Chances are you received the email, or know someone who did. Immediately after the passage of the One Big Ugly Bill, the Social Security Administration sent the message to everyone on its mailing list, proclaiming how wunderbar it all was. It appears that this campaign ad stitched together from false and misleading claims, which hailed a “historic tax relief for seniors”, was all set into type in advance and ready to go, just waiting for Dear Leader to scrawl his signature. It was just another nail in the coffin of Truth, a nail delivered by the hammer of Saturation.

We’ve already discussed the technique of repetition, which is perhaps the most fundamental propaganda tool of them all. The more often a claim or characterization is repeated the more normal it sounds, and thus the more likely it is to be believed. But when we talk about repetition, we generally are referring to one specific declamation –e.g., “”liberal bias” or “climate hoax” or “vaccines cause autism”. Saturation is more broad and general, and may make use of several repeated utterances. For example, certain repeated declamations such as “BLM violence” and “immigrant crime” not only work individually to target the specific demographic groups mentioned, but they also work collectively to saturate the public consciousness with the implication that non-whites are more violent and dangerous. Saturation, in other words, is a way of subtly driving home an argument that would risk too much condemnation or analysis if declared openly.

While repetition has the simple goal of entrenching a belief, saturation has three closely interlinked objectives: desensitizing, normalizing, and tribalizing.

As you probably realized, the sentiments expressed in the promotional brochure disguised as a neighborly letter were not, contrary to what it suggested, those of the Social Security administration itself, or even of its employees. The words, you can be sure, were either written or dictated within strict parameters, by the current Commissioner of Social Security, Frank Bisignano — who just happens to have been a big donor to the T—p campaign, which of course is just one big beautiful coincidence, and can’t possibly have anything to do with why he was appointed to the position in the first place.

There was a time, not so very long ago, when this type of hijacking of an official government body — this type of “weaponizing”, if you will forgive the use of a term which itself has been hijacked and weaponized — would have provoked outrage far, wide and deep. But while there were widespread denunciations immediately after the bootlicking memo was dispatched, the outrage quickly faded, and soon became buried under the avalanche of other outrages.

This has been going on for years; but it really accelerated in 2017 after That Guy assumed power for the first time. And it has not abated since then. Even during the years that he was out of the White House he unceasingly bombarded the media with a motley pack of lies to promote the narrative that he has been sorely wronged, oppressed, and persecuted; and that he actually has the best interests of hoi polloi at heart. Not only that, but he’s a visionary leader, and everything he does is “historic”.

The more the public sees/ hears/ experiences something, the more it’s accepted as just the way things are. The more it’s “normalized”, in other words. And the politicization of government agencies has now become quite thoroughly normalized. So much so that people hardly even pay attention to it anymore. That’s the point. At least one point.

Public outrage over his actions has become increasingly muted, because the public is suffering from battle fatigue. There are many people — and perhaps you are one of them — who tune out the news completely because they are just so tired of hearing about the nonstop deluge of enraging atrocities. That’s an understandable strategy for preserving sanity, up to a point. But if the public is totally ignorant about current events, it simply makes it easier for a despot to wreak his evil unopposed.

But in addition to fostering a general narrative and numbing the public to malfeasance, there is the third objective of saturation: creating a sensation of belonging to a tribe, of feeling like one of “us” instead of one of “them” — and feeling that the “us” tribe actually needs and values you.

When I was much younger and at least somewhat greener, I had a close encounter with recruiters from the Unification Church, better known as The Moonies — a cult notorious for indoctrinating its disciples and compelling them to live a spartan lifestyle while putting in long hours of soliciting donations from the public to further line the pockets of its leaders. How did the cult get them to go along — to be willingly and eagerly exploited? By practicing total immersion. Which is to say, saturation.

The new recruits were never left alone for one minute, never allowed time to think and process. They were totally surrounded by unconditional “love” and acceptance from the group, totally entrenched in group activity and mindset, constantly assured that the group understood and accepted them better than their own families, until they were conditioned to do anything they were asked to do to keep this warm fuzzy feeling sustained.

Unsurprisingly, the Unification Church has enjoyed a long cozy affair with the Republican Party and right-wing media, which echo many of its tactics. If you’re masochistic enough to tune in to any kind of press conference or congressional hearing involving one of the Cosplay Cabinet, there’s one thing you’re certain to hear: an attack on President Biden. Any time someone asks one of these lackeys a question about the administration’s policies or actions, he or she will begin with a smear about how Biden supposedly was such a big failure on the same point, and they are cleaning up his mess. It’s painfully, almost comically obvious that they are under orders from headquarters to promote this narrative at every opportunity. By tearing down the previous administration, they hope to make themselves look better. This kind of forced contrast and bad faith whataboutism is one of the manufactured norms that are quickly gaining traction.

And if you’re masochistic enough to tune in to Fox “News”, you’ll hear smooth, slick-talking carnival barkers hammering away full blast day in and day out, hardly catching a breath, at predigested talking points. They never give their viewers time to think and process — indeed they actively discourage thinking and processing — and whip them up into a froth over nothing or less than nothing. This emotional stimulation is the drug that the leaders of the Fox/ MAGA cult dole out to keep their followers compliant, suggestible, and addicted to getting more and more and more. And to make them feel, quite erroneously, that they are loved and valued components of the tribe.

If propaganda saturation is carried on long enough and intensely enough, and is widespread enough, then it certainly will achieve those objectives of numbing, normalization, and tribalization. But even more, it will eventually upend the paradigm; which is to say, it will result in a Bizarro culture in which truth is irrelevant, and in which lunacy is regarded as sanity, and vice versa. The circus will convince you that it’s the real world, and that the real world is a circus. The Bad Guys will become the Good Guys, and they will convince the public that the Good Guys are really the Bad Guys.

Which is pretty much where we are right now.