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Maybe 25 years ago, drilling down into something or other, I learned of a manipulative process used by government (not “even government”, hell they invented it) industry, and business. It’s called the Delphi Technique. It is actually a perversion of the original process, used to gaslight people or the public. Especially popular in school settings as well. School board meetings, city council meetings.

Manipulation of attitudes is part and parcel of propaganda. Making a group of people believe that mainstream opinions are “controversial”. Ultimately it’s a kind of psychic mind cage. With the Delphi technique, neutral “facilitators” are brought in. Except they aren’t neutral. Everything is broken down into groups, and resistance to a position or policy is blunted. If you don’t understand what’s going on, it looks like magic. “Consensus” was reached. Except it wasn’t, it was a carefully crafted mind fvkkery that is highly unethical, but it works.

They get everyone to think that their viewpoint the majority viewpoint is extreme or an outlier. You are the problem. Not the problem itself. At the same time, the genuine radical or extreme position is held as normal and good, and what’s wrong with you for not going along with the “experts” and all decent and good people?

It’s a form of “Manufactured Consent”, to get people to think that “Gee, maybe I am kind of out there on this”. They start with the conclusion first, and work backwards. The last thing they want is to follow facts wherever they lead.

I went to a couple of meetings where they used this exact technique. BLM was supposedly gathering comment on their 5 year plan for our area, and local residents and ranchers were invited. But most of the crowd were from out-of-area environmental groups and even BLM employees in plain clothes. So they broke into small groups and gathered comments from everyone. The locals’ comments were included but sort-of disappeared into the fog of comments from non-locals. They got exactly the answers they wanted while pretending to respect local concerns. Both meetings worked out identically.