“We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”
~ Edward L. Bernays (1891-1995), author of Propaganda
Joel Bowman, with today’s Note From the End of the World: Bangkok, Thailand...
Tell a lie often enough... and people will learn to fill in the rest of the quote. (But that doesn’t mean they’ll understand the point of it.)
By now gentle readers will have suffered the cringe-worthy video of the world’s Somnambulist in Chief, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., sleepwalking aimlessly around the grounds at last week’s G-7 summit in Puglia, Italy. In case you haven’t yet seen the footage, here’s a clip...
[Special Note: As we go to press, White House Propagandist in Chief, Karin Jean-Pierre, has falsely claimed the above video is a “deep fake” (meaning A.I. altered), a statement she had subsequently to retract… hey, props to KJP for preempting the exact point we were about to make further in this very article! Read on…]
Hostess with the Leastess
Poor ol’ Giorgia Meloni. Not only was the popular Italian prime minister and host of the revolving gabfest charged with shepherding Sleepy Joe back to the group...she had to stage a fête for what must surely be the slimiest bunch of political losers, lame ducks and lunatics disgracing the world stage today.
Right to Left: President of European Council Charles Michel (unelected eurocrat, fetid swamp creature)... German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (just lost EU parliamentary election)... Canadian President Justin Trudeau-Castro (lowest poll numbers in Canada in half a century)...French President Emmanuel Macron (just lost EU parliamentary election)... Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (host, member of the “hard-right,” highest approval rating for any EU leader)... United States President Sleepy Joe Biden (“Biden...?” “Biden...?” “Is there a President Biden here...?”)... Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (cabinet approval rating at 16%, calls to step down as PM)... British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (about to get a well-deserved trouncing in upcoming UK elections, candidate for worst Tory PM in modern history in a very, very tough field)...European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (unelected EU henchwoman, threatened Italian voters before Meloni’s election, “We have tools...”)
Pssh! No wonder Meloni extended a special, personal invitation to Argentina’s Javier Milei, who arrived a few days late after getting business done in his own backyard, down at the end of the world, first. (As to why El Señor would be seen cavorting with such a rabid cesspool of managerial collectivists, we’ll have to leave for another day...)
But back to ol’ Sleepy Joe...
Pretend People
For concerned citizens... and even those unconcerned, who simply don’t like seeing doddering human mannequins drifting off into open, unsupervised spaces...the man’s behavior has become something of a problem.
Whether it’s the sneggerlegerlainerwhachamadunnit gaffes... the aimless ambulatory misadventures... the pathological commitment to untruth... the weaponization of federal agencies... or the steely determination to avert the imminent onset of peace... even moderate Democrat voters are starting to realize...
...Obama’s third term has been his worst!
Here is the former/shadow president, coaxing “Weekend at Joey’s” off the stage at a celebrity fundraiser in Hollywood on Saturday night.
On cue, the mainstream media lauded the event, crammed to the hilt with people who literally pretend to be other people for a living, as “the most successful fundraising event in the history of the Democratic Party.” With countless red carpet groomers behind him and zero felonies to his name, Team Obiden raked in a cool $28 million for the night.
Taking a somewhat different tack, The Donald held a similar event a few weekends back... which involved 34 felony counts, zero celebrities... and $200 million raised. The media’s response: Yawn.
At this point, polls for the 2024 presidential race have Orange Man Bad ahead on both the national stage and in every single one of the battleground states.
But moderates and sensible centrists needn’t start looking for short ropes and long drops just yet. The Democrats have an ace up their sleeve when it comes to combating inconvenient public perception...especially when it’s accurate.
Which brings us to our latest installment of everyone’s nobody’s favorite game of mass delusion, cognitive dissonance and cerebral contortionism:
It’s not US... it’s Russia!
Dear readers will recall favorite episodes from the recent past, including “The one where Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election... to Russia!” and “The one where it wasn’t the Fed’s money printing that caused inflation... it was Putin’s Price Hikes!” and “The one where we flat-out told you we were going to blow up the Nord Stream Pipeline... then Russia did it!”
Not to mention the popular, oft re-run classic, “The one where 51 top intelligence officials told American voters right before the election that Hunter Biden’s highly incriminating and totally legit laptop was really... ‘textbook Russian disinformation!’”
Having reliably sold the catchy “It’s not US... it’s Russia” slogan to the American public more times than we have room for in these pithy Notes, we were hardly surprised to learn that questions regarding Biden’s mental acuity would receive the same mass managerial treatment.
After last week’s unscheduled walkabout at the G7... and his increasing tendency for onstage rigor mortis... calls have come for the White House to publicly release the tape of the president’s conversations with special counsel Robert Hur, so voters can get a take on his mental fitness.
Readers will recall it was special counsel Hur who recommended Biden not be prosecuted on classified document charges (remarkably similar to those Mr. Trump currently faces) on grounds that the president is merely “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Unfit for prosecution, in other words... but totally fit for another four years with his shaky Skeletor fingers on the nuclear button.
Already The New York Times has obliged, running a standard form article titled:
“Russian Disinformation Videos Smear Biden Ahead of U.S. Election”
And now, from one of the interchangeable bobbleheads on MSNBC:
“A huge part of the Mueller report [which found no evidence of Trump’s collusion with Russia] is Russian disinformation tactics, and one of the themes this election cycle is that Joe Biden is too old to lead. And so everyone is seizing upon this. And it is a classic disinformation tactic. And I think the best thing we can do is to prepare the American people for this false narrative.”
Did you get that, dear reader? Prepare to “be prepared.”
On that note, we leave the final word today to The Father of Propaganda himself, Edward Bernays, who literally wrote the book Propaganda and who sure knew a thing or two about manipulating We, the Public:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”
“There are invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions. It is not generally realized to what extent the words and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the scenes.”
~ Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
P.S. It is true, dear reader… the mainstream media is no more concerned with the truth than it is with shaping The Narrative of the elite, managerial class. Look at their handling of practically every major event of the past few years, from “The Covid” to “The Science” to the “Laptop From Hell” and plenty more besides…
Honest inquiry was suppressed… legitimate debate shuttered… reputations destroyed…
Is this how a free and open society best operates? How we sort truth from lies? The fools from the knaves?
Fortunately, the legacy media’s stranglehold is loosening as more and more skeptical individuals begin tuning out of the mainstream “programming” and into independent news and opinion sources… like right here on Substack.
We known this because, even here, at our own humble Notes publication, we reach readers in all 50 US states and across 130 countries all around the world… an unthinkable proposition for all but the most powerful media corporations even a few years ago.
In place of monolithic mainstream media megaphones shamelessly doing the elite’s bidding, we stand for open inquiry, intelligent questioning and a censorship-free press. That means free markets… free minds… and free people.
As such, we are especially thankful to our dear Notes Members, whose generous support makes this work possible.
If you’re not already a member, but would like to join our burgeoning community of critical thinkers, open minds and incurable skeptics, please feel free to join us and support our work today. Cheers! JB
Spot on the money Joel. What's interesting about all of this is people the world over are starting to catch on to the MSM. They see Biden in the flesh as what he is and that is totally opposite what the lying presstitutes say. It causes every rational person to pause and query "What else are they lying to us about?" That is the beginning of the path in search of the truth. Then they find Joel Bowman over on Substack! LOL
I think it’s very noble of Milei to spare some of his valuable time to explain to the G7 donkey like leaders (apologies to lovely domesticated equines) that government isn’t the solution to our problems, government IS the problem.