I would really rather that these were actual examples, and not conspiracy theories. We all have our own unsubstantiated ideas about what shadowy no-gooders are doing, but I’d rather hear about things that are actually happening.
A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink.
“I have to admit, I’m always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up,” the CIA agent says.
“Thank you,” the KGB says. “We do our best but truly, it’s nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them.”
The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. “Thank you friend, but you must be confused… There’s no propaganda in America.”
…in Ba Sing Se
Removed by mod
There’s no propaganda in America.
promptly fires everyone who criticizes Israel
“brexit will bring in more trade! brexit will provide 350 million to the NHS!”
On a related note the whole notion extremely prevalent in the UK that all they have to do is decide they want to rejoin and it will happen. No matter which side of that a commentator is on, they almost never mention that they need to present something the EU27 actually want and convince them that the UK is not the ‘break international agreements’ kind of country any more. Overall the British still all seem to think that they are something better than everyone else and others have to do what they want and have no real agency.
The thing I loved about that lie is even as a 20 something who’d never been to that hemisphere I knew it was a lie because weren’t these the people trying to kill the NHS
The idea that they could leave and somehow get better trade deals, especially with European countries. The EU is the deal! It’s a trade agreement that favors the participants, how could they ever get a better deal?? What’s baffling is that a lot of older people voted for it and they can actually remember when the UK joined the EU. That means they realize that the UK joined for the deal but somehow that’s worth nothing.
A lot of those older people are racist and blame foreigners for literally every problem, and continuously vote against themselves
Vaccines will give you autism, microchips, actual diseases etc. It’s one of the best medical breakthroughs in history and we have idiots ruining it.
I got the vaccine and currently have autism, microchips and an actual disease! Checkmate!
Though I’m pretty sure they’re all not connected to each other.
“Democrats are liberal/progressive”
In reality, they’re pretty conservative.
The real lie is the notion that “liberalism” was ever anything other than right-wing to begin with, let alone adjacent to progressivism.
By any civilized standard democrat politicians are far right extremists (a few token exceptions are closer to right or even center-right on some points, but they have little effect on the whole). Republicans are outright deranged lunatics, mixed with a worryingly increasing percentage of fascists.
Socially left, but not communist
The concept of trickle down economics. Anyone with a functioning brain can tell you that it would never work. But somehow people as a whole in the US still think giving corporations and rich cunts extra money, and tax breaks somehow lead to the 99% reaping a benefit.
It has never been true because the basic function of capitalism is to get as much money as possible, while spending the least amount of money to do it. There’s no room for passing on the extra profits to your employees, clients, or vendors.
Trickle down economics does work though.
It’s just that the thing that trickles down isn’t money.
In theory it does work, and it has historically worked in the past. A lot of wealthy people in the last few centuries were philanthropists that built schools, hospitals and other public works.
The main deterrent these days is that your typical billionaire is greedy and entitled.
Plus as we saw with some merchants and colonial figures, your name could be scrubbed from the history books and statues of you torn down if your past actions are incompatible with modern day morals. Edward Colston is a good example because despite him pumping a lot of money into philanthropic projects, he made his fortune from the transatlantic slave trade.
I can almost guarantee that people would have much more favourable views of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, etc if they pumped tonnes of money into building new homes and actual public transport infrastructure.
Starting a private space company doesn’t count as philanthropy. As for Bill Gates, years of medical disinformation have built up this narrative that he’s pumping money into medical research and vaccination programmes for nefarious reasons, like planting microchips into people.
My parents still think the 2020 election was stolen…
I’m sorry
* gestures broadly at US politics *
“Your socioeconomic status is a measure of work ethic, sacrifice, and ability to make good decisions. Poor people deserve to be poor, and suffer, for making bad decisions.”
Birth lottery which includes not just wealth but family connections is the biggest metric. We are way down the list of developed nations in terms of upward mobility. Only the outliers that prove to be of the greatest service to entrenched capital are granted entry. Most Americans, religious or not, have internalized the dogma of the prosperity gospel, itself an absolute parody of the dogma of Christianity it claims to be part of.
Go to any local fast food restaurant at rush hour, hell, go to any produce field at harvest, and tell me how much that studious hard work pays off. conversely, please regail me with tales of how hard it is to be a capital landlord,
making investmentsgambling with insider information with capital gained from previous exploitations, and then merely expecting an endless steam of capital for NO labor into what generated it. It’s like we were conquered by the traveling snake oil salesmen of old.It’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.
Also known as “prosperity gospel.” The religious justification for obscene wealth. The basic idea is that if you are rich, it’s because God has chosen you to BE rich because you are morally superior to everyone else. It’s an absolute perversion of Jesus’ teaching in the New Testament.
If you cut taxes on the rich it will benefit everyone.
But if you don’t agree to cut taxes on the rich they’re going to fly the plane straight into the ground just out of spite.
Except for the rich
Rising early and going to bed early is more virtuous than rising late and going to bed late.
Yeah we really gave morning people too much power. Awake at 5AM? You’re a go-getter. Doesn’t matter that you had to be in bed by 8pm to accomplish that. Awake until 4AM? You’re lazy and immoral, and should feel bad for being productive when there are fewer distractions. All because you don’t like being awake before the sun is up. Even if you sleep fewer hours than a morning person, (because morning people will start demanding your attention at 8AM on the dot,) you’re still considered lazy when compared to the morning person.
Hard to swallow pill, right here
Too many famous people are hailed as something they are not, and everyone believes it. For example Elon Musk is hailed as a genius when he seems to be showing lately that he is the dumbest person alive.
He’s not dumb. He is a troll who likes to control people, since he’s used to a level of comfort and prestige that has allowed him to do that his entire life.
He is dumb, he bought Twitter for how much more than it’s value, again?
His desire to troll and control is directly what enables his being s fucking idiot
That Israel is not a colonial state. All it’s founders defined it as a European colonial project. It was and is allied with all the colonial powers and projects like Britain, the US, apartheid south Africa, and Rhodesia. Its funding association was called the Palestine Jewish colonization association. It’s bank was called the Jewish colonial trust. The Jewish national fund and the Zionist project at large was from the beginning concerned with building segregated colonies.
First, lands were bought with foreign funding from feudal land lords, and their inhabitants were entirely dispossessed, kicked out. Then when awareness of the ultimate goals of the Zionist project crystalized and resistance against Palestinian dispossession mounted, the lands were ethnically cleansed by force and the people massacred. 700 to 800 thousand Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in one continuous military operation that spanned two years from 1947 to 1948.
Zionist leaders fully acknowledged that Palestinian demographics were a core issue to the Zionist project, that the Palestinian population had to be removed at any cost, which is exactly what Israel did. What lead to the Palestinians being defenseless in this situation? Colonial Britain abetted the formation of heavily armed Zionist militias with soldiers numbering in the tens of thousands. The arms of Britain’s colonial military presence were inherited by the Zionist forces that it supported. All this while Britain summarily excecuted any Palestinian found in possession of a firearm.
This is not to mention the enthusiastic support of european antisemites for the Zionist project, or its strict early opposition by antifascist jews.
The idea that Israel has any right to exist on Palestinian land is a lie that has been so heavily proliferated, it has to be debunked when it should be paid no consideration at all.
Donald Trump claiming executive privilege for his various crimes. It seemed like everyone was laughing about it even a couple months ago, like how can it be executive privilege when this is about things he was doing before and after his presidency? Then there was a narrative shift and now the media is back to hand-wringing over whether or not you can prosecute a former president. I don’t think anyone is expecting any of it to stick anymore.
“Trickle down economics lead to more wealth for all.”
“Trickle-down economics.” They’re literally saying, “we’re pissing on you.”
They also love to say, “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Unless, of course, you don’t have a boat and we know what happens to them. How well the stock market is doing means literally fark-all to most of us.
“Of course it’s true! Supply side economics is the cornerstone doctrine of colleges of economics the world over!”
And the entrenched, generational capital that fund/endow the most prestigious colleges of economics, that the rest want to be like, clearly stand to gain nothing ensuring global economic theory revolves around give the owner class all the money and pray for rain.
The belief that colour blind glasses work
See megalag’s videos
The videos I’ve seen on YouTube saying they don’t work have all been by people who have normal vision.
I have mild red-green colorblindness, and for someone like me the glasses absolutely do work.
I don’t have enough cones for red and green to see certain shades properly. The glasses turn down the other colors in order to bring my perception of red and green back into balance. I then see the right shades but darker like wearing sun glasses.
The first time I wore them in the fall it blew my mind to see all the different colored trees that are just green or brown without the glasses.
There would have to be thousands of people lying their entire lives saying we see brown where other people see color in order for the colorblind glasses to be a hoax.
It’s such a ridiculous assertion, yet YouTube is full of videos saying they don’t work.
Disclaimer: Let me be clear, I’m definitely NOT defending the color blind glasses, and especially not the ridiculously expensive and over-priced, scam brand(s). Also, not going to watch videos on YouTube so my comment doesn’t take any context from those links. All that being said …
Sometimes people don’t realize that color blindness is a spectrum and that there are different types. For example, a lot of people like me might more accurately be described as color vision deficient. To me, I can clearly and easily differentiate between red and green in most practical circumstances, particularly in close range. Things can get dicey from a distance, as well as with very subtle tints or with very dark colors.
A number of years ago, I purchased a cheap (like less than $20USD) pair of fishing sunglasses (mirrored, polarized sunglasses that typically use bright red, orange, or green tinting of the lenses) right before taking a trip in the fall. When I put those sunglasses on, it was really surprising. All of a sudden I could differentiate between the trees that were dead or which had already dropped their leaves, versus those that were actually bright red. Normally, unless I’m looking at a specific tree from a close distance, the browns, reds, and grays all sort of look the same and blend in. From a distance, like from the top of a mountain looking down into a valley, the fall color change of the leaves is a bit underwhelming normally. With the glasses on, I could actually see individual trees or clusters of trees that were red.
To be clear, the cheap sunglasses didn’t restore my color vision. I assume it just shifts the spectrum a bit so that colors, which are normally very muted for me, actually stand out in the same way that bright yellows and blues do. And I know that the colors I’m seeing are tinted, so not 100% accurate to what a person with full color vision would see.
And when I’ve tested the fishing glasses with Ishihara tests (numbers in the colored dots), they do not improve my ability to make those out. So, that’s further evidence that they aren’t actually restoring my color vision. Granted, the fishing sunglasses never marketed themselves that way, where as the expensive scam color vision correcting glasses heavy imply that they are miraculous even if they don’t outright state that they restore color vision.
That never made any sense to me. If the problem is with the cones in your eyes, then filtering the light going into them isn’t going to magically do anything. At best, you might be able to do stuff with contrast to make colors more distinct, but someone that’s red-green color blind could only have that actually fixed with new eyes.
Turns out that some people have overlap in color perception that muddies things, and when you use these glasses to filter out the “in between” wavelengths, everything becomes easier to distinguish.
Whereas I believed it with the analogy of hearing aids. There are a lot of people with hearing issues who can benefit from a simple amplification, or a more complex amplification of specific frequency ranges or filtered sound. By analogy, it seems perfectly reasonable that color-blindness may not be a binary condition so many people could benefit from more clearly distinguishing or amplifying certain frequencies. If I have a hard time distinguishing red from green, why wouldn’t glasses that filter red and green differently potentially work?
Hearing aids aren’t really comparable. You still hear fine, but volume needs to be at a higher intensit. Hearing aids solve the problem with simple amplification. Corrective lenses for myopia and hyperopia are similar, correcting errors in something that’s essentially just calibrated wrong.
Color blindness is more like being deaf. Don’t think of your eyes as being one input generating a single image, but each eye being four inputs generating four images that are then composited. With color blindness, at least one of those pre-composite images is just not being generated at all. Like how a genuinely deaf person can’t benefit from hearing aids because they don’t have funcional ears, a colir blind person can’t get new colors from simple lenses because they don’t have cones capable of detecting those colors.
You can play music really loud for someone who’s hearing is degrading and they’ll hear it fine if it’s loud enough, but you can’t get someone who is red-green color blind to see green by ramping up the intensity of the green; they can’t see that color for much the same reason I can’t see ultraviolet or infrared.
With color blindness, at least one of those pre-composite images is just not being generated at all.
From the posts of people saying it helped, I assume that like deafness can be a spectrum from hard of hearing to no inner ear nerves, color blindness can vary from limited cones for a color to no cones at all.
Wow, I actually believed in this one. Is there a short text version of what the videos are explaining?
Main idea: They can’t restore any color by filtering or let you perceive any new colors as their marketing likes to claim. At best they might be able to improve contrast of certain colors while reducing contrast for others - which is not at all what they say it does
The video goes much more into depth about their deceptive marketing and such
