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HOW BARACK OBAMA BUILT AN OMNIPOTENT THOUGHT-MACHINE, AND HOW IT WAS DESTROYED
Tablet ^ | 21 Dec, 2024 | David Samuels

Posted on 12/21/2024 6:19:10 AM PST by MtnClimber

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1 posted on 12/21/2024 6:19:10 AM PST by MtnClimber
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To: MtnClimber

Social media and leftist government censorship to shape public opinion. But now the censorship is being ripped away from the democRAT’s control. And they are in a panic.


2 posted on 12/21/2024 6:19:21 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

....and Like Lemmings they seem to head
Straight for the cliff with a
Raging Ocean far below.


3 posted on 12/21/2024 6:26:45 AM PST by Big Red Badger (ALL Things Will be Revealed !)
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To: MtnClimber

do you think Obama paints his toes?


4 posted on 12/21/2024 6:27:01 AM PST by WeaslesRippedMyFlesh
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To: MtnClimber

He lost me the minute he started in with America is a democracy.


5 posted on 12/21/2024 6:32:42 AM PST by philman_36 (Pride breakfasted with plenty, dined with poverty and supped with infamy. Benjamin Franklin)
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To: MtnClimber

So. Communists, censorship, and propaganda.
Everything anyone with the ability to think, could see and understand.


6 posted on 12/21/2024 6:32:56 AM PST by vpintheak (Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug. )
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To: WeaslesRippedMyFlesh
do you think Obama paints his toes?

I think Big Mike the Pike paints them for him.

7 posted on 12/21/2024 6:34:24 AM PST by philman_36 (Pride breakfasted with plenty, dined with poverty and supped with infamy. Benjamin Franklin)
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To: philman_36

fire engine red to match is lip stick
mike needs something to shoot for
first black president
really, a sissy marxist POS?
that’s the best you could do black?
i love all americans and I’m trying not to see color, but stop making me
head shake


8 posted on 12/21/2024 6:42:39 AM PST by WeaslesRippedMyFlesh
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To: MtnClimber

long read, done first section. Considering pedigree and connections of author, I am looking to be gaslighted, but so far, pretty darn good:”It was the entirety of this apparatus, not just the ability to fashion clever or impactful tweets, that constituted the party’s new form of power. But control over digital platforms, and what appeared on those platforms, was a key element in signaling and exercising that power. The Hunter Biden laptop story, in which party operatives shanghaied 51 former high U.S. government intelligence and security officials to sign a letter that all but declared the laptop to be a fake, and part of a Russian disinformation plot—when most of those officials had very strong reasons to know or believe that the laptop and its contents were real—showed how the system worked. That letter was then used as the basis for restricting and banning factual reports about the laptop and its contents from digital platforms, with the implication that allowing readers to access those reports might be the basis for a future accusation of a crime. None of this censorship was official, of course: Trump was in the White House, not Obama or Biden. What that demonstrated was that the real power, including the power to control functions of the state, lay elsewhere.


9 posted on 12/21/2024 6:52:50 AM PST by sopo
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To: MtnClimber

A long, thoughtful, and detailed essay.

I agree with most of it, but Samuels is unwilling to acknowledge how much the old media controlled the political environment before the digital age.


10 posted on 12/21/2024 6:54:17 AM PST by marktwain (The Republic is at risk. Resistance to the Democratic Party is Resistance to Tyranny. )
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To: MtnClimber

wow , so good, great section on Axelrod includes:”With Obama’s reelection campaign on the horizon in 2012, the White House’s attention turned to selling Obamacare, which would become the signature initiative of the president’s first term in office. Without a healthy, well-functioning press corps that could command the attention and allegiance of voters, the White House would have to manufacture its own world of validators to sell the president’s plan on social media—which it successfully did. The White House sales effort successfully disguised the fact that the new health care program was in fact a new social welfare program that would lower rather than raise the standard of care for most Americans with preexisting health insurance, while providing tens of billions of dollars in guaranteed payments to large pharmaceutical companies and pushing those costs onto employers. Americans would continue to pay more for health care than citizens of any other first world country, while receiving less.”


11 posted on 12/21/2024 7:00:52 AM PST by sopo
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To: MtnClimber

On the bright side, half of the country was never fooled by Obama for one minute. He only managed to hypnotize those open to suggestion. Rush had a lot to do with that. He was quite the counter weight.


12 posted on 12/21/2024 7:09:19 AM PST by DeplorablePaul
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To: MtnClimber

Their arrogance has no bounds. We could all see it, did they really think we didn’t? Then Elon comes along and buys Twitter and it’s as though the end of the world was happening. Maybe we didn’t understand the depths to which media and social media were being controlled by the government but it was exposed by the panic we witnessed before Elon even walked in the door.

Almost nobody is watching cable news anymore. They’re watching the free press exercised by individual citizens, of which they have no control. The same is going on across Europe, except those citizens don’t have the protection of our Constitution and it shows. People being imprisoned due to exposing the corruption and the corrupt abusing their authority to retaliate against those speaking out.

It isn’t going to end well. Even here, if we think the machine is dismantled because Trump has been voted in and Elon will dismantle that which is bloat, we are kidding ourselves. The machine is still in place and is going to fight to the death to continue to exist.

While the 2020’s have been a complete disaster so far it’s about to get much worse imho. They would rather tear everything down and leave chaos for Trump rather than see him, or the American people, succeed. It’s power and money for them...or nothing for anyone. They are traitors to the American spirit and its people.


13 posted on 12/21/2024 7:11:22 AM PST by fuzzylogic (welfare state = sharing of poor moral choices among everybody)
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To: MtnClimber
“... OMNIPOTENT THOUGHT-MACHINE...”

Believe me, there is not and never WAS any ‘thought’ associated with “O’Bozo”... !

It is/was always and EVER only about emotion. His voter base would not (and many not even now), have anything whatsoever to do with ‘thought’.

Any group which can be successfully appealed to or persuaded on the basis of race or gender can not be considered thoughtful voters, and their decisions can hold no more merit that what can be expected from children or the mentally challenged

Children and the mentally challenged make decisions strictly on the basis of 'What I want', and 'What I feel'

No such conclusion, decision or view can have value if based on such a narrow , subjective and emotional basis.

14 posted on 12/21/2024 7:11:56 AM PST by SMARTY (In politics, stupidity is not a handicap. Napoleon Bonaparte I)
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To: MtnClimber

“... has been reconfigured at by new technologies. In turn, these technologies - the telegraph, railroads, radio and later television, the internet, and most recently the networking of billions of people in real time on social media platforms — set the rules by which stories are communicated, audiences are configured, and individuals define themselves”

That passage, which I have shortened, caught my attention. The rest of the article is a word fog on other subjects.


15 posted on 12/21/2024 7:18:17 AM PST by cymbeline
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To: sopo

American exceptionalism as the saving grace


16 posted on 12/21/2024 7:19:38 AM PST by sopo
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To: MtnClimber

Obama like the a great Oz was just the man behind the curtain who with his cabal in the West Wing ran the country with Biden as a senile sock puppet. The policies and decisions made during Obama’s de facto third term were a disaster for the country. The collapse of the Obama third term was the inexplicable decision to allow Biden to run for re-election ending in the disastrous first debate when Biden’s senility could no longer be concealed. The hasty decision to anoint Harris as the nominee without benefit of primaries or even an open convention was a grave mistake that lead to Trump’s ultimate victory. All efforts to destroy Trump with phony lawsuits only solidified Trumps support. The real clincher for Trumps triumphant return was his narrowly escaping an assassination in Butler, PA where the iconic image of a bleeding Trump with his fist in the air urging his supporters to fight on shaped public opinion in a way not seen since the famous photo of the flag raising at Iwo Jima.

Obama has left the Democratic Party in shambles without any leadership. Nancy Pelosi will after her hip fracture will not be minority leader for long and Chuck Schumer too will soon be replaced. Obama would be smart to just enjoy his millions in his Martha’s Vineyard mansion as his plans for a fundamental transformation of America have ended.


17 posted on 12/21/2024 7:34:41 AM PST by The Great RJ
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To: MtnClimber

T’was not social media killed the beast. T’was gas pumps and cash registers.


18 posted on 12/21/2024 7:53:29 AM PST by The Duke (Not without incident.)
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To: MtnClimber

Negroes can break an anvil, don’t make it any harder than it is.


19 posted on 12/21/2024 7:54:41 AM PST by exPBRrat
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To: fuzzylogic
Even here, if we think the machine is dismantled because Trump has been voted in and Elon will dismantle that which is bloat, we are kidding ourselves. The machine is still in place and is going to fight to the death to continue to exist.

When Trump arose after the near-fatal headshot, he shouted from his heart “Fight! Fight! Fight!” I’ve taken the first fight to be for the election. The second fight is the transition. The third fight will be when he’s President.

We are not fight to win decisions. We are fighting to permanently eradicate the so-called “Democratic Party”, it’s ideology, and all leftists, socialists, communists, and marxists. It’s a war of TRUTH vs lies, good vs evil, decency vs perversion.

We even have to fight doubt and this who say and believe it can’t be don’t. It can. We will fundamentally restore America.

20 posted on 12/21/2024 7:57:35 AM PST by The Truth Will Make You Free ( )
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