I have used the Texas Sharpshooter idea to describe how modern pseudo-science does research that it gets paid for, then uses Public Relations and advertising to convince people that whatever-is-discovered is actually just whatever people most want and need.
This applies to public policy, in its pseudo-moralistic manifestation. Due to the massive coverage and influence of modern mass/social media; and that so many people are so powerfully addicted to it, such that the media shapes almost-all mainstream public discourse, including among private persons - this kind of this is used to control public discourse.
Some "issue" - which may be incredibly trivial - is launched as a matter of public concern; and then this is what great swathes of people talk-about, debate, moralize over - and expend ludicrous efforts and energies in wrangling over policy responses*.
The result is that people are completely diverted from any concern with the human condition, and the nature of the cosmos; and wrangle over made-up mutually-contradictory nonsense, that could not possible make any significant difference to anything significant.
Such is "serious" discourse - especially among the professional, managerial, "intellectual" classes... Any danger of anything fundamental getting onto the agenda of life, is dealt-with by the extreme urgency of todays triviality.
Examples abound - especially in "modern environmentalism" (i.e. nothing whatsoever to do with the world of nature) which is the subject (along with sex/sexuality) with which the chattering classes are most concerned.
Recycling is maybe the biggest. Millions of people in the UK spend several hours per week ritualistically fussing over recycling, sorting rubbish into multiple categories, washing and sterilizing rubbish, driving to and from recycling centres with little packets of this or that; and scrapping functional technology for inferior electricity-consuming substitutes.
All of which is entirely done for self-gratification and status within the community of like-minded.
All of which Very Obviously has net harmful effects on the natural world - obvious if only people were able and willing to think things through.
Piddling little environmental campaigns have been propagated across the nation, and taught in primary schools. Campaigns to make it illegal to provide grocery bags without extra charge. Campaigns to replace plastic drinking straws with paper. (An extreme emergency, apparently because polar bears got plastic straws stuck between their toes, or something.)
Nutrition has become linked with environmentalism and thus with the totalitarian agenda - so that factory-made vegan "food" is now supposed to be morally supreme - seemingly because it enables the world to abolish/ destroy farming, then mammals (insects are OK), and perhaps eventually plants. Which must be a good thing...
It does not matter how trivial or stupid an issue may be, "people" can be made very concerned about it; to the point that it becomes immoral to consider the consequences or the larger picture.
To "solve" a piddling pseudo-problem, enlarges the Real Big Problems. Just as every measure to "help" some victim group, always and systematically oppresses the whole of society.
From the perspective of the ruling class; this is a manifestation of the Texas Sharpshooter, because it entails picking-out what They want to do anyway; then drawing a line around it and framing the resultant micro-policy as exactly what most needs to be done - now!
The strategy is therefore to accumulate one after another such "imperative" micro-issue, towards the overall objective - whether that objective be the totalitarian system of surveillance, monitoring, control; or else the (more recent) destructive agenda working for societal collapse, escalation of war and lethal civil violence, famine, deadly disease, and toxic exposures...
The worst thing we can do is fight these idiocies, issue by issue - because that is exactly Their plan.
The only positive response is to step back and understand where this is going, and why, and the supernatural (demonic) origins - therefore that the proper response is not "an alternative answer" but a completely different framework of assumptions concerning our-selves, other people, the world, the cosmos...
*This applies to politics, as well.
Heading into the holidays and long family visits, I wonder if you’ve ever found something constructive to say in the typical situation where any conversation leads quickly to “Did you see the article in the [media] on this?” I was thinking of responding with some variant of “no, but I’m more interested in what *you* think.” Though that doesn’t help at all about what you’re talking about here, where the topic itself is best avoided.
ReplyDeleteMy husband and I have definitely been struggling almost more with the family that agree with us on “the issues” than with the ones that disagree, because every conversation is an invitation to exchange pre-determined talking points, and we just refuse to engage in that way. It’s so rare that anything we say that’s “off-script” gets any meaningful response, but maybe there will be fruit one day.
@Mia - No, I have never found anything constructive to say in these situations - quite the opposite! (i.e. count-productive). I find that silence is the best policy.
ReplyDeleteI do a few shifts each week as a delivery driver for a large supermarket chain (I started during lockdown, as a good alternative to house-arrest). The supermarkets say that they recycle bags, so some customers insist on returning the drip-bags (very flimsy plastic bags, used to catch any liquids that may escape from uncooked meat or poultry and contaminate other items).
ReplyDeleteThe fatuous self-congratulation with which this is done has to be seen to be believed. I used to tell them the truth - that we throw them away when we get back at the store - but each time I did this, the customer hesitated very briefly, with a look of bewilderment; then pushed them into my hands as if I'd said nothing.
Now I just take the bags without comment.
william arthurs has left a comment :
ReplyDeleteThe paradigm case of trivia expressed in mathematical form is some measure of health risk, or exposure to a hazardous substance, taken out of context, and which everyone is encouraged to obsess over.
Example: "I'm having my granite countertops ripped out, and I cancelled my holiday in New York because Manhattan is built on granite. Because of the health risks from exposure to argon, I read about it on the internet/ in the tabloid press, haven't you?" This has been ramped up over the decades post-war in parallel to improved accuracy in detection equipment.
I believe this futile silliness laid some of the groundwork for the popular terror of exposure to the [birdemic] and its supposedly-lethal infection/ fatality rate.
@HM - Good story
ReplyDelete@wa - I was a lecturer in epidemiology, where the training was all about how foolish is this kind of nonsense - but when my colleagues became public health doctors they completely ignored all the standard cautions and colluded in propagating any form of nonsense that emanated from government...
While using their technical statistical skills falsely to rubbish any state-disapproved but genuine and significant health risks (like giving billions of people never objectively tested, and utterly needless, gene therapy).