The BFD | From the Desk of a Male Pale and Stale

It’s fun to watch videos of American graduates being asked geography questions. Not only do many of these students think that Australia is in Europe, that Africa is a country rather than a continent, and that NZ is in Middle Earth (we’ll give them a pass on that one) but many are unable to answer even basic questions about their own country. No, Canada has not become the 51^st state, at least not yet. Below is a video of Americans struggling with such questions:

Their misconceptions have recently been polled by a survey company called “YouGov” with interesting results, see below:

As one can see there are some glaring misunderstandings, and not only about minorities and what is the racial makeup of the US e.g., no, the US is not 41% Black, it is 12% Black. (This is interesting because according to the FBI, African-Americans accounted for 55.9% of all homicide offenders in 2019, with whites 41.1%, and “Other” at 3.0%. Among homicide victims in 2019, 54.7% were Black or African-American, 42.3% were White, and 3.1% were of other races. The greatest risk to a Black man in the US is not a White Supremacist, nor the police, but other Black men.)

Other misconceptions include the population being 30% ‘gay’ (3%), 21% transgender (1%), and 20% of people having a household income of over one million USD per annum (1%) and so on.

So how do these misunderstandings occur?

First we need to understand where these people get their information. They are not children but adults and as such it is reasonable to assume that these beliefs were not learnt in the classroom (though certainly the seeds could have been laid there) but rather from the MSM and social media to which they have been exposed.

“Share of voice” is a marketing term indicating the measure of the market your brand owns compared to other brands advertising in the same industry. Thus, if your brand spends $80 on the airwaves compared to the total spend of all brands (including your own) on the airwaves of $100; then you have 80% share of voice.

These Americans have these twisted beliefs because the share of voice they are receiving provides this type of information. If every day, you hear of Muslims being persecuted in the US then you can reasonably believe that there are a lot of Muslims and a lot of them are being persecuted. Similarly, if you see a whole lot of Blacks on TV, on the news and in programs, then you can reasonably come to believe that there are a lot of Blacks in America… and so on (and apparently being persecuted by White cops).

But what if these representations are deliberate lies directed toward a political end? For example, when Donald Trump was in office the Left (who dominate the MSM and Big Tech) felt so threatened and he was so despised by the Left that 92% of TV coverage was “anti-Trump”.

Taking into consideration that almost all of NZ media take direct feeds from the American Left media (e.g., CNN or the NYT), it is understandable that many people in New Zealand developed a negative view of Trump – ironic considering that almost all his “debunked claims” e.g., the spying on his campaign, the Russian Collusion hoax, or Hunter Biden’s Laptop from Hell, have all been borne out. As well we had the Jessie Smollet hoax, that Judge Kavanagh was a rapist, and that Nicholas Sandmann was a ‘White Supremacist’.

In summary, we are being force-fed leftist American cultural values and biases. But don’t hold your breath for an apology from TVNZ or the NZ Herald – our “trusted sources of journalism” – for both their mis-information and dis-information. Jacinda has assured us that they and the government are ‘trusted sources’.

Lying has always been used for political purposes, whether they be deliberate and direct lies e.g., promising there would be no vaccine mandates, or lies by omission e.g., Labours ‘Co-Governance’ plans.

Lies can be used to cover up corruption, past mistakes, or hidden motives. They are an essential ingredient in political campaigning. However, lies can take on a far more sinister form, for example when the recent legislation against ‘conversion therapy’ was passed. The reason they used to justify it was that it is a step towards protecting people from religious or gay conversion therapies.

New Zealand has the advantage of seeing what has happened in Canada and the UK – that this is just the first step in tying the hands of medical practitioners, psychologists, and other professionals regarding the types of therapies they can suggest or apply to body image dysmorphia. It places them in the invidious position of affirming the condition, or finding themselves being sued, rather than treating the condition e.g., by CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy).

Some claim that such legislation, on top of the ideological push through our schools by adherents of “WOKE” could see a mirror of what has happened in Britain.

In Britain, in a very short period, a 4000% increase in transgenderism occurred.

Pushing these shocking changes, we see the role of media in highlighting transgenderism, promoting transgenderism, misreporting figures, and either downplaying or “debunking” those who speak out against children being ‘groomed’ to be transgender. (In itself, this is a ‘conversion’, but the government and media of the time chose to ignore this contradiction).

Here in NZ, we already have a media that is ostensibly WOKE, is duplicitous by not presenting both sides of a story fairly, spreads propaganda – and yet has been subsidised by the government to the tune of $55 million-plus dollars, so what can we expect?

Can we expect that the Kiwis’ understanding of NZ, its character, demographics, and issues, will become as distorted as that of the Americans for their country? That “White Supremacy” in NZ will be regarded as a greater issue than the 8000+ gang members terrorising our streets and that climate change is more important than housing and jobs?

Eventually, the culture of lying will take on a more encompassing form, where to speak out at all against the government/media WOKE theocracy will invite both silencing and punishment. We need only look at Canada to see the future.

In Canada, first it was bank accounts frozen if you bucked the system, and now you cannot even be a journalist, and reveal truths, unless you have a “journalism licence” – which means only “government truths” are supported.

Regarding such a situation Hannah Arendt says: