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Susceptible? 90% of our public discourse is manufactured, and this whole TikTok thing is a prime example.

Well mass manipulation of the people is how the USA functions. This is what Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman wrote about extensively in their book Manufacturing Consent from 1988. So it is no wonder it works when other people do it too. I agree though, it is sad, or frustrating, upsetting, infuriating, that the USA works like that.

https://chomsky.info/consent01/

And indeed this gets at the falsity of democracy as a concept itself. In a certain sense it is more duplicitous than dictatorship