In the main, Dickey, mass media shapes public opinion in North America through a combination of carefully presented "news", entertainment, and advertising. And the majority of people go along with it and never question it. There will always be a few voices in the media who buck the trend, but only very few, and most people won't listen to them and wouldn't believe them if they did listen to them.

Thus do governments and special interests shape public opinion and arrange public consent.

This was also true in Nazi Germany or in the Soviet Union or Red China or ancient Rome or the British Empire. The Soviets did it too clumsily, though, and they didn't offer their public enough domestic "goodies" to keep them pacified. Accordingly, they eventually failed in maintaining the consent and cooperation of the people.

I think Noam Chomsky is basically correct in what he says about "manufactured consent". It's the same as manufactured public demand for big-selling consumer goods, such as the "Tickle Me Elmo" doll or the Ipod. You convince everyone they've gotta have one, through aggressive advertising, and they all dutifully troop out like lemmings and buy one...or several.

Ka-Ching!!!!!

I tend not to be affected much, because I don't watch TV or listen to the radio, but I've always been a maverick and an outsider when it comes to stuff like that. There aren't enough people like me that it's ever going to be any real threat to the $ySStem.

The only thing that is a real threat to the $ySStem is its own idiocy and its basic insanity....its own excessive appetites. Those will probably cause it to fail in the end, as did the Soviets, the Nazis, Napoleon, the Romans, and whoever else you could care to name who was once king of the hill.

And then something else will take its place.