The Truth Will Set You Free

A few words about "propaganda".

I spent much time this week on Twitter discussing (arguing about) trans rights. The conversations went about as well as conversations go on Twitter, so there’s no point rehashing them. Instead, I want to focus, for at least for a few hundred words, the argument’s core: that our culture is being inundated with LGBT “propaganda”. Here’s the meme that inspired the conversations:

As you can see, one girl with a tuba has, inexplicably, placed the bell of her instrument over the head of another girl. One can imagine the tuba player (tubaist?) blasting skull-shattering oom-pah-pahs into the other girl’s poor ears while she’s JUST TRYING TO LIVE HER LIFE!!!

If that’s the case, we can certainly feel some sympathy for the poor girl oddly standing against a wall without so much as raising a finger in protest at the intrusion to her day as she’s JUST TRYING TO LIVE HER LIFE!!!

Another possible explanation, however, is that the second girl came into the band room and placed herself in front of the tuba. In this scenario, the tuba player is doing what she’s supposed to be doing – playing the tuba in the appropriate environment to play the tuba – but she’s got this little weirdo trying to prevent her from expressing herself. If that’s the case, then it’s the tuba chick (tuber?) who’s JUST TRYING TO LIVE HER LIFE but is being interfered with by the girl claiming to be a victim.

So is the situation that the tuba is being piped through the school to the annoyance of a student body JUST TRYING TO LIVE THEIR LIVES or is the situation that one student is staging an anti-tuba protest?

Where is the line between advocacy and propaganda? Moreover, where is the line between propaganda and culture itself? How do we know if we are, in fact, the victims of propaganda? Worse, how do we know if we’ve become agents of propaganda ourselves, spreading the dreaded “talking points”, unaware that we are doing the bidding of evil (almost certainly Jewish if my Twitter feed is to be believed) masters?

I have to be honest – I don’t really know the answers to these questions. After all, one has to believe that the most effective propaganda would obscure the fact that it’s propaganda at all.

What even is propaganda? Need it be nefarious? Or can all information be viewed as propaganda depending on who’s doing the viewing? That seems to be the crux of the arguments I was having on Twitter. Those opposed viewed any sympathetic portrayal or positive representation of trans people as propaganda, as is any iconography associated with the LGBT movement, such as rainbows. So, obviously, is Pride Month. Those of us who express love and support for our LGBT friends and family are either spreading the propaganda ourselves or hapless stooges too dumb to recognize our own gullibility in the face of all the money to be made from Big Trans.

Last night, I watched some of Lex Fridman’s interview with that scamp Tucker Carlson, who, to his credit uttered this self-aware quote: “As has been correctly noted, I’m a dick.” And he is. Setting aside his dickishness, Carlson discussed American propaganda regarding the War in Ukraine, saying that Americans have been conditioned by the media which, in his estimation, is the propaganda wing of the American government - and he would certainly know about working for a propaganda wing of the American government. Is Carlson right to be skeptical of government narrative? Of course he is.

We should all be skeptical of the information we’re receiving from whatever source. We know this already. The problem with all cultures, though, is how do we identify the water we’ve been swimming in our whole lives? Is all information, in a certain sense, propaganda since information can only be expressed through the filter of subjective human experience?

Even our most basic knowledge can be weaponized. Early in 1984, for example, Winston writes “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four.” But Orwell also says, “In the end, the Party would announce that two and two made five and you would have to believe it… The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right.”

Is freedom the right to be free from propaganda? Or is freedom the ability to determine the truth for yourself. If that’s the case, I guess it should come as no surprise that we cannot even agree on facts anymore. Is this what freedom looks like?

People opposed to the acceptance of LGBT into society might point to Orwell’s line about common sense being the heresy or heresies to support their position. After all, it is common sense that a person born a boy should believe themselves to be a boy. Except that, despite what common sense dictates, they do. So either they’re wrong or “common sense” is wrong. From there, we fall into the rabbit hole of trying to prove our position by hurtling dueling medical studies at each other, discounting the others’ experts, etc.

But common sense also dictates that people should live how they want to live and to be accepted for it. Common sense dictates that an aggressive nation should not invade their neighbor. Common sense dictates that a representative government should represent all of its citizens without fear or favor. But common sense so often breaks down at the moment it meets reality.

Which is how we get advocacy. Which is how we get accusations of propaganda. Which, like beauty, ends up being in the blinkered eye of the beholder. The other thing you can do, if you feel like you’re being blasted with information with which you disagree is to change your environment. After all, that girl JUST TRYING TO LIVE HER LIFE isn’t doing a thing to alter her situation. In fact, one might even have to conclude that she wants to hear those oom-pah-pahs in all their rainbow-hued fabulousness. Otherwise, why the hell did she stick her head in the tuba?