1) The Message is pushed unrelentingly, all the time, through every medium.
2) The trivial is catastrophized (when it suits The Message), while serious issues (that don't suit The Message) are trivialized, or even ignored.
3) Anyone who questions The Message is not simply dismissed as being wrong. They are condemned as malicious, ridiculous, or so far off the mark it's perverse.
4) Freedom to disagree is allowed in theory, but restricted or discouraged in practice ("free speech has consequences").
5) Fictional depictions of people who disagree with The Message (usually in a very mild way) inevitably depict them as unlikeable, stupid, backward, embarrassing, and so on-- though perhaps they have some endearing qualities. (If they are really nice, they'll have agreed with The Message by the end credits.)
6) In the case of admired figures who lived before the Message, and whose popularity is too deeply-rooted to be undermined, anything they said contrary to The Message is explained away; "He was a man of his time", etc.
7) Even wishing to debate The Message is portrayed as suspicious, and probably motivated by baleful beliefs.
8) To react angrily against The Message makes you an angry person. Anger which is in agreement with The Message doesn't make you an angry person. Hatred towards The Message makes you hateful. Hatred in agreement with The Message doesn't. Fear about The Message makes you a fear-monger; fear inspired by the Message doesn't.
9) Any reactions against The Message just prove the necessity (and intensification) of The Message.
10) The extent of popular disagreement with The Message can never be acknowledged, except in the face of undeniable evidence (such as a mass demonstration, or a referendum going the wrong way. In the latter case, the concept of "misinformation" can be easily is used to explain it ). All right-thinking people agree with The Message.
No 6 is a particular bugbear of mine! I read a biography of Pope Julius II (one of 'Michelangelo's Popes') some years ago. It was solid and workaday, but the most astonishing and magnificent fact was that unlike just about every other modern biography there was no patronising introduction pampering the reader about the shock that may result from reading of other cultures with other values, all made palpable and forgivable with the staggeringly patronising and smug, "We must remember X was a product of their time' guff. Is there someone who isn't a product of their time?!!
ReplyDeleteI know, I have had the same sense of grateful shock myself. It's actually surprising how much stuff can fly below the radar in scholarly and quasi-scholarly books and other venues where They are less likely to be listening.
DeleteI tried to think of someone who wasn't a product of their time. I thought of William Blake and then thought again. Nope, can't think of anyone!