Contra Mozilla

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

A Few Assorted Thoughts about Propaganda

I have long considered John Stewart to be a complete hack as a comedian; on the other hand, he is one of the most successful propagandists of this generation. His protege, Stephen Colbert, is often a bit funnier, and often a bit let hackish as a comedian; he engages in propaganda--a lot of it, to be honest--but not always at the expense of his comedy routine. However, comedy at times takes a back seat to propaganda in his shtick, too. He's not alone by any stretch here, not among comedians, not among other entertainments outfits, and not even among what once might have been called "serious news outlets."

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A funny observation about certain types of propaganda: sometimes an image which would seem to be intuitively obvious as "good" (that is, visually effective) propaganda can misfire. Case in point, this image made (presumably in photoshop) after the Supreme Curt's ruling in Obergefell v Hodges:


I saw this, an immediately understood its intent to be that it takes courage to stand against a culture which is collectively in the wrong (or heading towards the wrong), to seek freedom by doing what is right and not doing what is wrong even if the rest of the world has gladly embraced injustice and slavery by following its passions. The image was posted with the quote by Chesterton that "The Catholic Church is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age." The originating site, while mostly not in English, does not seem particularly friendly to social liberalism. Thus, I read the man who is in the circle and thus not under the rainbow flag to be those few people who aren't quietly (or worse, enthusiastically) going along with the whole "gay rights"/"gay marriage" movement.

Yet, some people saw this image and read the opposite into it. This rainbow fag of celebration is made possible by the one guy who refused to condemn homosexual acts (such as sodomy) as sinful and thus not worthy of legal protections and privileges. I suppose that 30 years ago, such an image might have at least reflected the reality that most people still called a sin a sin, though it would have been a rather perverse recognition. Thirty years ago, he majority was not necessarily silent on this issue, and it was right. Now, there is a small majority (or else a very vocal minority), and certainly a larger and more vocal one in the social media, which marches in perfect lockstep to the beat of the progressive drum and salutes the rainbow flag as the sign which leads them on the victory.

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Most people who speak out publicly against this march to privilege sexual deviancy and to codify the rights of immorality are shouted down (at best). Where once homosexuality was "the love that dare not speak its name," opposition to homosexual acts is the viewpoint which dare not speak its name.

We are moving out of the propaganda phase and into the outright persecution phase, soft persecution first and then maybe hard persecution will follow. There is certainly somebody who will be happy with this result. Especially if it leads to some more "results."


It might be fair to say that we lost this (big) round of the culture war, because we lost the propaganda war. In fact, we barely seem to have engaged in the propaganda battle until the end. Well see what results after the persecution:

God is not mocked, yet we have taken a symbol which if figuratively the sign of His covenant with us, and turned it into the symbol for the sin that cried out loudly from Sodom and Gomorrah. Perhaps there were other reasons why God destroyed these cities, and so the rampant homosexual sins were only the most visible symptom of a deeper evil. Perhaps, for that matter, "God's destruction" is again a metaphor for the cities' own inevitable demise. Is that a great comfort for a civilization bent upon following their example?

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