A sheepdog gone rogue can herd a flock of sheep over a cliff without touching them.

How do they do with apes? — NOS4A2

Vietnam War. Iraq War. Consent to remove workers' rights. Consent to dismantle/defund public schools. Jan. 6 2021. Etc.

Pretty well, if the sheepdog is also an ape, or a few of them.

To herd or control apes you have to commit violence against them, or proceed with the threat thereof.

To herd or control apes you have to commit violence against them, or proceed with the threat thereof. — NOS4A2

Such articles of faith are what you use to control people. It doesn't work in every case, but it works on average, and not even a threat is required.

Give it a try.

I am, but with my own articles of faith.

To herd or control apes you have to commit violence against them, or proceed with the threat thereof. — NOS4A2

That contradicts both, current and historic facts. See the last post for the beginning of a list of things that happened, and/or are currently happening. It negates the statement quoted above.

I suspect a notion of 'violence' stretched beyond its breaking point to include mental violence.

Threats of violence are not a part of informed willful consent. Call it "manufactured consent", if you like. I won't mind that. The American public have been convinced to consent to all sorts of things that were harmful to them, in the financial sense. Quantifiable financial harm. "What are the damages?" That's a common question.

Look at the spread of wealth around the world after WWII. Pay particular attention to the flatline in real blue collar wages. Watch the power of their dollar wane over time. Watch the under 100k blue collar lifestyle require more than one income. Watch the companies who treat their workers worse obtain a financial advantage for having done so. Much easier to do without legal enforcement of binding arbitration agreement. Ronnie Raygun started that. Much easier to do if enough people portray working folks' unions in nothing but a negative light. Do it long enough and vwahlah. Magic. People are convinced that one of the best things for them is not. Watch the birth of many ghost towns, replete with walking zombies.

No, sir. You're wrong. The smartest bipeds known to man are capable of being happily led to their own slaughter. No physical violence or threat thereof necessary for that to happen.

And now they've been convinced to be mad at all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons.

Today in Trumpenfreude

NASDAQ (DJT :rofl:)

31August24 – $19.50 per share 
(NASDAQ 17,713.62) — 180 Proof

4Sept24 – $16.98 per share (-36% past month) :down:
(NASDAQ 17,084.10)

:lol: :point: Sell-off erases Trump Media shares' 2024 gains

That contradicts both, current and historic facts. See the last post for the beginning of a list of things that happened, and/or are currently happening. It negates the statement quoted above.

Then it should be easy to demonstrate. Manufacture my consent, or anyone else’s. I am willing to read any argument, marketing, or propaganda you can provide, and we’ll see if I willfully consent to any of it.

Another Russian influence operation, straight from the desk of Putin himself to the propaganda of right-wing influencers.

But Putin is all in on Kamala.

Meanwhile a Chinese spy was found to be working for the Governor of New York.

You're kind of like Sisyphus.

Today in Trumpenfreude

Harris will beat Trump, says election prediction legend Allan Lichtman

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/05/harris-trump-lichtman-election-prediction.html :victory: :cool:

↪NOS4A2
You're kind of like Sisyphus — frank

Syphilis.

Syphilis. — 180 Proof

I actually did lol at this.

Syphilis — 180 Proof

Herpes

These laws against foreign inference in US election make little sense in a country that spent 7 billion in 2016 election campaigns. We are 6 times bigger than UK, but in 2016 we spent like 100 times more then UK in electoral campaigns.

The biggest problem in this country are the money from NRA, Oil Industry, Pharma, all kind of CEOs, the Zionists, and so on.

It doesn't make sense anymore to vote for candidates who take billions from people you and me do not know at all. The only thing we know about the "legal" billions is that they come from US citizens (though their hearts may belong to Izrael, to Texaco or to some utopia).

If democracy has a circus, USA is that circus nowadays.

Right, American elections are unique in that respect, and in the way they’re conducted. Personally, I love the circus for sheer entertainment value, but the amount of money thrown around is obscene. Dark money from undisclosed sources kind of make the whole foreign influence rhetoric a huge sham. I rather some American oil company or lobby group have influence than a shell company company who need not disclose where the money is coming from.

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2024/03/unprecedented-surge-in-dark-money-floods-2024-elections/

By the way, in UK there's no limit how much to give to the parties, but there is a clear limit on what the parties can do with all that money. This is why many won't bother to donate in UK lol (cause they know that 70 million are enough for palm cards, billboards, and this kind of stuff).

https://qz.com/1743234/the-three-main-differences-between-us-and-uk-elections

So now, I come with this question: let's suppose that we know the people who give X money in the US, what do we know about the way X money is used?

Can Pier Morgans, to take an example, receive X money in order to write a good article about Trump? Another example: can Kamala use D money in order to pay "volunteers" to attend an event?

In today’s vatniksoup, I’ll discuss the Kremlin’s funding of Tennessee-based media company TENET Media. TENET Media is best-known for their promotion of Russian narratives and for strong support for...…
^{— Pekka Kallioniemi · Vatnik soup · Sep 5, 2024}

Meet the right-wing Canadian influencers accused of collaborating with an alleged Russian propaganda scheme
^{— Jonathan Montpetit, Aloysius Wong · CBC · Sep 6-7, 2024}

How much influence do such campaigns have anyway?

I just finished listening to PBS "On the Media". They were discussing this. Pool, Rubin and others claim that they did not know the money for their propaganda platforms was coming from Russia. But this much is clear - they made a lot of money and it is not difficult to trace it back to the source. But why look a gift horse in the mouth when it is offering you so much money, even if it is a Trojan horse?

Regarding the question of how much influence they have :

Forbes is a good place to start:

Benny Johnson, who has more than 6.6 million followers across YouTube, X and Instagram, was described by the Washington Post in 2015 as the "king of viral political news”

The host of the "The Rubin Report” YouTube channel with 2.45 million subscribers as of Thursday

The “Russian influence” canard returns. We now know they are using it as a pretext for surveilling American and Canadian citizens, which is the true crime.

, and yet there have been, and are, such campaigns — fact.
You may opine on what to do about them, but not their existence.
They've increased during the time of the present Kremlin, and, in addition to effects/efficiency, we might ask the same old question: To what end?

Fact? It’s complete bullshit, itself an influence operation. It’s just a list of trigger-words to activate the drones. “Putin”, “Russia”, “Trump”, “right-wing”, “influence”, and Kamala gets some help with her campaign.

, yep, fact. There have been, and are, such campaigns/projects/activities. ^{(2022Jun10, 2024Mar13, 2024May22, 2024Jun14, 2024Aug13-)}
(Some of the more heavy-duty ones aren't run against the US, though, but smaller, more "manageable", areas.)
You can also find some in Europe and Africa, and you can also find some run by US agents.
Odd that you first deny such activities only to turn around and instead call the reports of them such activities, first denying then claiming their existence.

I don’t believe any of it, and I’m certainly not scared of social media and tic-toc videos. I mean, who cares?

It’s a nonsensical pretext to censor and control social media, spy on Americans, and if the past is any indication, to gaslight the electorate.

Russia and China want to influence the election as much as possible— of course they do. The US does it all the time. (The difference is that we’ll support a coup or invade.)

But the Russian influence is mostly social media. Why wouldn’t they do so? They’ll fund people who are already saying things they like, unleash a bunch of bots, etc. But what’s the actual impact? I doubt it’s very much. The claims are overblown. Just as they were in 2016. Hillary didn’t lose because of a Russian bot farm; she lost because she sucked.

It’s still interesting to see what they’re rooting for. In China’s case, mostly just chaos and division. For Russia, mostly undermining support for Ukraine. Not rocket science to see why this would be the case.

, you don't believe there have been and are such campaigns/projects/activities? :brow: Except for the reports thereof, a rather impressive multinational multicultural conspiracy? :chin:

I don’t doubt there are such activities. People try to make money by getting views on social media all the time, often by making political propaganda. What makes it a campaign or something nefarious?

15 minutes in— She looks nervous, dry-mouthed, and is delivering memorized lines, ignoring the questions. She’s delivering them without stuttering and with coherence, but it looks fake and forced.

Trump is his usual rambling, incoherent buffoon self — repeating his rally lines reflexively. But he looks more natural doing it.

Man, it would have been nice to have Bernie up there with Trump just once.