Keepers at the Gate: He Who Controls Television Controls the Masses

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Tue, 13 Dec 2005 09:40:47 -0800 (PST)

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http://valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com/2005/12/keepers-at-gate.html

 

 

 

Keepers at the Gate

He Who Controls Television Controls the Masses

 

By Manuel Valenzuela

 

In this age of modernity and technology,

where the television monitor has become

the center of the average American household,

from cradle to grave acting as surrogate parent,

teacher, role model and as influencer of human thought,

it should come as no surprise that entire populations

can be controlled with such facility and efficiency,

turning once thinking humans into grazing sheeple.

For in today's day and age, he who

controls television

controls the masses, and he who

controls the masses

controls the nation.

 

Television has become, quite simply, the greatest tool

of mass manipulation and thought control civilization

has ever seen, an incarnation of the myriad of myths,

fables, fictions, story telling, theologies

and all other forms of `bread and circus' history's elite

have concocted from which to retain power and control

the lower echelons of man's corrosive pyramid of hierarchy.

 

In the television the elite have found

the greatest weapon of mass control, seemingly able

to dictate culture, politics, events, thought and destiny

from the moment of birth to the time of death.

It can even be said that it is

- they who can determine reality

in twenty-first century America,

magically making history disappear,

altering the past,

changing the present and

molding the future.

 

Reality is what they want it to be,

shifting culture to their dictates,

conditioning minds to fit their goals,

pushing society in the direction

that most benefits them and erasing from memory

any manifestation that does not correspond

to the reality they wish to create.

 

The ruling elite can, through clandestine programming

and seemingly innocuous entertainment,

influence the way millions of minds think,

invariably transforming free thought into shackled reasoning.

 

Over decades of methodical molding and development,

beginning at the earliest possible age of a human being,

those who control television oftentimes succeed

in altering and indeed controlling

the opinions, beliefs and thoughts of a person.

Thus, the goals and views of the elite

are transmuted onto those who stand NOT to Benefit

by the beliefs they now possess

and the thoughts they have been brainwashed to accept.

 

This silent conditioning, achieved willingly by society,

allowed inside the home by millions of families,

absorbed into the mainstream and

transported over the airwaves to all corners of the nation,

creates entire armies of sentient beings

conditioned never to question authority

or the actions of governance.

Over decades of assimilation and dumbed-down programming,

the population comes to accept that fate has accorded them

the role of sheeple in the games of social Darwinism

and human caste systems.

 

Thus, the interests of the elite and the control

of the powerful are allowed to continue uninterrupted,

without protest, dissent or challenge, assured of dominance,

slavery and enduring reign over the sheeple of America.

In today's day and age, those who control television

are corporations and the fledgling corporatists

now in possession of government.

 

The rise of fascism in America has also given rise

to the mutually beneficial interests of both government

and corporations, making the use and control of television

of utmost importance to the ruling elite.

 

With government and business fusing together,

the resources of both entities can join forces

to achieve the desired regimen of thought control,

thereby having a greater impact in controlling

more of the population, for longer periods of time,

and in greater capacity,

both by mass manipulation and by offering

exactly what the human/animal brain wants most,

- distraction.

 

Thus, mass media serves a paramount importance

in the rise of corporatism, using all tools at its disposal

to condition, manipulate, indoctrinate,

distract and transform the masses,

steering the population in the direction

both government and business wants us to head in,

creating massive armies of drones

marching lock step in service of,

and controlled by, the corporatist few.

 

With Americans watching so much television on a weekly basis,

- discarding books of enlightenment - for monitors of idiocy,

- preferring the drug of fantasy

over the sobering realm of reality,

- no longer capable of analytical, logical thought,

choosing to incorporate as their own the views,

beliefs and opinions of corporate media,

the keepers at the gate are free to do as they please,

- disseminating lies,- distortions,- manipulations, -

- propaganda and fictions into our homes

and the minds of our family, young and old,

never discriminating and always flowing

in the interest of the Establishment.

 

From birth they have us hooked

with their highly addicting programming, from cartoons

to sitcoms to movies to sports to newscasts

to niche channels, using our animal emotions and passions

to intravenously feed us their vast array of products

and opinions and services and trends and beliefs.

 

From birth the manipulation of brainwaves begins,

altering development, robbing innocence,

- supplanting free thought with manipulated ideas

tested in marketing laboratories,

making consumers and producers of us and

enslaving our biological and psychological needs

to those outcomes that offer them

- the greatest revenue, profit and rise to power.

 

In time we are conditioned to become

- slaves to the system, their system,

becoming unquestioning automatons never wondering

why it is that the same system we are a part of

is intent on keeping us subjugated and exploited,

why we work the hours we work,

why we work five days instead of four,

why we devote more time to work than to our children,

why we put up with office politics,

why we put up with long and stressful commutes,

why our pay is what it is,

why we continue watching television,

why we place blind faith in immoral politicians,

why we ever supported an ill begotten war,

why we vote against our own interests,

why we continue shopping for goods we don't need,

why we purchase the products we buy,

why we never question authority or speak truth to power.

 

As the brainwashing continues,

and as the last remaining vestiges of free thought

are chained to the gallows of corporate control,

we fail to see that we have become

a mere pawn to the system,

an army of worker bees and soldier ants,

one cog in a giant engine, exploited for our energy

and our existence, a part

easily replaceable,

easily discarded,

easily abandoned.

 

Through the devastating dumbing-down mechanisms

of television, along with the - abandonment of education -

and the comfort of American middle class life,

the Establishment is assured of

- a population acquiescent and pacified,

remaining silent in times of disquieting conundrums,

- made merry by the plethora of bread and circus

emanating throughout the land.

 

The genius of the American Establishment,

learned after WWII, was in sacrificing a minute piece

of the American pie to the growing middle class,

that would have previously been greedily kept

– in order to maintain the masses

in an utter state of comfort, thus creating

- an environment of silent passivity,- complacency and calm,-

where the masses would have

- nothing to protest or dissent over.

 

The Establishment

learned that a citizenry made comfortable in life

would not protest the inevitable enslavement

of their lives, or of their children.

 

It learned that slavery could be maintained,

and even sought by the slaves themselves,

by offering a few more morsels, crumbs and bones

than before, enough to live in comfort and thus

never being given the opportunity to seek revolution,

challenge authority or protest the status quo.

 

By perpetually satisfying

our mammalian passions, needs and emotions

with a larger sliver of the prosperity pie,

the Establishment saw that - production increased,-

- consumption rose exponentially,a calmer society permeated,-

- citizens actually further enslaved themselves, and

in the end, the same products produced by the middle class

invariably were consumed by them as well, thus returning

the allocation of resources back to the Establishment.

 

The television would only serve the interests

of the Establishment even further by distracting

the enslaved masses in search of escapism

with fantasy-filled media, by programming young minds

to the dictates of the system and by saturating the airwaves

with the products and services produced by the masses,

for the consumption of the masses,

and the growing power of the Establishment.

 

For years this worked marvelously, in the process helping

to make American citizens the most comfortable people on Earth,

given an overabundance of products by which to enjoy life,

a growing standard of living and materialistic wealth

beyond anything seen in human history.

 

Yet the added morsels and crumbs and bones and fictions

given us could not hide the control over our daily lives,

our indebtedness to the system, our impotence versus power

and our continued subservience to the Establishment.

 

The Soviet Communist Paradigm

 

The full introduction of the television

would also be used for more sinister methods,

arriving just in time to see the emergence of the elite's

- control of the masses through Fear and Xenophobia,

using the manufacture and marketing of enemies,

such as the dreaded Soviet Communist, to better control

the direction of the nation and the population.

 

The Establishment became fully aware of a grave

and growing danger to its power and control

that if allowed to foment in the minds of the masses

could spell a deep threat to the system.

 

This fear by the elite was not of Soviet communism,

which was a product of human greed, corruption

and debauchery by the Russian government,

but of the principles of socialism,

which were gathering steam throughout the world

in the years after World War II.

 

The Establishment, both government and corporate,

would use the television, and the newspapers and magazines

it controlled, to preempt the principles of socialism,

many of which espouse the teachings of Christ,

conditioning in the population fears, lies,

manipulations and hatreds regarding human socialism,

thus assuring itself that such a threat to its existence

would be squashed in America.

 

Through television and mass media Soviet

Communism and socialism were Fused Together,

fear of " Red Soviets " was made all-encompassing

and the introduction of the Cold War, thanks to

an easily-manipulated and fear-gripped populace,

became a prosperous era for war profiteers,

defense contractors and corrupt politicians.

 

The Cold War established with the population

the idea of America as benevolent and inherently good,

always right and never wrong,

fighting for the freedom of the free world,

doing battle against the dreaded " Evil Empire. "

 

Americans with social democrat tendencies were persecuted,

anything anti-corporation was chastised, those pointing out

the debased faults of the American system were ostracized

and an entire nation was brought under the noose of fear.

 

An enemy had been created, and hundreds of millions

of Russians were made subhuman monsters,

all innocent and as decent as you and me,

all fighting to survive a totalitarian regime.

The brainwashing of Americans was so overwhelming,

so successful, that for decades the Cold War raged on,

living off the fumes of illusion and charades,

creating bogey men lurking behind dark corners

and making the principles of socialism

a taboo subject to those whose un-enlightenment

is a cornerstone of the keepers of the gate.

 

Television and mass media were used

to conjure up an enemy that was designed

and marketed to last into perpetuity,

- granting Perpetual War - for Perpetual Profit, -

giving sustenance to the military-industrial complex.

 

Fear oozed out the pores of average Americans

as we were made to believe in mushroom clouds,

told to build concrete bunkers,

`educated' in the inherent evil of communists,

of evildoers hating us for our freedoms.

 

We were spoon-fed the lies and manipulations

and charades through sitcoms, movies,

advertisements, newscasts and even cartoons.

The conditioning was as pervasive as it was successful.

 

It was corporate mass media, from newspapers to magazines

to television, that transformed an entire nation

into enemies, allies into rivals, millions of humans

into communist monsters and a Cold War

into tense periods of mutually assured destruction.

 

So invasive was the idea of Soviets and of communism as enemies,

in fact, that to this day those brainwashed decades ago

still see an enemy behind every progressive

and left leaning American, still calling us " Communists "

when the new, hip, in vogue term is " Terrorist. "

 

Only with the fall of the Berlin Wall

were we allowed to see

- the fallacy behind our lunacy, the façade

finally evaporating,

finally opening our eyes to a cold war

that was designed for the salvation of the elite,

not that of the masses, so that a perceived threat

to the Establishment's crony capitalism, profit,

greed, wealth and power could be retained, so that the

American people would be taught and conditioned to despise

the principles of socialism, for the elite saw in it,

and still do, a severe threat to their way of life.

 

For the salvation of the elite

Americans were conditioned into hysteria; for our continued

ignorance the Cold War subsisted, empowering itself

and living off our programmed fears and hatreds,

calculated to keep us on the path to crony capitalism

and debauched democracy and away from other,

possibly better mechanisms of human society.

 

Our fears and hatreds

made it easier for the elite to control us;

our blind faith in the propaganda they spewed

further degraded our lives.

We were negated from seeing the beauty of Russia

and Eastern Europe; their cultures and peoples

were marginalized and denied us.

A threat was over hyped on purpose, creating an enemy

for geopolitical and power hungry goals.

 

Along with a cursory semblance of greater freedom,

as well as the illusions of democracy,

 

Americans were made to believe in the sanctity of the nation.

America could do no wrong;

jingoism and nationalism flourished,

we were conditioned to believe in an America

- the righteous,

- defender of human rights,

- protector of democracy,

- cherished beholder of justice and equality,

- an upholder of all things good.

 

All the while America's government was unleashing

- hell on Earth upon the peoples of the south,

- creating wars, supporting dictators and despots,

- arming militaries, training soldiers of death,

- promoting murder, assassinations, torture,

- coup d'etats, death squads, creating slave labor,

- impoverishing millions, exploiting billions

and condemning to limbo countless human beings

whose only crime was being born in lands

coveted by American corporate interests.

 

It was the mass media, using all tools at its disposal,

that created good versus evil,

cowboy versus Indian,

American versus Soviet, masquerading the interests

of the few for those of the many,

spawning fear and hatreds, altering culture

and opinion to the tunes of the Establishment,

controlling the fate of an entire nation.

The same exact thing has occurred in this fictional war

on terror, simply the latest resurrected marketing ploy

from the dusty bins of history.

 

What the Cold War shows us is that the population

of a wealthy nation can be, through the corporate media,

easily cajoled into doing the bidding of the elite,

standing proudly by, and in furtherance of,

the beliefs and goals created by the system.

A nation can in the span of a few years or months

- be made to hate, fear and seek war,

its collective emotions and psychology and passions

exploited and manipulated by mass media,

particularly television.

 

Reality is anything

the Corporate Mass Media Wants It to Be,

and with a nation addicted to television,

subservient to its hypnotizing glare,

ready to absorb its opinions and visions,

unquestioning and sedentary,

kneeling in reverential attention at the images

it generates and the sounds it emanates,

the real danger becomes when the concocted reality

of corporatists becomes the reality of the masses,

when fiction and lies and deceptions

become forgotten or ignored,

and when fear, hatred, jingoism and xenophobia

are birthed through the careful manipulation

of our animal emotions and passions.

 

As has been seen during the Cold War, and now

- the fictional war on terror, it seems entire populations,

no matter how civilized or comfortable their lives are,

no matter how advanced or sophist. they might claim to be,

are impotent to the captivating powers of television

and mass media,- the Weapons of Choice for Corporatists,-

creating citizens ready to do the bidding

and dying for the interests of the elite,

ready to sacrifice their freedoms, human rights,

democracy and nation's Constitution

in furtherance of the growing plague of fascism.

 

Keepers at the Gate

 

Corporate mass media, today more than ever,

has the ability to push exactly the right buttons,

using the powerful images and sounds of television,

by which to steer an entire population

in the direction it wants it to head.

 

Images from video can be manipulated, altered, omitted,

repeated, inserted and given the aura of reality, while

sounds can be used to further the interests of the mass media.

Opinion can be and is oftentimes skewered

in favor of the Establishment's goals, as reporters,

journalists and anchors assist in furthering the propaganda

of their corporate owners, in the process censoring the debate

and dissent necessary for the healthy function of democracy.

 

The Keepers at the Gate are the Creators of Reality,

of news and opinion, those that filter

and whitewash and erase from memory,

those whose job it is to distract

and sensationalize and manage culture.

 

It is they who possess the responsibility of altering

mass thought and opinion in favor of the Establishment,

pushing the goals of the few into the homes of the many.

 

A nation that has been weaned away from the liberating

mechanisms of knowledge and reason and free thinking

must depend on the opinions it hears

and the images it sees to create its own reality.

Pushed away from and trained to detest reading,

getting news only by watching television,

trained to absorb the views of pundits and talking heads

whose opinion always favors the interests of the elite,

America's population is robbed of divergent and diverse views,

failing to grasp the dissenting opinions and debate needed

for brains to analytically synthesize all angles of a story.

 

Instead, a population conditioned to have the attention span

of 10 second sound bites has been manipulated to hear

the repetitive slogans and cheers and talking points

emanated by the talking heads seen on television.

 

Through repetition of catchphrases and words the opinion

of the masses is generated, creating a consensus of

mass appeal the easier to dictate the direction of the nation.

 

In such a way, since 9/11, the corporate media,

in partnership with the Bush administration,

has methodically managed the " war on terror "

through censorship of diverging opinion,

by the repetitive use of slogans and catchphrases,

by creating alternate realities and by controlling the views,

images and sound bites allowed to fester on the airwaves.

 

For they are the Keepers at the Gate, the entities

that decide what constitutes the programming and news

and reality the masses should be made to watch.

They are the puppeteers and we the marionettes,

our actions and opinions controlled

with the invisible strings of manipulation.

We are mere pawns in their games of chess and monopoly,

impotent to challenge their omnipresence.

- Our reality is their fiction,

whatever they decide to filter into our lives.

 

They can manipulate us into an immoral and illegal war

using the tools learned from Madison Avenue marketers,

exploiting our mammalian passions, wants and emotions,

tinkering with the buttons of human psychology.

 

They can condition us to hate and fear and seek vengeance,

using enemies, both real and imagined, to force us

to give up freedoms and rights and democracy,

in the process transforming

once decent people into cheerleaders and supporters

- of torture, mass murder, illegal occupation, war crimes

and the evisceration of both due process and habeas corpus.

 

They can devise a fictional war on terror,

using modern day bogey men to manipulate our fear-induced

emotions, thereby enriching and empowering themselves,

all the while we willingly concede our remaining freedoms

and rights to the corporatists in power.

 

The Keepers at the Gate determine the morsels and crumbs

and bones of information we are allowed to see and hear.

It is they who have made the Bush/Iraq war a war invisible

and unseen, hidden from our conscious, its ramifications

on our soldiers and on Iraqis made to disappear.

 

It is they who brazenly darken the arrival of dead

and injured soldiers, they who censor the horrors of war

and the war crimes committed in our name.

 

Thanks to the Keepers at the Gate, the Iraq war exists

in the clouds, as if taking place in another planet,

inside a vortex of unknowns, away from

our gluttonous reality, our comfort level retained

and secure from the ghastly realities of a war of choice

upon millions of innocent Iraqis.

 

Hidden wars that do not litter the landscape

of American consciousness have a purpose, however.

For a losing war that cannot be seen by the masses

cannot create dissent, protest and shock.

 

A quagmire that is unseen retains the aura of victory,

refusing to give rise to revulsion and disgust

in the minds of millions who, if allowed to see

the true nature of man fighting man, might become a threat

the Establishment does not wish to foment.

 

For the Keepers at the Gate have decided that Imperial Wars

for resources, wealth, power and geopolitical advantage

must continue; the Iraq war must not be relinquished.

And so, in the time honored tradition of controlling the masses,

television has risen to hide what is not to be seen

and disseminate only what is needed,

feeding us morsels of news so that we do not become a threat.

 

It is corporate media that has been created

to maintain the balance of news, used to expose

the enemies of power and the pawns of the elite

whose usefulness has served its purpose.

 

The corporate media and its journalist hacks

that masquerade as propagators of news manipulate us,

deceive us and confuse us, using the power endowed to them

to cover up the mistakes of the Establishment.

They have become the loudspeakers and sycophants of power,

employed to propagandize corporatists and their goals

while suppressing and maligning those who question

and those who speak truth to power.

 

News anchors have become corporate shills,

pushing the products and services sold by the mother company,

offering sensationalized news that serves only to distract,

dumb down and make forget.

Reporters propagate the government's lies and deceptions,

rarely, if ever, seeking truth and all its angles.

 

The bottom line has replaced truth,

propaganda has replaced reality

and lackeys have replaced honorable journalists.

 

The interests of those who control television and news

bureaus are given precedence over informing the public,

objectivity and truth becoming victims of religious,

political and philosophical inclinations.

Suppression of truth has given way

to the pursuit of ideology and zealotry,

with the beliefs and goals of reporters,

producers and editors allowed to dictate

what is and what is not considered valid news.

 

The Keepers at the Gate are the stimulators

of our reality, suppressing what is not expedient

to the Establishment, disseminating that which is,

systematically concocting and perfecting the formulas

to better control and manipulate the American public

and knowing what buttons to push so that, in the end,

we invariably take the road they have designed for us.

 

The Keepers at the Gate dictate

- what is, what was and what will become,

hiding behind cameras to push society in that

certain direction that will be of most convenience to them.

They are embedded throughout corporate mass media,

becoming the gods of destiny for hundreds of millions

of citizens, creating the invisible hand and the omnipotent

consciousness of American culture, politics and society.

 

They can conjure up bogey men out of thin air, creating

enemies and wars out of lies and embedded manipulations.

They can ruin the lives and careers of honorable men and women;

they can birth division and animosity between citizens.

Presidents and politicians are born and made through

the fictions and whitewashes at the disposal

of the Keepers at the Gate, their careers eviscerated

when falling out of favor with the Establishment.

 

Populations are

brainwashed through propaganda;

dumbed down through the idiocy of circus-like programming;

manipulated by subjective and skewered newscasts;

distracted and made to forget by sensationalist bull manure;

emotions and passions easily controlled

- by fear, hatred and warmongering.

 

For years the corporate mass media

has been marinating our existence,

taking our youngest, inculcating them to produce,

consume, obey and be a good slave,

reprogramming their innocent minds

with the incantations of corporatist goals,

taught never to question and always to follow, told

to place blind faith in corporations and so-called leaders.

 

The Keepers at the Gate are the arbiters of reality,

determining our fates through the monitors we eagerly

cherish like idols perched in the middle of our homes.

Daily we sit and pray to the new religion of man,

told to produce and consume and obey and follow,

our thoughts calibrated to the tunes of power.

 

The news chosen for our consumption is tainted

with the ulterior motives of control;

the shows and sitcoms we watch contain the poisoning allure

of fiction and perfection that in the human condition

is constantly sought yet can never be achieved;

advertisements, the real purpose behind programming,

saturate our minds, manipulating our emotions,

needs and wants, compelling us towards purchase.

 

From our earliest days the Keepers at the Gate

bombard us with their propaganda,

using the seduction of television, with its vast array

of brain altering mechanisms, its fantasy-laden programming,

its opinion-transforming sound bites

and its captivating role as parent,

teacher and role model for millions of children

no longer reared, taught or disciplined by overstressed,

overworked and greed addicted parents.

The Keepers at the Gate are the sentinels watching over

our lives; the overlords of America's destiny.

 

They are allowed inside our homes, their technologies

adapting and learning ever more each year

how to control and manipulate us further.

They are the Keepers at the Gate, the gods of information

and the purveyors of the Establishment's interests.

 

Truth is their enemy;

knowledge their poison;

free thought the antidote

to their dreadful virus;

our incessant watching of television

sustains and feeds them, granting them energy.

 

Our ignorance is their strength; our acquiescence

their ability to continue emaciating our lives.

 

The greatest weapon of mass control to ever arise

sits proudly in our home, welcomed by us

into the safe confines of where our children reside.

 

The tool used by corporatists to gain dominion over our

nation and lives has become our most cherished possession.

We place full trust in its capacity and technology,

in the escapism it can offer and the news it can provide.

 

It is the only way the Keepers at the Gate can enter our homes,

thereby penetrating our minds and that of our children.

Yet we control the remote

and the ability to leave the monitor off.

It is up to us to kill our television before it kills us.

 

Only then will the Keepers at the Gate

dissipate from our minds, and our consciousness.

For they can enter our home

only if we allow them and today, more than ever,

they need to be shown the door, with darkness enveloping

their attempted passage into our lives.

 

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic and commentator, international

affairs analyst and Internet columnist.

His articles as well as his archive can be found at his blog,

http://www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com and at

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info as well as at other alternative

news websites from around the globe. Mr.Valenzuela

is also author of Echoes in the Wind, a fiction novel.

Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at

manuel.

 

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