize against the democratic equivalent of a suicide bomber?
Again, that’s how nudging works. They try and get the process to be slow enough that by the time you do anything about it, it’s too late to change or your victory is irrelevant.
All this works if everyone plays by the same rules. If they don’t then there is no chance on earth you can achieve anything. The courts tried to pin Trump, the media tried to pin Trump, his personal enemies tried to pin him, his own party even tried to pin him. In the end, they unleashed a virus onto mankind as a side note, then rigged and tampered with an election. It was in plain sight. They got him by not playing by the rules. He stopped playing by the rules Jan 6. By then it was too late. And they’re still trying to pin him so he would go away…
Maybe someone knows more than me, but what possible “strategy” could Trump have used?
File Federal suits and get this issue before the Supreme Court well before the 2020 election for starters. Trump had no legal strategy going into the election although he often boasted about the legal teams he had amassed to fight vote fraud. This comes from being surrounded by fifth raters who are completely clueless.
File Federal suits and get this issue before the Supreme Court well before the 2020 election for starters.
I’m just not convinced that had he done all that, the SCOTUS wouldn’t have done to that case what it did to Texas’ case. What would have prevented them from just delay hearing it if they didn’t outright dismiss it?
Like I said above, this debate sometimes feels like you’re saying, “if Trump had just picked the middle shell instead of the right shell…” and I’m saying it doesn’t matter which shell Trump picked, he was never going to be allowed to win the game in the first place. The Times “fortification” article all but admitted it.
What kind of battle plan can we form when our best general available is incompetent and our champions are traitors? (No, I’m still not happy with Jonah Goldberg et al.)
What would have prevented them from just delay hearing it if they didn’t outright dismiss it?
We will never know since Trump was too dumb to try. There is all the difference in the world between challenging election rules before an election and after an election. I would say that it would have had quite a better chance of succeeding than the idiocy Trump pulled after the election, with the January 6 rally merely being the crowning idiocy. Trump supporters were entitled to far better leadership from Trump.
This comes from being surrounded by fifth raters who are completely clueless.
I’m still not sure who you’re referring to here.
There’s another feature of this you haven’t alluded to and that’s reports at the time that people were threatened professionally for taking on Trump as a client. There’s one more thing. At least in New York, election law is an odd line of practice and very few lawyers are palpably familiar with election law suits. The lawyers who are are commonly on the law committees of the political parties and will always be tied up. If you can find a lawyer who will take a case for a fee, chances are he’s learning on the fly. I’m not understanding where the local party hacks were over that period of time.
We will never know since Trump was too dumb to try. There is all the difference in the world between challenging election rules before an election and after an election.
I think we can know by checking all the challenges which were filed before the election…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-election_lawsuits_related_to_the_2020_United_States_presidential_election
I count three instances of “Donald J Trump for President” in that list. The results?
And I’m not even counting the ones involving the Republican party or instances of Trump joining in some of those lawsuits – but the results were always the same.
This is all something Robert Barnes mentioned multiple times. First the courts rules you can’t sue before the election, then they rule you can’t sue after it.
At the very least, it seems your statement “Trump was too dumb to try” needs to be redacted or at last modified.
Trump supporters were entitled to far better leadership from Trump.
Oh and as I said earlier – no argument, I’m just curious who that is supposed to be. I have some hope for JD Vance but at this point I’m not holding my breath for any mortal man.
I’ve got to ask, if I’m being robbed and I pull out a shotgun and shoot once into the wall and then blast my foot off, is it really right to say “at least I fought back”? Oh, yeah, and wreck two Senate seats in Georgia?
I’m not understanding why federal judges were ruling here. There should be redress in state courts.
BTW, as far as I am aware in New York, aggrieve candidates and ordinary constituents have standing to challenge petitions and decisions of boards of elections.
Judges are quite adept at persuading ordinary people that they meddle a great deal but do not protect anyone very much.
I’ll point out something else. If you add up the following
-Civilian government employees posted abroad, and spouses in country with them
-Active duty servicemen and spouses living with them
-Students enrolled at schools which have a residential campus
-People in long-term care facilities
-Home-bound people
-People traveling out of town in a given week
The number does not sum to even 10% of the adult population.
A woman tells me that she lives in Arizona and so many people live in remote areas they cannot be expected to vote in person (70% of Arizona’s population lives in tract developments around Phoenix and Tucson and another 5% live in smaller population centers; as for the rest, they shop for groceries, so set up the polling stations at those stores).
There is simply no excuse for promiscuous use of postal balloting. If the queues bother you, move voting times to Friday evening, Saturday morning, and Saturday afternoon and set up a sufficient quantum of polling stations. New York has one station for every 1,000 residents; Georgia attempts to scrape by with one for every 6,000 residents. (The mean for the US as a whole is one per 3,000 residents).
We have another problem I’ve noticed, comparing New York’s voter rolls today with what they were when I was active in local politics: they’re teeming with relict entries.
It’s not that challenging to fix these problems.
I’m still not sure who you’re referring to here.
Almost all his aides and assistants. Cabinet officers were largely ciphers or men who simply did not share Trump’s agenda. Trump badly needed an able staff and he never developed one.
At the very least, it seems your statement “Trump was too dumb to try” needs to be redacted or at last modified.
Trump was too dumb to do so effectively. Throughout his career he has always had legal counsel consisting of the cheapest he can find or relying on firms out of sympathy with him.
I’m just curious who that is supposed to be.
The legal team put together by the Bush campaign in 2000 over the Gore attempt to upset that election was a model of effective action taken in a short period of time. Detail work is not Trump’s strong point and that is why he needed able and loyal people around him. Too often Trump’s people failed on both counts.
I’m not understanding why federal judges were ruling here. There should be redress in state courts.
Feds always have primacy in Federal elections.
Almost all his aides and assistants.
?
Cabinet officers were largely ciphers or men who simply did not share Trump’s agenda.
I wouldn’t call Wilbur Ross a cipher.