So between this, the manufacturing consent, and the brexit post, I couldn't decide which post to make this on.😅

Despite it being 4 years old and already somewhat outdated, one of the reasons I still really recommend that people read Dark Money by Jane Mayer is that it dissects the Kochtopus which is essentially an exploit of the consent manufacturing machine. To say they're lobbying is a bit like saying a cake has some sugar in it. It's a total understatement. They don't just lobby or buy propaganda willy nilly, but rather look for where the filters are most vulnerable and just pour money into dominating the weakness. In addition to funding politicians on both sides of the aisle, they fund their own research, they fund their own pundits, they fund their own public school resource non-profits, they financially back lawsuits that attack unions and regulations in order to set precedent for future lawsuits, they fund their own university law and economic programs in prestigious schools to teach their preferred concepts, they fund their own astroturfing groups to create the illusion of mass support, they essentially built their own infrastructure that taps into the current system and makes it, so that much like capitalism, you can't really get a mainstream source or opinion that hasn't been influenced by their work.

And of course, that's just the beginning because every other billionaire and industrial group has been doing the same thing. For example, The Guardian itself, much like many other media outlets, takes massive amounts of money from the Gates Foundation and very rarely publishes anything critical of their work, while giving a mouthpiece to neoliberal optimism industry favorites like Steven Pinker who pushes misrepresented and sometimes flat out false statistics released by World Bank and IMF. Once you start peeling back the layers you'll either feel like you're going mad or give yourself a rage induced aneurism.

#madpridewasright