Death of Michael Ledeen, maker of the phony case for the invasion of Iraq

This is the last time I felt the power of the propaganda machine. (The most recent time was the 2024 election) It was so obvious to myself and my friends that this was completely cooked up intelligence. And yet the truth was not getting out, and had fooled many people with this strange groupthink, almost like a dumb, braying herd animal, where the collective intelligence was utterly ambushed and tied up in a sack. I don't like feeling powerless, yet I have this feeling that our voices have been smothered of late, destroyed by ridiculous talking points.

The same propoganda machine has been on full effect in Israel's war on Gaza with American support. As soon as the attacks happened, there was a rush of propaganda (40 beheaded babies, mass rapes) to make the Hamas attacks seem completely unprovoked to justify the complete destruction of Gaza. The good news is Americans are more questioning this time of why they need to be involved in this at all.

If you didn't feel the machine in all those other cases it has gone full swing since then, that just means these two attempts were extremely crude by comparison (and they were indeed). But Cambridge Analytica has really ushered us into a new era of manipulation, where most citizens don't even have the slightest chance of perceiving how they are getting played by nefarious actors. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. Today we have stuff like the Saudis buying access to Twitter/X after getting busted for planting literal double agents inside the company. The level and sophistication of propaganda we see right now is unprecedented in human history.

It certainly is making me wonder about the supposed benefits of democracy.

If our votes, even those of our elected representatives, are so easily manipulated, then what's the point?

My question isn't entirely rhetorical. I'm hoping someone can talk me out of that conclusion.

To the contrary, if voters are manipulated it is not a well functioning democracy. It is a farce of a democracy, the subtle manipulation just adds a veneer of legitimacy because it appears to be a democracy. Those who are manipulating people are the ones in power, not the citizens.

Edit: I say subtle in the sense that those being manipulated are not particularly aware of being manipulated.

I’m afraid your conclusion is correct

There has never been a representative democracy. Not in the US, not anywhere. So it’s impossible to say whether it’s a goal that’s with pursuit.

The idea that one ever existed is also a fairy tale to be clear. This is the most globally “representative” system ever, if for no other reason than for the existence of global mobility. Despite global border protection, if you’re determined enough you can get anywhere. Truly.

People will argue in a mealymouth way about whether any form of democracy is functional and “best of all bad systems” is typically the masters level refrain.

It’s worth thinking beyond 20th century concepts like states

An interesting assertion. A quick Google search didn't turn up anything definitive for me. Do you have references?

What’s hilarious is how the “40 beheaded babies” claim is indeed propaganda - from Hamas apologists.

The original statement is that 40 infants were murdered during the Oct 7th massacre and infants were beheaded, no number given. This somehow mutated into the claim that all 40 murdered infants were beheaded so the claim could be ridiculed.

One of many: https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/researcher-in-fac...

see comments of hacker news threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20800031

Nope https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_baby_beheading_hoax

Democracy still is a good idea.

> Cambridge analytica had absolutely no impact on the election whatsoever,

Of course not. They weren't even active on Facebook, they were selling potatoes at the local market. /s

> Democracy still is a good idea.

When they finnaly implement it. /s

I am getting the compete opposite side, on average. Although Western states are very pro Israel, everything I read on social media is pro Palestine. On the street even more so (across a lot of countries).

Only with an educated population. An uneducated population is more easily swayed by cults of personality which can lead to the rise of dictators as the people will accept and justify any behaviour from the leader of their tribe.

> Although Western states are very pro Israel.

They're not, you're simply misinformed. The US and Germany have been. Countries like Ireland, Spain and Scotland have not. A lot of others have been somewhere inbetween, often as weakly-held beliefs. It's been very low on the list of priorities for people in country like Belgium, they might have been nominally pro-Irsael, but without caring particularly much. Now that Israel has been genociding for a year, except for those first two almost every Western state is largely pro-Palestine.

Unless you're purely talking about governments instead of the populace, but that makes no sense in this context of talking about social media.

The contest for the most efficient manipulation of the plebeians is where the elites are arbitraging their game nowadays. I suppose it's marginally better than constantly dying in their petty wars.

Not with universal suffrage. And without it you need to aggresively curb revolutionary communist parasites.

It's simple really, democracy isn't democracy if the voters aren't well informed. Also democracy is a spectrum, the "benefits of democracy" is almost meaningless if you don't define what type of democracy you're talking about.

We quickly get into the "communism was never implemented properly" type of argument too. Sure a theoretical benevolent dictator might be better than a flawed democracy, the problem is that it never happens in real life

"democracy is bad because it can lead to dictatorship" can't be a serious argument...

Democracies are all flawed but theocracies, monarchies, oligarchies, &c. certainly aren't better when it comes to cult of personalities and serving their own tribes

I was also puzzled about the low quality of the lies and how little they were challenged at the time. I watched that presentation with the trucks - wow that was bad. As if it was being sabotaged on purpose by people who didn't want to do it. But it worked anyway!

By the way, there's a decent quality German (but most of the talking is in English) docu-drama about the intelligence campaign, it's called Curveball.

I meant governments, not people. On the ground in Berlin, Germany definitely isn't pro-Israel.

What happened “as soon as the attack happened” was you had Hamas apologists pre-emotively criticizing Israel BEFORE there was even time for any response to have happened. A moral absurdity.

“Palestinians didn’t kill as many babies or do as many rapes as people say they did” does not cut as deep as you seem to think it does. The Oct 7th atrocities were atrocities, in the fullest sense of that word.

>Cambridge analytica had absolutely no impact on the election whatsoever

Say the guys who were implicated and facing public humiliation or even punishment. Meta has already paid billions of dollars in fines and settlements because of this, so all these people not covering their asses would actually be surprising. But if you look at the raw evidence uncovered during the senate hearings, there is no doubt that it had a major effect on the election and beyond.

> "democracy is bad because it can lead to dictatorship" can't be a serious argument...

Heh you got a good point. People seem to expect way to much from their form of government and get desillusionized when it is not magic.

Like, join a party and see how the sausage is made.

Yeah, friggen Hamas publishing their videos of themselves kidnapping 6 year old girls (that one still haunts me), or videos of themselves parading around young dead womens almost nude bodies and spitting on her. Pure fake propaganda, the videos Hamas published of themselves that the world saw that very day.

> "democracy is bad because it can lead to dictatorship" can't be a serious argument...

It's not and I didn't write, nor intend that.

Educated voters are a pre-condition for democracy and without that, democracy fails. It's similar to how market knowledge is a pre-condition of free markets as otherwise markets favour the biggest trader.

The Weapons of mass destruction were easy, west, north, and south of this comment.

Sorry, I don't have Gell-Mann amnesia - Wikipedia is not a trustworthy source on controversial claims like this based on the outright lies I've seen on things I know.