A Reminder on Propaganda

Theodore Dalrymple explained propaganda sometime back, and a lot of bloggers have been referencing it in the last few weeks:

In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is...in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.

If the FCC is allowed to silence or even throttle back the dissent against any administration, regime, government, or entity on the internet, we will suffer for it.  The insignificant corners like this one with only a few hits now and then don't make much difference in and of themselves, but we are a little like capillaries.  If the body loses a few, it's no big deal.  Lose too many and the cells in that area start to die off.  

The ability to mock and deride the ridiculous pontificating of someone like Harf or Brian Williams keeps us healthy.  We reinforce and encourage one another in our defiance of the official narrative. 

For now, I think, the FCC ruling will only make access more expensive and keep the Netflix business model viable, but it is none of their business, and Congress should stand up and make that clear.