In 1971, Farley Mowat (author of “Never Cry Wolf”) published a book titled “The Siberians.” He traveled to Siberia, meeting and interviewing and learning the Soviet-era lifestyles.
One memorable interview comes back as we learn how Elon Musk’s hundreds of millions of dollars created cleverly disguised ads against Kamala Harris. Mowat asked the Siberian what he thinks about all the propaganda being beamed into the mining camps. The Siberian replied that they are intelligent enough to see through the blatant lies, but that Americans need to wake up the fact that our propaganda is so professionally, psychologically produced that we believe it.
This was before Rush Limbaugh became a right-wing mouthpiece and Rupert Murdoch had immigrated here from Australia to set up the 24/7 right-wing Fox propaganda network.
Our democracy cannot exist much longer when so many voters are so mis- and disinformed.
Musk took the targeted Facebook ads of 2016 to an entirely new level of mendaciousness in the past campaign — and sadly, as Mowat’s book foretold, Americans fell for it.
— Robert Atkinson
Seward
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