“The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda.”

~ Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, 1988

Embrace yourself. We are in for a whirlwind of propaganda directed to both sway and embolden our beliefs. We will need to question the sources of our information. We will need to understand where the bias of the message is coming from. We will need to fact check for reliability, accuracy, and exaggeration.

We will be entertained. We will be angered. We will be emboldened. We will be ridiculed by those who disagree with us. And we will be the ones ridiculing others who hold different beliefs than us. Systematic propaganda will slowly lead us to more polarized views.

This is not a test of your emergency broadcasting system. This is also not an emergency. No, it is the emergence of political propaganda in a post Truth era. Find your own truth, fabricate your own truth. Because the media outlets you believed you believed in are not the ones in existence today… and they do not transmit Truth.

Marshall McLuhan was correct, ‘the medium is the message’, and the medium is designed not to inform but to entertain; to excite; to anger; to draw attention, clicks, and eyes on advertising. No, not to inform, to trick you. Sway your opinion, and lie to you.

Are your beliefs your own or have they been manufactured, manipulated, and swayed by the media you watch? Will you be able to answer that question as convincingly a year from now? Will your beliefs be yours or will they be governed by the propaganda you choose to watch and believe in? Be warned, the answer to that question might not be the answer you currently believe.