The recent series about how the founding fathers deplored political parties leads well into the next misinformation principle. We are misinformed through dogma or branding and nothing illustrates that better than party or think tank ideologies.
Humans are an incredibly diverse species. To put this in perspective, bees are among the most social organisms in the animal kingdom, but they have no choice in the matter. Humans have the liberty to associate with a variety of people in a variety of ways; we take full advantage of that liberty. Throw in the liberty to think independently and the natural independence of our labors (which gets degraded in a corporate system), and we are likely the most diverse species on earth. To top it all off, life constantly changes.
Considering all this diversity, simply to advocate one fixed ideology for all groups in all situations for all time is misinformation, with no further distortions or omissions needed. Yet party and think tank ideologies would not be the problems they have become without their focus on branding and negative campaigning.
This may be incredibly hard to do, but imagine Rush Limbaugh delivering positive messages about his own ideology, rather than constant whining and negative campaigning against opposing ideologies. Admittedly, this strategy would not work anywhere near as well, but that is the point. With humans being so incredibly diverse focusing on a message that one ideology works for everyone all the time would be discredited quickly. Pointing out the flaws in competing ideologies is a much easier sell since nothing is perfect, particularly when we are so diverse. You can even cut down on your distortions and omissions when the goal is mainly to uncover flaws in the competition.
Yet think tanks and political parties do not stop with a dispassionate analysis of the flaws as they brand competing ideologies. Aided by the glitz and mass appeal of corporate media, they become uncivil in their branding. This eventually leads to branding that is simply uncivil without bothering to produce any evidence. Then you have misinformation combined with belligerence.
So we have a think tank industry that receives over a billion dollars a year to brand competing ideologies and misinform us. Throw in special interest groups and you have billions more spent on misinformation. Throw in political parties and, well, some numbers just get too large to fathom. And over time this unfathomable investment has grown more on belligerence than misinformation.
Tags: Interest Groups, Misinformation
