We actually live already in a de facto totalitarian system on many levels, with a strict limit on what can be said or even thought outside of determined confines. (Post coronavirus it is likely that our regimes will be fully totalitarian.)
You might find a heated discussion about this or that car, or electric scooters, or travel to one exotic place or another, but you will in general never find serious space given to whether a capitalist economy is a good thing, whether all private transport should be discouraged, whether public transport should be abundant and free... Any newspaper is constrained by its advertisers and will not act against their interests. Once you understand that the newspaper's client is the advertiser and that the you are the product being delivered to the client, you can see why mass media is in fact a propaganda outlet.
The BBC, without overt advertising, depends on the government and the constant threat of having the substantial licence fee lowered or abolished and will, as a result, defend the interests of the deep state tooth and nail, and will relentless attack any politician that threatens these interests.
All of us above a certain age remember the shocking propaganda that justified the Iraq War. Actually, it was not convincing at any point: the politicians making the case for war (Bush Jr, with creepy and self-interested Cheney and Rumsfeld in the background, Blair, Aznar) were never going to be reliable truth tellers. Important civil servants resigned, stating clearly that there was no legal case for war. We all knew deep down that it was all about the oil in Iraq, about keeping the region in western hands and about keeping the world addicted to oil, not to mention maintaining Israel's privileges. Years later the mainstream media lamented how they had been hoodwinked and, yet, it is hard to believe they actually were hoodwinked, when so many of the public had seen through the lie (witness the huge antiwar demonstrations).
A massive exercise in cognitive dissonance is ongoing, that of believing the BBC and other MSM yet again, this time about the coronavirus. People are suffering and will die, mainly because of the hideous poverty (what is endearingly called "austerity") that will be rained down yet again as a result of shutting down people's lives and locking them indoors - just the 99%, mind you.
Cramming old people into OAP homes, quarantining them without fresh air or green spaces (a perfect recipe for a flu epidemic), stopping them from having visitors, over medicating them and forcing the flu vaccine on them every year (there is a link with the flu vaccine and getting CV-19) has created a perfect environment for this year's flu. And they are dying. No palliative care for them though. No kind attention to their last wishes of a relative or pet nearby, a warm hand, a cup of tea and a biscuit, none of that. Just scary face masks and latex gloves in the intensive care unit, while those who actually need intensive care (accidents, real acute illness) will be turned away. This is no way to die if you are old.
All the relentless propaganda - after all, who actually reads anything over a screen in length, if that, nowadays? - has made us see reality not as it is but a little off centre. We do not see the big picture as we take the little selfie. If, in your isolation, the clock on your mobile was a little off you could tell the time all day and never get it right. A mad man in the next flat might stare at a stopped clock and happily say all day, "It's 9:30!" He'd be right twice a day though.
Better to be neither of them, not the coherent but wrong individual, nor the mad person. Better to take off the blinkers, switch off the MSM noise, take on the arguments on the other side, and see what there is to them.
