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Really, Troy? Do I really need to explain why the losers are powerless to stop us dividing them, when they should be uniting against us?
Well, yes, actually, Hugo.
By controlling the truth.
That sounds a bit Big Brother.
I guess it does a bit, but let me give you an example. Through years of carefully crafted news stories, the losers know that they can’t trust politicians. We’ve carefully and dutifully taught them that for generations.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Of course it does. When a politician like ex-First-Best-Guy Phineas Finagle stands up in front of a packed media room and declares, ‘Read my lips, I never had sexual relations with that sheep,’ everyone knows that he did.
But he didn’t.
Troy, are you stupid? The photo of him fisting that sheep was all over the front pages of the papers. It looked like a scene from a Scandi porno. That one where the housewife played by Bertha van der Whoppeee has a dripping tap and Tigger Johansson plays the plumber. Just picture scene three, but replace Tigger with Finagle and Bertha with the sheep and that’s exactly the photo. Just without the marrow.
The photo showed Finagle as a student at veterinary college. He was assisting in the breech birth of a Texel ewe.
Fake news!
The lecturer and 17 other students who were present all swore that it was a breech birth. If you compare the newspapers’ version to the original photo, you can see someone photoshopped several white coated students out of the background.
FAKE NEWS! What about Simeon Shiftyus, who sold his story to the Capitol Post about how he used to procure sheep for Finagle?
Simeon Shiftyus? The man who was shown to have been serving years three to seven of a 15-year sentence for conning elderly widows out of their life savings while Phineas Finagle was serving as First-Best-Guy. Hardly a reliable source, would you think?
But it was in the Capitol Post, so it must have been true. The media wouldn’t lie, would they?
Have you actually lost your mind, Hugo? Of course they’d lie. Ask anyone who’s most likely to lie to you between a journalist and a politician and you know the only way they’re ever going to pick one over the other is by tossing a coin.
Well done, Troy, it appears that you’ve answered your own question of how we keep the losers divided. We control the media and use it to control the truth. It’s our supreme method of brainwashing the losers to believe what we want them to.
But you can’t control Everything Broadcasting Service or Everything Public Radio.
Don’t get me started on those state-funded medical experiments where they test the limits of brainstaining the masses.
Brainstaining?
Yes, brainstaining. We The People’s well-oiled and privately owned media operations spend all that time and money brainwashing the losers to give them beautifully clean and pristine thoughts that are aligned completely with our viewpoints, just for publicly-funded fake news to stain their perfect thoughts with their crazed, liberal propaganda. They brainstain the losers and we need to stop it.
I’m not sure I can agree with your claim of them pushing propaganda and your brainstaining made-up word seems an unbalanced way to describe their attempt to make their audiences consider a more balanced and neutral view of the world. A view that may be in their best interests, rather than the best interests of We The People. Both EBS and EPR are independent, only partly publicly-funded and tasked with a mission to present an honest and unbiased take on the news.
Honest and unbiased! That bunch of fake news peddling communists.
That’s an extreme take on public media. Admittedly, there is a genuine argument that some of their editors may simply ignore stories that undermine their own beliefs, but the stories they do cover are generally presented in an unbiased way. Remember, the rest of the media is privately owned and strongly skewed to the conservative viewpoint. So we can argue that, as the media landscape as a whole is so biased towards the right, a little liberal bias in a small minority of outlets is just helping to provide more balanced, though still right-biased, reporting overall.
We don’t want balanced reporting, Troy, we want reporting that’s biased towards We The People. So you’re right to say we can’t control EBS and EPR, but we can discredit them in the eyes of the voters. That’s why we claim that they’re massively biased against working-class Everythingers and, somewhat ironically, that they operate in the best interests of the elite. On top of that, we constantly remind voters that they’re the ones paying for these organisations that lie to them. If we can make the taxpayers angry about their money being wasted on communist propaganda, even if it is only 1.6 spondoolicks per person per year, they’ll be happy for us to stop giving them government funding and even to shut them down completely. And, praise the universe…dammit, I mean praise God, it’s a one-sided fight as publicly-funded media has an obligation to try and remain neutral while the privately funded media can exaggerate and outright lie to their heart’s content. So once we shut them down or take them over, We The People will control the truth 100%.
But it can’t be that simple. I’ve just said that everyone knows that journalists lie. They may enjoy the spectacle of the First-Best-Guy caught in the act of fisting a sheep, but they don’t really fall for it. They understand it’s just a bit of titillating fun. They’re never going to fall for any big lies in a big way.
Really, Troy, that’s quite a fascinating opinion to hold. So tell me, which tax is the most hated?
Well, as important as taxes are to a functioning democracy, none of them are exactly popular.
Yes, true, but which one do the media always report to be the most hated?
Oh, the Death tax, of course.
Noooooo, don’t you ever call it that. Are you an absolute lunatic?
But that’s what the tax is officially called, it’s the name Sebustian Wimple gave it when he first proposed the tax.
No, no, no, always call it inheritance tax or estate tax. It’s political suicide to highlight the fact that we even tax death.
But why, Hugo? When would you rather pay tax, today while you’re alive and want to spend your money or tomorrow when you’re dead and most definitely aren’t going to be spending anything?
I understand your logic, but I don’t ever want to pay tax, dead or alive. I earned this money through my own hard work.
I thought your mother left you her huge fortune when she died.
Well, yes, she did, but I used that money wisely to fund my many successful business ventures.
But everyone knows you’ve declared bankruptcy six times and the latest 1000 Wealthiest Barstewards Report said you’re worth less now in real terms than when you inherited.
Which is why I’m so bloody keen to be elected First-Best-Guy, so I can clean up, but you’re getting off the subject. Focus, Troy, focus. The death tax, as you’re so keen to call it, is Everything’s most hated tax. That’s official. A recent survey found that 52% of the population of Everything wants to scrap the tax. Not just tweak it or reduce it a bit, but scrap it altogether. How many deaths result in the tax being paid? Surely, it must be a large number if more than half the people want to scrap it, wouldn’t you think?
Do you know, I’ve never stopped to think about this. I’ve not even written a will myself and I’ve no idea what the tax rates are on inheritances. However, to answer your question, it must obviously be quite a high number if the majority want to abolish it, but I’m guessing more people think they’ll inherit something than actually do. So, I’ll say 40%. No, wait, I bet people are even more overly optimistic about being left money, so make that 30%. Yes, 30% of deaths lead to inheritance tax being due.
That was very impressive, the way that you carefully thought the problem through and logically arrived at a carefully considered answer. However, you’re miles off. Recent figures show that less than 2% of deaths lead to any death tax being paid at all. More than 98% of the population never gets impacted by the death tax, but more than half of them want to scrap it. Why on earth are so many people opposed to a tax that doesn’t affect them and only affects a small number of people, most of whom will have spent their lives avoiding paying all sorts of taxes at the expense of the poor?
Don’t let me interrupt your flow, go on, Hugo, get it off your chest.
Because We The People tell them it’s a nasty tax that should be scrapped.
That sounds rather labor-intensive.
No, we don’t literally go knocking on the doors of slums asking if we can come in for a friendly chat. We don’t need to, because we control the truth. You yourself said that the media always refer to the death tax as the most hated tax, even though only the wealthiest of us ever pay it. The people who own our media companies are exactly the people who have to pay death tax and they hate it, so they use their control of the truth to convince the losers that they should hate death tax too. And astonishingly, it works.
Okay, if your figures are correct, then it seems the losers are much more gullible than I ever thought.
Do you know the word ‘gullible’ isn’t in the dictionary?
Gosh, no, I didn’t know that, I wonder why it isn’t…oh, very good Hugo, I see what you did there.
What you just experienced, Troy, is one of the most effective demonstrations of the difference between our unconscious and conscious minds. The unconscious mind operates flat out all the time and handles most everything for us. However, to operate so quickly, it has to be very trusting and can’t waste time analyzing the information it receives. So when it’s told that the word ‘gullible’ isn’t in the dictionary, it instantly accepts that as fact and immediately moves on, in this case, expressing amazement that the word isn’t included. The conscious mind, on the other hand, is incredibly distrusting and doubts everything that it hasn’t had the time to carefully think through. Obviously, the need to carefully think through everything means that the conscious mind is much slower than the unconscious mind when it comes to dealing with information. You literally just saw how much slower it was, as it must have taken a second or more for your conscious mind to point out you’d just been gullible in falling for the suggestion that the word isn’t in the dictionary. Whether you’re trying to sell a truth or a lie, if you want it to be compelling, it’s essential that what you say sounds plausible so it won’t trigger the conscious mind into action. Manage that and the super-trusting unconscious mind will happily accept everything that it hears as the gospel truth. I bet you can guess who’s very good at doing this.
You mean journalists, don’t you?
Exactly, Troy, journalists. Now just imagine that you’re so filthy rich, you spend some of your money on buying a newspaper, the Capitol Post, perhaps, or a TV channel, like Dox News, for example. Or perhaps you buy both. Whichever way you go, you now have a pile of journalists working for you. Gosh, what do you think you could do with them?
Expose the outrageous corruption at the top of society?
I’ll be honest, I didn’t see that coming. Oddly, I had a feeling you were coming around to my way of thinking.
So, I’m meant to say that I’d use my journalists to make more wealth for myself by making politicians do the things I want them to. And in return, I’ll make them look good in the eyes of the losers and help them to get re-elected.
Well, you make it sound very unimaginative, but yes, that’s exactly what you’re meant to say. Just think back to the Bank of Everything web page that showed how little wealth the poorest 50% of the population have owned over the last 35 years or so. Never more than 4% of the nation’s wealth, as low as 0.4% and currently about 2.5%. Clearly, the poorest 50% wouldn’t keep voting for the People’s Party or the National Party if they stopped to think through how neither of these parties ever does anything to make their lives better. But they don’t think about it because they’re lazy.
I don’t like to say they’re lazy. Every living creature on this planet is struggling to survive and they’ve all evolved to be frugal, ensuring they don’t waste energy unnecessarily.
I accept that a pride of lions sleeping through much of the day on the plains of Gondwana is a demonstration of frugality. Each lion knowing that their next hunt may not be successful and energy wasted needlessly now, could be the difference between life and death tomorrow. However, Everythingers aren’t hunting gazelles and antelopes across the Gondwanan savannah. They’re buying ridiculous permutations of coffee to go with their smashed avocado on toast and then scrolling through endless videos on Bish-Bash-Bosh to keep their thumb amply exercised and limber so it’s ready at a moment’s notice to tap another emoji to express some semblance of feeling to another human sat just centimeters away, but too busy engrossed in their own shiny screen to offer any kind of real and personal interaction. Lions need to be frugal. Humans are simply lazy. Though to compound the issue, a lot of them are stupid too.
Hugo, I’m starting to think that you hate people.
People, Troy? Try to concentrate. No, I don’t hate people, I don’t even hate the losers. What I hate is their laziness and stupidity, even though it’s what We The People rely on to increase our wealth day after day. They happily watch Dox News or read The Capitol Post and lap up everything they’re told. They see someone who claims to know what they’re talking about and then go and repeat everything they hear to their family and friends because they think it makes them look smart. Just last week I had a conversation with a security guard in Laufeyville about supply-side economics. I was struggling so hard to keep a straight face and internalize my laughter, I actually peed myself. I had to swap pants with Derek from my security detail before I went on stage. But this guy was hilarious. Despite the fact that his wife’s employment troubles mean they’ve had to turn to food banks on occasion and his 19-year-old daughter struggles to pay for her insulin, he was earnestly insisting to me that we need to double-down on supply-side economics.
Sometimes you’re extremely unsympathetic, Hugo, laughing at that poor man’s plight.
Just sometimes? Now I’m worried you haven’t been paying attention. Anyway, as much as I despise the term ‘trickle down economics’, I had to drop it into the conversation with this security guard to see if it might make him visualize what he was saying any better. But no, he was 100% convinced that the best way to make poor clowns like him better off is to give more money to the wealthiest. What a ducking moron! It should be obvious, without even thinking about it, that you’re not going to make Peter richer by giving money to Paul. But why hasn’t that dumbass security guard taken a minute to actually think about it? Then he might have realized that if you give one billion spondoolicks a year to one person, they’re never going to spend all that money. Probably 950 million spondoolicks will just sit in a bank account and will never trickle down to the poorest in society. However, split one billion spondoolicks between 20,000 people and you can be certain that each and every one of those people will spend all of their 50,000 spondoolicks every single year, because they have to put a roof over their family’s heads and feed them. They can’t afford to leave money in a bank, so every single one of those billion spondoolicks will trickle out into the economy. But no, Mr security has never thought to use his own brain cells to think it through, but just listens to what the media tells him, before parroting it at anyone else who will listen to him. He deserves everything he doesn’t get.
I’ve actually had similar arguments when trying to turn National Party supporters to the People’s Party, but they just don’t seem to hear what I’m saying.
Of course they don’t hear you. They don’t trust you. They trust Dox News and the Capitol Post. So when they tell them that giving tax cuts to billionaires will make them richer, they believe it.
But that’s crazy. The Capitol Post’s owned by Happenstance Bigjolly, one of the richest Everythingers ever and Dox News is owned Smelter Machete, not only also filthy rich, but not even a natural born Everythinger. He’s still got a Barbaquian passport. Why do they trust these people when they’re so rich they clearly have nothing in common with the losers, and particularly when one of them is a foreigner?
Well, well, Troy, interesting to hear you using the word ‘foreigner’ like it’s a bad thing, but to answer your question, Dox News and The Capitol Post say the things that many people believe and that they say themselves. We naturally like those who believe the same things as we do and we naturally trust those who we like. And it doesn’t just apply to the media that supports the National Party. The papers and TV channels that are pro-People’s Party are just as bad. They tell their audience that the People’s Party is the only party that cares about them, but they’re no different, supporting politicians who only ever act in the best interests of We The People. The media don’t report the truth, they create the truth. And your liberal fascist cheer-leading media is every bit as corrupt as our fascist cheer-leading media.