Challenging Your Worldviews

The narratives have gaslighted you for years

The U.S. Capitol in Washington on Dec. 23, 2022. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

Most Americans seem unaware of the ongoing information warfare being carried out against their collective best interests.

We are bombarded continuously with politically motivated messaging about every important issue of the day: Ukraine virtue-signaling, LGBTQI activism, those evil election “deniers,” mRNA jabs über alles, critical race theory brainwashing, Trump criminality, etc. All media winds seem to blow to port these days.

The Twitter revelations—while long suspected by many independent analysts who endured shadow-banning and suspensions—have only provided a glimpse of that information war in terms of the suppression of views that dissent from the federal government, especially Democrat Party political narratives. On the flip side, Twitter reinforces those narratives at every turn, as the Twitter files reveal.

As it turns out, we are learning that the federal government has been involved in shaping narratives via the media for years, including the legacy media in the days before the internet and now via social media and search engines.

What does that mean for the average American liberal who has been subtly influenced by the constant drumbeat and resultant psychological conditioning associated with those narratives?

And is it possible that any of them have experienced a personal epiphany and perhaps changed their opinions?

Let us examine a few easily recognized categories.

The China Investor

So you bought into the China engagement narrative pushed by multinational corporations and the political class in the 1990s and beyond. You watched while China’s economy grew with “free money” investments from the West while your own state lost manufacturing jobs in droves because its factories were transferred to China. While that gave you a bit of unease as you saw the devastation wrought in local communities, your concerns were assuaged because your portfolio was going gangbusters, thanks to direct investments in China-based companies.

In piecemeal news stories in recent years, you then learned that the Chinese regime was torturing Uyghurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong adherents, and others and was even forcibly harvesting organs from some of those victims.

And then you read about the zero-COVID lockdowns in China in which the Chinese authorities locked the doors of infected people’s apartments and forced people to take anal swab tests. You wondered whether you could endure a similar tyranny if that were ever implemented in the United States. And you saw signs of that authoritarianism popping up in the Democrat media narrative, with lockdowns in Democrat-run states, mask mandates, and social media attacks on anti-vaxxers.

Then you learned about the People Liberation Army’s (PLA) intimidation of Taiwan after Nancy Pelosi’s 19-hour visit in August 2022, as well as the recent surge in PLA Air Force incursion of 47 aircraft into Taiwan’s airspace, and thought for a moment that maybe the “engagement crowd” was wrong when they told everyone that China was benign and that investment in China would curb the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) aggression over time.

Is an epiphany in the offing followed by a divestment in your Chinese holdings? What will it take?

The Rocket Force, under the Eastern Theater Command of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA), fires live missiles into the waters near Taiwan from an undisclosed location in China on Aug. 4, 2022. Eastern Theater Command/Handout via Reuters

The Code Pink Protester

So you grew up around people who protested the Vietnam War and naturally developed similar anti-war feelings. During the build-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2002–2003, you naturally joined the Democrats’ anti-war narrative because the goal was to politically undermine and thwart the “warmonger Bush 43” at all costs.

You joined the Code Pink movement, founded in 2002, to protest U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. You wore pink hats, handed out pink slips with other protesters in Washington and elsewhere, and felt really good about making a statement against the war. Then you were delighted that Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 (and even volunteered on his behalf). Still, the Democrat media narrative shifted afterward, pulling the rug out from under Code Pink and other anti-war protesters. You later learned that Obama was involved in running a drone war to kill terrorists.

What really made you think is that it took a political outsider like the “evil Donald Trump” (in your mind) to draw down the U.S. military presence in the Middle East and facilitate the total withdrawal from Afghanistan that was later botched by President Joe Biden and crew.

The Biden administration turned your anti-war sentiments upside-down as you watched it pump $100 billion into Ukraine while U.S. inflation soared and your relatives in south Texas were robbed blind by illegal aliens flooding the border.

Are you close to an epiphany about the narratives you’ve blindly believed because you were a “good liberal”?

The Feminist

So your mom was a “second-wave feminist” who burned her bra and marched with other old-line feminists like Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and others in the National Organization for Women (NOW) to demand “equal rights for women” in the 1960 and 1970s and especially abortion rights, as cheered on and politically exploited via the Democrat media narrative at the time.

You joined NOW, were caught up in “third-wave feminism” in the 1990s, and marveled at the successes of getting women into corporate board rooms, elected political office, and military combat roles. You bought into the Democrat media narrative on identity politics because it advanced the feminist cause. You were at that protest on the Capitol steps when this iconic shout was made: “We’re fierce. We’re feminists. And we’re in your face!”

But in 2022, you were aghast as you learned that your precious daughter was being groomed by an LGBTQI teacher in her private school and wanted to undergo a mastectomy because she suddenly wanted to be a boy, and that the current Democrat media narrative supports what is effectively child mutilation. You also looked on in horror as transgender men have been allowed to compete in women’s sports with nary a peep to the contrary out of the NOW gang or any other mainline feminists. And you asked yourself if this was what you and your mother had fought for over the past 50 years. A personal epiphany could be in your future!

The Never Trumper

As a good liberal Democrat, you were aghast when Donald Trump was elected president in 2016. Although you admired him as a cultural figure and probably watched an episode of “The Apprentice“ when he was on, you completely bought into the Democrat media narrative that trashed him as a political candidate and a human being that started in 2015 and continues to this very day.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a 'Save America' rally ahead of the midterm elections at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe, Penn., on Nov. 5, 2022. Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

You believed the Trump-Russia collusion and were shocked when Robert Mueller and his team of Democrat lawyers came up empty. You knew for sure that Trump was a crook because that’s what the Democrats and media said. You waited impatiently for him to be prosecuted for violating the emoluments clause, sexual harassment, tax evasion, sedition, and anything and everything the Democrats said of which he was “guilty.”

But then you learned that the Russian collusion was a hoax. The Twitter files showed that Trump was right about the 2020 election. None of the allegations and investigations bore fruit despite six years of Democrat prosecutors trying!

Despite your feelings for Trump, you were aghast that the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago home in what to you was a politically motivated act. You wondered whether that set a precedent and if the Bidens, Obamas, and Clintons might be similarly raided by a future Republican-controlled Justice Department.

And in comparing the Trump presidency to Biden’s, you realize that there really weren’t any Trump policies with which you disagree. Will the Twitter files finally push you into your own epiphany about Trump?

Anti-government

So your liberal parents told you all about the Pentagon Papers in the 1960s and the deep distrust they developed for “the feds” as the Vietnam War dragged on and the casualty numbers rose. That translated later into a general distrust of the police and other institutions in American society, and you bought into that wholeheartedly as your liberal college professors drummed that attitude into you and your peers.

You cheered on Antifa and BLM, who were protesting “the Man” and “the System.” The Democrat media narrative about Trump cast him as an “authoritarian” who would “start a nuclear war” and use the powers of the federal government to “implement fascism” throughout America. You quite naturally bought into that narrative and distrusted anything Trump said, as well as whatever his cabinet, aides, and advisers said—about any topic. Whatever the government said during the Trump era made you instantly believe the opposite.

Suddenly, that narrative changed with the inauguration of Joe Biden in 2021. Everything Biden and his administration said and did was fully supported by the media echo chamber, including jab advocacy for everyone (including children), mask mandates, lockdowns, weaponizing the feds against “domestic terrorists,” opening the U.S.-Mexican border to all comers, advocating LGBTQI rights, etc.

Yet your grandfather succumbed to a heart attack within days of getting his second booster, your best friend was diagnosed with myocarditis after his third shot, the suppression of mRNA dissenters by Twitter has begun to be exposed, and you’re wondering why you have caught COVID-19 for a third time.

The Twitter files have also shown that the surveillance state (the FBI, intel community, and other agencies) has been deeply involved in shaping narratives and suppressing dissent. That bothers you because you are a big supporter of the First Amendment.

Having bought into the Democrat media narratives since January 2021 about “trusting the experts,” you are now on the verge of a personal epiphany through direct experience.

Concluding Thoughts

Americans have been gaslighted by the media for years for politically motivated purposes that advance the Democrat (and Uniparty) agenda. The constant repetition of those narratives in the media echo chamber has conditioned Americans to believe what they see and read in the media, which is reinforced by their social media interactions. After all, it “saves time” just to believe what is presented rather than do the hard work of investigating all sides of the issues of the day. And the Democrats and Uniparty know that!

Some of those preconceived and conditioned notions have been placed at risk through the continuous release of the Twitter files and other revelations made known over the past two years. Indeed, many Americans are uncomfortable with what they are learning, and perhaps more than a few are even adjusting their personal views, as noted above.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.