

Well at least you’ve shifted your argument from ad hominem to the fallacy of incomplete information. Bravo!
Well at least you’ve shifted your argument from ad hominem to the fallacy of incomplete information. Bravo!
Policy has only aligned with the will of the people 55% of the time. That’s not so bad, assuming we just ignore the observed and prevalent phenomenons of elite capture of public opinion and manufacturing of consent.
Of course, democracy exists when we discard the unsavory bits of reality, anything can be democracy when its meaning is an empty signifier.
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
I’m not saying democracy can’t exist, it can and it should, but it’s only a fleeting notion in any society based on dominance hierarchy. Democracy does not exist without a well-informed public, a people plagued by ignorance do not have free will, and in consequence do not make their own decisions.
There is nothing representative or democratic about US democracy, if we are being honest with ourselves.
An oligarchy in democratic accroutements.
The concept of freedom and democracy was nothing more than the idea of an ethical order, or at least the perception of one.
You seem to be confused on the meaning of nihilism. Making observations are not nihilistic, we’ve only ever perceived reality through the lens of the elite, voted on candidates selected by the elite, our democratic choices nothing more than packaged products, marketed and sold to us. The advent of internet and social media have simultaneously broken the illusion and made it near impenetrable. Knowing truth is not a negation of truth itself, therefore it cannot be nihilism, I still hold onto meaning.
America was never a democracy, all Trump did was pull the curtain back, the scene becomes the ob-scene. The people lament for the comfort of their illusions and parlor tricks.
I think what is happening is the reluctance of associating the term influencer with propagandist. The terms themselves are synonymous, influencer a little more specific, and without the added negative connotations propagandist has. If people realized “influencer” is just another term for propagandist, that may harm ad revenue. So we have “distinctions” being made, between influencers who do regular propaganda and influencers who do bad propaganda or “influencer propaganda” instead of just admitting they are all by definition propagandists.
Propaganda is the expression of opinions or actions carried out deliberately by individuals or groups with a view to influencing the opinions or actions of other individuals or groups for predetermined ends and through psychological manipulations.
Propaganda, Jacques Ellul
Civilization collapse will hit hardest on communities who haven’t localized their production of basic necessities like food. The financial backers behind Trump adhere to the Dark Enlightenment philosophy, with the goals of dismantling democracy, balkanizing America and establishing a patchwork of technomonarchy city-states from the ashes of destruction. The dismantlement phase is complete, now begins another phase of their philosophy, the scapegoating of Trump and replacing him with their Chosen One.
Here is a quote from the dark enlightenment to get people an idea of what these people have planned:
Civilization, as a process, is indistinguishable from diminishing time-preference (or declining concern for the present in comparison to the future). Democracy, which both in theory and evident historical fact accentuates time-preference to the point of convulsive feeding-frenzy, is thus as close to a precise negation of civilization as anything could be, short of instantaneous social collapse into murderous barbarism or zombie apocalypse (which it eventually leads to). As the democratic virus burns through society, painstakingly accumulated habits and attitudes of forward-thinking, prudential, human and industrial investment, are replaced by a sterile, orgiastic consumerism, financial incontinence, and a ‘reality television’ political circus. Tomorrow might belong to the other team, so it’s best to eat it all now.
The Dark Enlightenment, Nick Land
Make friends and grow potatoes.
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A key milestone of the Dark Enlightenment agenda is to scapegoat (per mimetic theory) Trump after he has dismantled democracy and have him replaced by Vance by way of 25th amendment.
His reluctance to devolve power, his lack of loyalty towards his most zealous followers, his readiness to chop and change policies, his preference for mediocrities and sycophants over men of natural ability, and, most of all, his increasing tendency to believe his own rhetoric about the state of the nation ensured that the new state was never going to be a meritocracy
Nature of Fascism, R Griffin
This is in reference to Mussolini, but it’s a valid description of Trump as well.
It makes sense if you look at it from Trump’s financial backers Dark Enlightenment philosophy. It involves the mimetic theory of creating a scapegoat. So Trump dismantles democracy and triggers the collapse of the United States, is then scapegoated and removed by way of 25th amendment, then the Dark Enlightenment “Chosen One” JD Vance establishes the new patchwork of technomonarchy city-states from the ashes of civilization. Seems a bit rushed, I think they underestimated the amount of effort it would take to destroy the country.
They were nothing more than useful idiots, the Party no longer has use for them, they will be among the first Americans sent to the camps.
It’s over the top and stupid because he’s using crowd psychology, it’s language tailored to elicit an emotional response based on irrational fear and anger. The “truth” is delegated from above, it’s true because the “authority” says it’s true. The intent of this type of rhetoric is to mobilize supporters to commit violence.
Since fascism’s mythic power is automatically sapped by the renewed ascendancy of the private over the public sphere of life which ensues once political stability and relative social harmony are restored, it can only maintain its momentum and cohesion by continually precipitating events which seemed to fulfil the promise of permanent revolution, of continuing palingenesis.
Though it may seek through agitation and propaganda to develop into an ‘irresistible’ mass movement, fascism must always in the last analysis be imposed by an elite in the name of a national community yet to be realized, and whose realization, even once the movement is installed in power, will initially (and in practice indefinitely) involve reeducation, propaganda and social control on a massive scale.
Since only a minority of the population can be temperamentally susceptible to converting spontaneously to fascism or becoming the new breed of homo fascistus, and since even at the height of its popularity, no modern regime can enjoy total support, the thorough-going ideological coordination of the national community could never come about ‘naturally’. A grotesque parody of it has to be enacted through the extensive use of propaganda and terror.
Nature of Fascism, R Griffin.
Incredible as some of these aberrations may appear, we must yet be on our guard not to dismiss them as mere accidental by-products which have nothing to do with the essential character of a planned or totalitarian system. They are not. They are a direct result of that same desire to see everything directed by a “unitary conception of the whole,” of the need to uphold at all costs the views in the service of which people are asked to make constant sacrifices, and of the general idea that the knowledge and beliefs of the people are an instrument to be used for a single purpose. Once science has to serve, not truth, but the interests of a class, a community, or a state, the sole task of argument and discussion is to vindicate and to spread still further the beliefs by which the whole life of the community is directed. As the Nazi minister of justice has explained, the question which every new scientific theory must ask itself is: “Do I serve National Socialism for the greatest benefit of all?”
The Road to Serfdom, Ch. 11 The End of Truth, F. A. Hayek
These “influencers”, or propagandists to be concise, are encouraging the masses to ignorantly embrace the arbitrary rule of a vulgar conventionalist. They need the eradication of the Rule of Law, the dismantlement of Democracy and the Balkanisation of America to fulfill their twisted utopian vision of technofeudal fiefdoms.
Vulgar conventionalism is … that the life according to nature is the preserve of a small minority, of the natural elite, of those who are truly men and not [born] to be slaves. To be more precise, the summit of happiness is the life of the tyrant, of the man who has successfully committed the greatest crime by subordinating the city as a whole to his private good and who can afford to drop the appearance of justice or legality.
Natural Right and History, Leo Strauss.
The means of action of the leaders. Affirmation, repetition, contagion
When, however, it is proposed to imbue the mind of a crowd with ideas and beliefs—with modern social theories, for instance—the leaders have recourse to different expedients. The principal of them are three in number and clearly defined — affirmation, repetition, and contagion. Their action is somewhat slow, but its effects, once produced, are very lasting.
Affirmation pure and simple, kept free of all reasoning and all proof, is one of the surest means of making an idea enter the mind of crowds.
Affirmation, however, has no real influence unless it be constantly repeated, and so far as possible in the same terms.
When an affirmation has been sufficiently repeated and there is unanimity in this repetition … what is called a current of opinion is formed and the powerful mechanism of contagion intervenes. Ideas, sentiments, emotions, and beliefs possess in crowds a contagious power as intense as that of microbes.
The Crowd, Gustave Le Bon
You started with a thought terminating cliché, then followed up with ad hominems, then an assertion based on cherry-picked information, and topped it off with a strawman. That is not an argument, you have made no argument.