It's difficult to overstate the power of propaganda. I think an apt comparison here is the public's opinion of the Iraq war during the build up. The media told people what to think, and, by and large, they thought what they were told, or were cowed into silence. Not that it mattered-- millions protested anyway, and were ignored.
To be blunt, the majority of people didn't even have the capacity to say "but this is wrong!" whether behind closed doors, in their mind, or in public.
They have no agency.
I think a good rule is that people who are handed their worldview from the mainstream media are going to be gullible/misguided by default. It's harsh, but I haven't found any examples to the contrary yet.
The point made in the italicized line [1] above is much much larger than the typically-trite debate over the consumption of mass media narratives.
Reducing it to a talking point - about the power of mainstream media to silence skeptics - cheapens the vast and profound meaning embedded in it.
This is not about doves vs hawks. This is much larger than that.
That statement is not just about propaganda or consensus, at the societal level.
It is also about personal convention and the nature of agreeableness in itself.
[1]
If you believe everything you're supposed to now, how can you be sure you wouldn't
also have believed everything you were supposed to if you had grown up among the
plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South, or in Germany in the 1930s-- or among
the Mongols in 1200, for that matter? Odds are you would have.
The major problem is that everyone\* likes to believe that—while they, of course, are not perfect!—they are fundamentally, in the end of the day, a basically decent and good and rational person. Likewise that their friends and loved ones and co-workers are too. And that their lifestyle, and the society they live in, and the institutions they belong to and identify with are fundamentally okay as well, not out-of-control nightmare carnivals. And that in so far as things are seriously screwed up, it's the fault of those other guys, a clearly-identifiable outlaw, villain, or oppressor group which does not include me or mine.
Of course, this is basically never true. But the unhappy realisation that it's not true in your own case is so agonising that the human mind distances itself from it like a cat from a hot stovetop. Cosmic-horror stuff about how many stars there are or how many metres you are from the centre of mass of the universe are is just an amusing trifle in comparison. Even people who are rationally aware of some of this (often because they recite it once every week) are protected by powerful psychological defence mechanisms from actually having to confront the realisation very often. (Often the upshot of the weekly exercises is that the person simply becomes more confident than ever that they're a great person and they have it all figured out, in much the same way that developing a self-image as a lover of truth and rationality so often makes people markedly dumber.) Add to that the fact that, of course, changing your behaviour to become less of a scumbag often comes with serious or very serious costs to your well-being and relationships with others, and it's not even close.
The final nasty kicker is that, of course, an individual person's judgement of right and wrong isn't necessarily any better than that of his or her society. Futhermore, people who share a particular critique (good God I hate that word) of their society tend to band together into their own subcultures, partly to better resist the material and social pressures from society to conform. So now you have a new self-image, a new lifestyle and a new in-group, and the process repeats itself.
\* The few exceptions, sadly, are largely psychopaths and other people who simply don't give a shit.
I think his ideas about us humans are brilliant. Still are very relevant. We didn't change. I believe Nietzsche turned out to be extremely far-sighted.
Would Zarathustra be the opposite of your scumbag description?
>Even people who are rationally aware of some of this (often because they recite it once every week) are protected by powerful psychological defence mechanisms from actually having to confront the realisation very often.
No, some of us just have to hold back tears on a frequent basis.
The media told people what to think, and, by and large, they thought what they were told, or were cowed into silence. Not that it mattered-- millions protested anyway, and were ignored.
Which is it? Were we cowed or did people make up their own minds to the extent that millions protested and (presumably) millions more disagreed? And why characterize the people against the war as freethinkers, while assuming those who supported it were tricked? I know a lot of people who were against the invasion who couldn't tell you five things about the entire region. I wouldn't consider them freethinkers. It doesn't feel like you've actually said anything in this comment.
"millions protested" is not a majority by a long shot. "millions" can be less than 1% of population. Even when 5 million people protested and 10 million silently disagreed, that still leaves 95%. Which is more than enough to qualify as "by and large", even after subtracting those who really gave some thought to the issue and then agreed.
To be blunt, the majority of people didn't even have the capacity to say "but this is wrong!" whether behind closed doors, in their mind, or in public.
They have no agency.
I think a good rule is that people who are handed their worldview from the mainstream media are going to be gullible/misguided by default. It's harsh, but I haven't found any examples to the contrary yet.