WE SWIM in a sea of obfuscation, confusion, and fabrication. We are bombarded by academics, commentators, consultants — experts of every type — who build their brands on telling us what our rulers want us to hear. Through calculated ruses, they penetrate our entertainment, even our escapism, with embedded messages that strengthen conformity and consensus.

The purveyors of this conformity — the messengers — are given the stolid image of trustworthy tradition or the superficial appearance of daring nonconformity or diversity, depending on the sensibility of the audience, though the message is the same in all cases.

Today’s bourgeois society has utilised previously unimaginable advances in communication and technology to achieve even more unimaginable control over the thinking of the people. This is what Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky so insightfully called “manufacturing consent.”