Brainwashed. Maniuplated. Mislead. Mind controlled. No one wants to be controlled by other people; we all want to make independent decisions and "be ourselves." MJ used to accuse me of brainwashing her into making the financial decisions that I was comfortable with or making my standard of thinking the predominant one, so I know how negative emotions can be conjured from feeling brainwashed. When thinking of authoritarian countries that control everything that their citizens do including the way they think, most think of heavily domineering countries that censor outside opinions and punish those who critize the political leaders, like North Korea, China. Yet with as many ways to express ourselves and all the independence that we have in the U.S., I feel in many ways the country is brainwashed as well, it just hides better in plain sight because we don't think we are.
It has only been the last few years where I realized how much the media controls the narrative, and how important controlling the narrative shapes the mood of the country, the values of the country. I made a speech at a politics camp before my senior year of high school and railed about the evils of the media and how dangerous they can be for the country, but I was mainly just reading it off of others' opinions, political texts I had read and regurgitated, without fully understanding how the media does it. Perhaps I still don't. Even without any thought of the political leaning of the media, the news has a bias of trying to make money, and they make money by getting the most eyeballs to read or watch their material, and nowadays the most eyeball-catching material is controversial things, eyecatching headlines, sensationalist new stories. I feel it in my daily stock shows or news bulletins: the more drastic the headline, the more I read to make sure I'm not missing anythng, especially if it's about a stock market crash and I feel like I'm losing money. Other news stories work similarly: they play on people's emotions of fear, worry, anger, distrust (usually of the government or other ethnic groups). The slogan used to be "if it bleeds it leads," as in if people died, then that story comes first, and that's still somewhat true, but the real No. 1 story now is politically controversial material.
I unfortunatley think that this brain-washing effect has colored the coverage of the Derek Chauvin trial, probably the biggest trial since the OJ Simpson case. Specifically, news coverage has already caved to the mob opinion that Chauvin should be guilty and be convicted for the murder of Derek Chauvin. He may still be, but now a murder conviction has become the expected result, and anything short of that (like manslaughter) will be seen as a travesty and cause riots in Minneapolis and cities all across the world. As a lawyer who was trained in law school to assess all the facts and apply the law, it sure seems like there has been enough reasonable doubt that George Floyd's death may have been partially caused by factors other than Derek Chauvin's knee, and even if there was direct causation that Floyd was killed by Chauvin, that Chauvin did not act maliciously. I haven't seen enough evidence of murder from the limited amount that I have seen of the case, and even non-lawyers know that a murder conviction requires certainty beyond a reasonable doubt. Unfortunatley the media know that there is a lot of raw emotion with this case and is feeding off of the racial motivations and making this case about systemic racism and police brutality against black Americans, which I haven't seen any evidence that this case was racially motivated......but that narrative gets the most attention, and that's what sells. So instead of, when later in the week the jury comes back with a verdict in this case, this being a minor case with local coverage about a black man who died due to a police officer's misconduct, this will be the biggest news story in the U.S. representing the system vs. the common man and white people v. blacks and the police v. blacks.....we are unfortunately being brainwashed by the media to think this way, and it will have some really bad effects if a certan outcome (maybe the right outcome legally, but the wrong one for many) isn't reached.
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