I challenge truth-seekers to review these and other popular proaganda techniques.
Are you believing propaganda? I am. Should we? What do you think? Stupid question. We studied these techniques in Junior High, but do you recognize them when they are so blatantly used today in Political News, Advertisements, friends casual political talk?
I see most of us as one or more of five basic handlers of propaganda.
1) We blindly believe sources whom we trust, which are actually untrustworthy.
2) We choose to believe certain "Friendly-to-our Beliefs" forms of Propaganda, out of our own selective hearing. WE even willingly perpetuate it because it is a good lie. It supports and makes us feel better about our own beliefs. We may even suspect that it IS propaganda. In turn, we filter out any opposing information as untrue--deaming it as propaganda whether it is or is not.
3) WE consciously use firsthand or secondhand propaganda because we feel that the end justifies the means. I find this especially alarming. Once we could sort of count of at least a moral attempt at honesty.
4) There are some among us who are intentionally using propaganda masterfully to our own ends and our own means in order decieve and use people without regard to the collateral damage. Other well-intending people may wittingly or unwittingly help us by repeating our lies as truths.
) We are inexperienced, stupid, uninformed, especially gullible, and this is the only information that we are exposed to, so we really don't know any better. I find this group to be the smallest.
6) And the smallest group of all, in my opinion, are those individuals who valiantly try to filter out propaganda by distilling the truth about specific issues. We do this by using the Internet to find three or more different sources that we can have good reason to believe have no axes to grind on the given issues--who are realtively nuetral. This can sometimes be daunting, but it is the only way to even get close to the truth in today's information overload. Those of us who believe in a God, may also pray and ponder as we seek the truth. A hasty conclusion almost always leaves room for bias.