Linguist and media critic Noam Chomsky has listed 10 strategies used by politicians to manipulate the people. Chomsky a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology might as well have been talking about the United States and how it manipulates the media. But could they also apply to Zimbabwe.
Here is the fourth strategy:
The strategy of deferring
“Another way to accept an unpopular decision is to present it as ‘painful and necessary’, gaining public acceptance, at the time for future application.
“It is easier to accept that a future sacrifice of immediate slaughter.
• First, because the effort is not used immediately
• Then, because the public, masses, is always the tendency to expect naively that ‘everything will be better tomorrow’ and that the sacrifice required may be avoided.
“This gives the public more time to get used to the idea of change and accept it with resignation when the time comes”.
How many things are being deferred in the hope that things will be better tomorrow?
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