Public consensus con game: time after time, the media deception artists have aided the ongoing revolutionary agenda by portraying radical schemes as "the will of the people". (Defining Popular Opinion).

All successful revolutions have prospered only by creating the impression that revolutionary goals are popular. Tyrants throughout history have therefore sought to manipulate public opinion by orchestrating press coverage. Adolf Hitler had his rallies at Nuremberg and Munich highly publicized. Lenin helped popularize his Bolshevik revolution with his newspaper Iskra ("The Spark"). Dr. Eugene Methvin's study Roots of Radicalism asserts that Lenin "had to start by pioneering in-depth interviews, sampling techniques and motivational research." Lenin employed these focus groups to assess discontent, and concentrate it in favor of his revolutionary power grab.

More modern revolutions seeking to centralize state power are no different. They too need to manufacture the appearance of "consensus" favoring the would-be tyrant's assumption of power. Journalist John T. Flynn noted this phenomenon in the 1940s in his book As We Go Marching. Flynn visualized public opinion as "a sort of social psychic stream -- millions of minds animated by a common expectation or liking or hatred or appetite. Organized or not, they form a compact minority and, according to the importance or intensity of the conviction, a dynamic one." Flynn noted that a revolutionary is "forever concerned in locating these currents or forces and running with them. It is in this that he differs from the philosopher and the reformer and, above all, the Utopian. He is not concerned with altering the course of these streams or in abolishing the force but rather with harnessing its power to his own conquest of power."

The mass media play a pivotal role in any revolution's climb to power because one of the first goals of the leftist revolutionary is to isolate traditionalists by creating a feeling of helplessness before the revolutionary assault. The revolutionary media cartel therefore manufactures the appearance that left-wing goals represent the popular will and that fighting against this accumulation of state power is hopeless.

Opinion Polls: Manipulating the Questions

The Establishment opinion cartel is adept at manipulating polling results, and then widely reporting the fraudulent results to create the appearance of popular support for its subversive agenda. The polling results may be skewed by skillfully using selective language.

A textbook example of the difference the wording can make is a ballot referendum, known as "Question #3," that appeared on Massachusetts ballots in 2002:

Do you support taxpayer money being used to fund political campaigns for public office in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts?

The referendum was designed to determine if voters really wanted to pay for a so-called "clean elections law" they had already approved four years earlier by a 58-30 percent margin. The law had been carefully marketed to voters in 1998 as a means to clean up the supposedly wretched influence of money in the financing of political campaigns. The law called for state financing of political campaigns, but the money was not forthcoming from a reluctant legislature.

Opponents of the 1998 law believed that if voters were given a more honestly worded referendum on this welfare-for-politicians scheme, the voters would decisively reject the law. Not surprisingly, Massachusetts voters did indeed reject the law in the more honest 2002 Question #3 vote: The "no" vote won by a nearly three-to-one margin.

Yet the polling tricksters proved they could subvert even this clear mandate. In 11 of the state representative districts, Massachusetts voters in 2002 were also polled on Question #4 that was slyly worded to mimic and support the deceptive 1998 ballot question:

Shall the state representative from this district be instructed to vote in favor of legislation that would fully implement and fund the state's voter-approved Clean Elections law, which provides a set amount of public funding for candidates who agree to strict fundraising and spending limits?

Voters in those 11 districts supported Question #4 by a ratio of nearly two to one, even though they also opposed Question #3 by about the same ratio as did voters throughout the state. Of course, voters who voted "yes" on Question #4 and "no" on Question #3 cast contradictory votes on what was essentially the same question, even though the two questions were next to each other on the ballot. They obviously were confused, and they voted for the "clean election law" wording because they did not understand that it meant they would have to "fund political campaigns."

Although the media cartel does not write ballot questions, it should serve as a watch-dog, exposing deceptively worded referendums so voters will better understand what they are being asked to vote for. But more to the point of this article, Questions #3-4 on the Massachusetts ballot illustrate the extent to which results can be skewed, and the media pollsters are masters at the game.

Hollywood's America

The opinion cartel's bag of tricks for distorting reality is not confined to public opinion surveys, of course. Consider, for example, the distorted depiction of America as seen through the lens of Hollywood. Norman Rockwell's America may be a thing of the past, but America has not become so morally bankrupt that it resembles Hollywood's America either. At least not yet!

The powers that be in Hollywood obviously know that they are pushing the envelope with their "entertainment." They are not so isolated from the real America that they fail to "get it." They really do "get it," but their intent is not merely to entertain but to implement a revolutionary agenda (see the article on page 38). That agenda includes creating the appearance of support for the "new morality" they have embraced. Thus they depict what they hope America will become as opposed to what America now is.

Mass Demonstrations

Another element in the cartel's bag of tricks is to accept the claims of radical street demonstrators and rally organizers at face value. The mass media deliberately portrayed the carefully packaged "Million Mom March" in 1999, for example, as a virtually spontaneous uprising of middle class mothers in response to gun violence in schools.

Shortly after a tragic August 10, 1999 shooting at a Los Angeles Jewish day care center, the nationwide media began broadcasting reports about how a common soccer mom had become fed up with gun violence and was organizing a "Million Mom March" to enact gun control legislation in Washington. The story of this political novice standing up to the hated "gun lobby" resonated with liberals throughout the media and the event became a national sensation. People magazine dutifully reported this mom's statement that "I didn't know the Brady Bill from the Brady Bunch."

But the mom in question, Donna Dees-Thomases, was disingenuous. And the media knowingly aided and abetted her lies. Despite Tom Brokaw's claim to his NBC Nightly News audience that Dees-Thomases was "a mother who'd never been politically active until she saw this [day care shooting]," she had long been a well-connected political activist. This alleged political neophyte had given $1,000 to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign the day before the day care shooting and is sister-in-law of Susan Thomases, the Clinton administration's close political fundraiser. Donna Dees-Thomases had served for several years as a congressional staffer for prominent Democrats Russell Long and Bennett Johnston. And though she told the Washington Post that "I couldn't organize a class picnic," Dees-Thomases did organize CBS News Washington bureau election coverage during the 1988 presidential campaign!

The mass media deliberately failed to report Mrs. Dees-Thomases' credentials in order to create the false impression that she was simply one of millions of common housewives struggling against the powerful, wicked gun lobby. They further aided the deception by always using the Dees-Thomases term, "Million Mom," and failing to point out that the actual turnout for the march was about 170,000. In essence, the media falsely painted this propaganda stunt by the radical gun control lobby as a huge, spontaneous uprising from Main Street, when it was in reality a meticulous, top-down orchestration by Madison Avenue promoters and Beltway brain trusts.

Ever operating in the service of the Left, the media can always be counted on to go to those whom they have already designated as "leaders" to affirm the popular mandate for whatever radical project currently is on the front burner. Many of these "leaders" are leaders only because the media have appointed and anointed them as such. Dees-Thomases became the media-designated leader of the suburban soccer moms. Similarly, Jesse Jackson has become the media-designated leader of black Americans. Of course, Jackson represents the views of only a fraction of black Americans, but the media create the impression that he represents all blacks.

The revolutionaries at the top know that if they can project the perception of popular support for their agenda, resistance to their plans will be weakened. Some opponents to the supposed "wave of the future" will lose heart, believing that resistance is hopeless. Others will lose conviction: "If everyone else is for it (or doing it), maybe there's something wrong with me and I should come on board too."