Sanders-forgængeren fra 2004

it was only a scream...

The "Dean scream" was deliberate character assassination by capitalist mass media that could not tolerate even the slight leftward shift of the Overton window that Dean represented.

Corporate mass media revealed to anyone brave enough to face the facts how it colludes across individual business entity boundaries to protect the collective interests of corporate elites in the "Dean scream" episode. It takes bravery because of the implications.

Consider: 1) Every single pundit, talking head, and their entire studio teams knew that the "Dean scream" meme was bogus, yet they forced that meme anyway. Anyone employed in public audio/video media is acutely aware of sound engineering, even if they don't know how the engineers do it. They know about multiple sound channels, mixing boards, and background sound because they deal with this technology every single day. This means that the entirety of the corporate mass media presented a false narrative to the public; they lied. All of them. In chorus.

Consider: 2) That ALL corporate mass media so quickly picked up and amplified the "Dean scream" forced meme indicates not only is this common behavior by the corporate media, but that it is habituated; automatic; a capitalist immune system response. In other words, the corporate media not only has done this before but the viewer just never noticed, they do this every day, day in and day out. They force memes. They manufacture narratives. Indeed, it is their job.

Consider: 3) A candidate in a presidential election is a huge thing for all the mass media to manufacture a false narrative about. For the mass media to attempt to destroy the candidacy of someone running for president implies that candidate is a threat to the corporate mass media's interests. If corporate media's interests were aligned with the interests of the typical American, they why would they bother with the false narrative? Why not just inform the viewers honestly about their concerns with this particular candidate? No, the only reason to bother manufacturing a false narrative would be if electing Dean would be in the best interests of the common American, but against the interests of the mass media's corporate owners. The only point for the mass media to coordinate the production of false narratives is to influence the public to act against their own interests and for the interests of big business.

Consider: 4) Bush won and Dean lost. Indeed, Bush never even had to face Dean, and instead faced off against "Lurch", a candidate of his own intellectual caliber and a faithful tool of the establishment through and through. This is proof that the corporate mass media's forced meme worked and "influenced" the public into voting against their own interests. There is another term for this: "Brainwashing". Nobody who failed to support Dean after the "Dean scream" forced meme can convincingly argue that they were not brainwashed by the corporate mass media; that they were not remote controlled through the TV; they they were not played like a violin; they they didn't dance when the mass media yanked their puppet strings. Of course, the notions of autonomy and independence of thought and action are central to every American's identity, and any evidence that proves they are not as autonomous and independent as they like to believe is seen as an existential threat to their identity as human beings. To demonstrate that someone's opinion is not their own and was planted in their head by cynical business entities; to demonstrate that someone's behavior is no more independent than a cow in a herd, or a fish in a school of fish; these are perceived by that person as a direct assault on the core of their being; an attack on who they are. As a defense mechanism, the individual will then rationalize their opinion/behavior; they will generate endless justifications for how they just happened to independently, through some different means, come to the same conclusion that was programmed into the herd. This is the underlying mechanism behind the truism that "It is easier to fool someone than convince them they have been fooled," and it is the behavior ridiculed by Twain in the "Royal Nonesuch" section of Huckleberry Finn . The mass media is acutely aware of this behavior in the human animal and routinely employs it to recruit the brainwashed into being accomplices in their own brainwashing.

If the reader has been able to follow me through the cognitive dissonance that discussions of this aspect of American culture inevitably generate, then it should be obvious to him or her that the guiding of opinion by the mass media demonstrated by the "Dean scream" episode is ongoing, re-entrant, recursive, and self-reinforcing. Anyone attempting to confront this must first confront the fact that they have already been successfully brainwashed. This takes bravery.