"In a way, the world-view of the [Manipulators] imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding, they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird."
Who are the manipulators? In George Orwell's "1984" it is the Party. Who would it be in our world: corporations, the military-industrial complex, the national security establishment, the Tea Party, …?
Could the attack on public education be an attempt to ensure that people are incapable of understanding the manipulations? Could the attack on true health care be an obfuscation to cloud understanding. Could the use (or misuse) of words like patriotism, free market, tax burden, job creation, and on and on be used as "flagrant violations of reality"?
Could all this manipulation be a means to confuse people so that they became "not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening" and therefore not even show up to vote?
