A Lady Pole like feeling.

Sometimes, when I attempt to explain anything pertinent to our politics, I feel a bit like the character Lady Pole from the novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.  Whenever she would try to explain to people about the harm caused to her by the evil faerie prince, she was compelled to speak a kind of gibberish instead. This was because of the spell the faerie had her in.

Outside the land on Faerie, and more specifically, in the United States of today - there are many possible reasons why our political discourse can turn into gibberish. These reasons range from the mundane to the incredible. By "incredible," I mean that which is often relegated to the realm of "conspiracy theory"

A simple reason we might be inclined towards political nonsense is because we are constantly exposed to political nonsense. Mass communications, often one-way communications (with the possible exception of the internet) fill our minds with fantasy. What has become the mass media, including television, radio, and the internet to some extent, assaults us with the greatest illogic  history has ever known.

So far, I have been speaking of the mundane, which should be fairly obvious to most. Moving beyond the mundane, into the realm of ideas often relegated to "conspiracy theory," there is much to consider.

Let's start with one that is a little less controversial. For decades, we have known about the potential for subliminal messages to alter thought and behavior. Some would say the potential is exaggerated. For instance, it has been claimed that for one to be motivated to buy a soda at the drive-in movie, one first had to be truly thirsty. And, there is some quibbling over how "subliminal" is really defined.  The above link makes the case that sometimes we mean "supraliminal" rather than "subliminal."

To move further into the realm of "conspiracy theory," There are allegations that, whether this counts as subliminal or not, the US government has technology to broadcast audio messages directly to a single individual.   In fact, here is a video that shows a private individual demonstrating the technology allowing him to do this very thing.

Of course, there is much more, and I haven't even mentioned things like MK Ultra and Project Mockingbird. There certainly are cases when fact is stranger than fiction, but at least it is still unlikely that one could be manipulated by a faerie prince.