I believe this is a brilliant essay by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

[BrklynLiberal]

October 22, 1844
Soothsayers and prophets, prepare to meet thy doom! And other framings.

By Bryan Zepp Jamieson
11/26/04
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Religious/doom.htm

AN EXCERPT:
"OK, my next essay will be “Audience Fucking for Cheap Applause.” You guys are better than dittoheads, but you can be swayed by emotion and imagery and memes, just like all people can.

And of course I use memes! Take for example, my use of the word
“Putsch” instead of “Bush.” Most people know it’s the German word for “coup,” and many know that it’s specifically used to describe Hitler’s abortive 1923 attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic in Germany, the “Beer Hall Putsch.” So when I use the word in relation to Bush, I’m not only trying to remind people of how he took office, but linking him to treason, ineptitude, and Hitler.

Sure. I’m a liberal. I prefer to use reason and logic. Except when I don’t. Many of you read me because I use reason and logic, but don’t mind when I don’t.

Which brings us to the fourth element, the final totally unrelated
event that led to this particular essay. I just read “Exile,” a 1991 novel by Michael Kube-McDowell. While the novel is something of a disappointment (Kube-McDowell seemed to have decided, with about 300 pages of narrative to go, that he should just wrap it up in the next 30 pages and go on to something else), there is one part that is utterly brilliant.

An event occurs, witnessed by nearly everyone in the city. While most people don’t understand exactly what it was they saw and heard, the authorities recognize it as a threat to their authority, and proceed to use force, intimidation, mob psychology and deft dividing and setting of one faction against another to not only eliminate the faction who want to know what the event meant, but to remove all memory of the event from the public mind. It’s detailed, fascinating and chilling, and rings very true. The reason Exile disappointed was because the ending was pat, and didn’t really address the issue of fighting power and propaganda. But Kube-McDowell’s depiction of how authority can misuse tools to mold our malleable grasp of reality is deeply disturbing."