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Saturday, September 19, 2009

You can fool some of the people...





This is a most interesting video. It demonstrates how our memories work. It also shows how memory and perception can be manipulated by someone posing as an unbiased source of information.

Although it was not intended for this purpose, the video also shows precisely how and why the right-wing spin machine is so effective in duping the public.

In the video, Elizabeth Loftus inserts a bogus image into an ostensibly objective test, and Leslie Stahl is manipulated into believing she saw the bogus face even when presented with the actual face she had seen in the test.

In the same way and for completely ideological reasons the talking heads at FOX News, talk show hosts, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, et al., and the leaders of the GOP use conflation to control perception.

They present contradictory ideas (e.g. "Obama is a fascist" and "Obama is a socialist.") as if they were interchangeable. No person, however, can be both a fascist and a socialist because those are polar opposite political concepts.

Having established doubt in the minds of their audience they then repeat the conflation at every opportunity.

This makes it very difficult for people to recognize the truth; and, because most folks are predisposed to trust any person claiming to present "fair and balanced" information, they are duped into believing one lie after another.

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