Regimented Applause Required

The new Mob Rule of Clapping

Is anyone else uncomfortable with the much overt fawning and thumbs-upping and clapping that is going on in Big Story News Events?

Seeing masses of goose-stepping sallow looking soldiers marching with that little extra jump required to show allegiance — it is always expressed by the masses of clappers, holding hands high in exactly the same way so that Dear Kim Jung Un can see that everyone is conforming properly and doesn’t need to be taken out back and shot. Keep Un smiling seems to be LAW.

That phenomenon comes up every day on my news feed..not just on May Day. Every day in our world and domestic news.

And it’s not just the Un-man who is looking smiley and so so happy when his masses do such obeisance in public. And likely in private. And he certainly is not the first!

As in Nazi Germany and in Cold War Russia, there are the parades of men and metal machines and patriotic cheers going up everywhere, blatantly visible to all and choreographed to the nth degree. [hint: if you are not for us, you are against us and we will kill you.]

Public persuasion (or call it propaganda, actually)aims, as in the old days of history, to control the masses. There were heads on pikes to induce terror. There still are heads on pikes to instill terror. Did you see?

Barbaric! I ask all world powers: — -have we brainwashed ourselves in the conventions of our beloved computer war games? It’s so exciting! Even fun!

Is this a sign of disease in humankind? Are we lionizing barbarians?

Does anyone else think so? Or is it just me?

The much clapping pervasive in our recent U.S campaign and post-election drama looks way too much like that, with each party’s Big Cheese coming on clapping and everyone dutifully claps with the Big Cheese and until the Big Cheese finally signals that clapping may stop for the nonce. But be ready to clap again — we will all clap together — the President-wanna-be and the masses.

Remember the final candidates coming out with face-splitting smiles, and waving and pointing to certain people I supposed were “favorites” — or maybe just no one in particular? The candidate is clapping with hands high and showing lots of white teeth and important pop-star struts.

Whether it’s Kim Jung Un or Hillary, or the Donald, it all looks very much like the old de rigueur acts of subjection, like the lowering of the eyes and the prostrating of bodies before the King.

Not that long ago, someone who looked directly at the Monarch of certain empires without proper permission was dragged off to some awful fate, from what I have read and heard.

What is it that makes this sort of fawning behavior so important? Why then, and why is it now so terribly important to do all this stuff? We have been brainwashed to think it’s required of us, I suspect.

And why does the King clap too, nowadays? Is it to say that we are all having fun together? Really? That the regent is really a nice guy who loves all his people?

I know that some churches practice a tradition of genuflecting and making the sign of the cross, or some other similar gesture when approaching religious altars. I’ll bet Caesar didn’t like that at all when the Christians got uppity and showed such deference to that God-concept they had and took the spotlight off of him. I believe Caesar had some pretty strict rules for approaching him for a request or a bit of news from the front.

Does anyone else have a feeling that now, in 2017, with so many millions of eyes trained on live-media news coverage, those who wish to rule are beginning with the clapping convention to create King-like adulation — and perhaps blind us?

It’s like Facebook LIKES, isn’t it? For the King to count up in his counting house.

In Athens, it was what was being said at “the Gate” that stirred public sentiment and spread the news. Now “the Gate” is everyone’s TV and computer screen and many are the messengers who spread the sentiments.

And then there are the keepers of the news-gates: those who route the news to the masses, and choose which clappers to feature and which to ignore. We people are seduced this way — I mean who would refuse to clap when on prime time TV where everyone else in the whole stadium is clapping? And the TV camera is trained on the audience? Just as we feel required to Like someone’s post on Facebook in order to stay on good terms.

Are we being hoodwinked?

Is the clapping the modern version of the Emperor’s New Clothes?

Will someone please say and act the truth?? Please let us not follow in the wake of this mob rule!

SGHolland ©2017