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Text of the page (random words):
home nygaard notes skip to main content nygaard notes independent periodic news and analysis header menu about subscribe donate archive search home no newer posts older a recipe for confusion issue 715 march 7 2025 this week common sense as propaganda quote of the week because conservative is common sense tending the soil challenging the narrative trump common sense and deep propaganda greetings whether it s a press briefing after an airline disaster or the state of the union speech or at a campaign rally or in an interview with a fox news reporter the task is the same for whichever maga spokesperson is speaking up to and including donald trump and that task is what is known as othering in a socially stratified society like the united states there is an ongoing argument about who belongs where and who gets what othering is the process of ranking the various groups that make up a society and then marking individuals as belonging to one or another of the ranked groups it s a complex never ending process but in the end it boils down to a binary who is us and who is them so when the president seems to be veering off script at a press conference responding to an airline crash he s actually getting back on script by reminding people that the real problem with america no with the world is that too many of them are in places that common sense tells us should be reserved for us this othering is what donald trump is doing virtually every time he opens his mouth this issue of nygaard notes takes a look at the common sense of othering in 2025 quote of the week because conservative is common sense the strategy of the right for decades has been to build support for a set of philosophical principles that lead people to believe that conservative is common sense the strategy has been remarkably successful as evidenced by an article on the front page of the new york times business section of february 13th the article was headlined for trump and fox news new policies are simply common sense the article notes that the phrase common sense has become a constant refrain on fox news citing a study showing that the term common sense was mentioned nearly 500 times on fox news in january an increase from around 200 per month in the years prior the article went on to say that the flood of common sense comments on fox news echoes the language mr trump and his new administration have used to justify his policies here are the final two paragraphs of this article mark levin a fox news host and close ally of mr trump seemed to recognize the echo between the white house and fox news when he raised the president s catchphrase on his show what trump is proposing is not radical it s common sense as he puts it mr levin said when he says common sense for many of us it means conservative because conservative is common sense tending the soil challenging the narrative i work at a place called rlm arts rlm stands for ricardo levins morales it s a remarkable place built on the work of this remarkable artist i have described it in the past as a radical art studio but it s so much more than that i encourage you to visit the rlm website and look around you ll find posters note cards buttons zines coloring pages videos and more what is it all about what is ricardo up to it s not easy to describe the many trails that he travels or blazes but surely a big part of what he has been up to for more than a half century now is tending the soil and what you may ask does that mean the answer can be found in part 5 of a 24 page zine pamphlet called tending the soil lessons for organizing you can find it on the rlm website but here i offer you the text of part 5 which is entitled the soil is more important than the seeds listen here to ricardo s voice one of the most important insights that cultural organizing has brought to movement struggle is the idea that the soil is more important than the seeds almost anything will grow in rich nutritious soil whereas it s hard to get anything to grow if the soil is barren toxic and won t hold moisture the seeds are our projects our initiatives our campaigns our organizations our institutions that we want to build the soil is the compost of beliefs ideas values and narratives that create the environment in which we re working for example if you re trying to win a decent contract and more funding for school teachers it s going to be hard if everybody knows that teachers are greedy lazy indifferent and don t care about kids the right wing has been hammering in that message instilling that into the soil in fact for forty years the right has devoted themselves largely to preparing the soil that includes saying stuff that sounds ridiculous fighting for things that aren t winnable yet because they re investing in the future and ten years later it won t sound ridiculous and they ll win the question i would pose to you is what stories what narratives what beliefs if they were widely disseminated in the soil of our communities would make it easy to win just imagine it for a moment what would make victories easy if everyone believed it now we re fighting against the weight of all these toxic narratives that people have internalized we re the only ones who can plant the seed of the tree that one day we want to live under we need to be preparing the soil in which that tree can grow ricardo talks about seeds that won t grow unless the soil is fertile in the propaganda model that i use in nygaard notes i talk about ideas seeds that don t make sense unless a large number of people share a general set of ideas about how the world works the soil i refer to the seeds as overt propaganda the soil i call deep propaganda i use the word propaganda in its original sense of any speech designed to persuade it didn t become a generally derogative term until sometime after world war i as i explained in 2002 in nygaard notes 172 the success of trumpism is due in no small part to the enormous energy put in by the reactionary right to tending the soil the next essay offers an example of how this works trump common sense and deep propaganda on january 29th an american airlines plane and an army helicopter collided in washington dc killing 67 people speaking to the press the next day president trump and his vice president used the tragic occasion to tend the soil in their own way it s worth listening closely to what they said after expressing sympathy for the friends and families of those who lost their lives the president said don t concern yourselves with the facts instead let me tell you how to think about this event ok he didn t say that i was paraphrasing what he actually said was this we do not know what led to this crash but we have some very strong opinions and ideas and i think we ll probably state those opinions now don t you think my paraphrasing was pretty accurate pete hegseth the new defense secretary was present at the press briefing one wonders why he was there but he was and he underlined the deep propaganda that showed its face in the president s spin on the tragedy hegseth speaking in code made it clear that he agrees with the president that the marginalized others whose inclusion is the i in dei diversity equity and inclusion would not be included in a make america great again future here s how he put it the era of dei is gone at the defense department and we need the best and brightest whether it s in our air traffic control or whether it s in our generals or whether it s throughout government note that the secretary s response only makes sense if you believe that members of marginalized groups are not and cannot be the best and brightest the overt propaganda here is the idea that only good people indeed the best people will be allowed access to positions of power prestige and responsibility the deep propaganda upon which that idea rests is the idea that people are defined by their membership in groups and marginalized groups are and should be marginalized because the people in them are not good people certainly not the best people in case the defense secretary was not clear enough trump called on his vice president jd vance to phrase the racist point in other words vance complied saying something the president said that i think bears reemphasizing which is that when you don t have the best standards in who you re hiring it means on the one hand you re not getting the best people in government but on the other hand it puts stresses on the people who are already there and i think that is a core part of what president trump is going to bring and has already brought to washington dc is we want to hire the best people because we want the best people at air traffic control and we want to make sure we have enough people at air traffic control who are actually competent to do the job the overt propaganda here is to allow the into the workplace the incompetence and lack of intelligence that characterize members of marginalized groups is not only dangerous in itself but it s contagious as it puts stresses on the good best people who are already there all this crazy dei stuff is actually preventing competent i e white people from getting these important jobs as air traffic controllers vance says here are his exact words if you go back to just some of the headlines over the past 10 years you have many hundreds of people suing the government because they would like to be air traffic controllers but they were turned away because of the color of their skin that policy ends under donald trump s leadership because safety is the first priority of our aviation industry if you don t know what the vice president is talking about just google reverse racism air traffic controllers the deep propaganda here is that black people in responsible positions danger no evidence but it could have been so much for the opening acts the headline act donald trump came back to the microphone and a reporter asked him this question mr president on dei and the claims that you ve made are you saying this crash was somehow caused and the result of diversity hiring and what evidence have you seen to support these claims to which trump replied it just could have been we have a high standard we ve had a much higher standard than anybody else and there are things where you have to go by brainpower you have to go by psychological quality and psychological quality is a very important element of it these are various very powerful tests that we put to use and they were terminated by biden and biden went by a standard that s the exact opposite so we don t know a few minutes later the president noted that it s all under investigation the reporter followed up saying i understand that that s why i m trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion right now that diversity had something to do with this crash because i have common sense trump replied and unfortunately a lot of people don t we want brilliant people doing this this is a major chess game at the highest level when you have 60 planes coming in during a short period of time and they re all coming in different directions and you re dealing with very high level computer work and very complex computers i will here quote myself on the subject of common sense back in 2006 i wrote that all of us have certain basic ideas about how the world works many of these ideas are received unconsciously at very early ages from the various doctrinal institutions that surround us these are institutions like our education systems the mass media and advertising when we let these ideas reside in our minds undisturbed by new information for a long long time as many of us do they can go beyond being simply ideas and can harden into attitudes beliefs and conceptions about the world by this i mean that they can become stronger and deeper than mere ideas and can begin to seem like common sense they can become so familiar and useful that we stop thinking about them at this point i call them the abcs of propaganda that is they are our basic attitudes beliefs and conceptions about the world the very strong opinions and ideas stated by trump and his acolytes in their press briefing supposedly about an aviation disaster are intended to reinforce the propaganda abcs upon which the othering project that we know as trumpism is based the logic and power of trumpism has everything to do with the historical moment of which it is born it s a moment when many members of the privileged classes are terrified and feeling abandoned large numbers of people in or wishing to be in the dominant group are looking for leaders like trump leaders who offer a sense of group identity who promise to clarify exactly who is us and who is them and that s what trump is doing every time he insults demonizes excludes targets blames accuses or otherwise scapegoats an identifiable other he s fertilizing the soil and reinforcing the deep propaganda which tells us that we must in the name of making america great again separate the winners from the losers the in group from the innumerable out groups the virtuous from the wicked us from them and how do we know who belongs in which group it s just common sense if you want to read the transcript of this very revealing press briefing it can be found online here copyright 2026 nygaard notes site by big river web design privacy policy admin about subscribe donate archive search