Pick up any major newspaper this morning, and you will likely witness a baffling spectacle: an executive decision or policy that was condemned just months ago as an authoritarian overreach is suddenly framed across morning panels as a masterclass in pragmatic statecraft.
The most disturbing part of the spectacle is not the cynicism of politicians switching scripts overnight. It is watching millions of educated, reasonable citizens defend today with burning passion what they considered morally repulsive yesterday.
How is this transformation achieved? In modern democracies, propaganda rarely requires blatant falsehoods or state censorship. It simply requires adjusting the temperature of the water, deploying the right lures, and activating our ancient tribal instincts. What appears from the outside as an indefensible flip-flop is experienced from inside the school as a historic necessity.
### How it works in practice: The Kabul drone strike playbook
To see how this machinery operates in reality without academic abstraction, consider the aftermath of the catastrophic August 2021 Kabul airport withdrawal. Following an ISIS-K suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members, the administration faced devastating, bipartisan political fire over botched planning and chaotic execution.
Within forty-eight hours, the damage-control apparatus deployed the classic playbook:
1. **The curated victory:** The Pentagon held an urgent press conference announcing a precision Hellfire drone strike in Kabul, officially celebrated by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs as a righteous strike that had eliminated an imminent ISIS-K truck bomb.
2. **Media amplification:** Flagship networks led with the administration's decisive, high-tech retaliation. The national news cycle spent crucial days praising the rapid strike rather than scrutinizing the systemic diplomatic and military failures that led to the airport collapse.
3. **The suppressed reality:** Weeks later, an on-the-ground visual investigation by *The New York Times* exposed the truth: the strike had not killed terrorists; it had incinerated Zemari Ahmadi, an innocent worker for an American humanitarian NGO, along with nine members of his family, including seven children. The explosive canisters spotted by surveillance drones were water jugs Ahmadi was bringing home to his neighborhood.
The telemetry was real and the drone strike actually happened. But by **isolating that narrative and trimming the timeline** to manufacture an instant triumph, the political apparatus bought critical weeks, insulated leadership from immediate accountability, and steered public emotion before the truth could catch up.
### 1. Moral Disengagement and the Lesser Evil Trap
The deepest puzzle of politics is not how zealots defend abuse, but how reasonable citizens do so without moral hesitation.
Albert Bandura formulated this as **moral disengagement**: our ethical compass does not turn off; it selectively uncouples when actions are tied to a sacred cause. In partisan Washington, this technique is routine. Whether the issue is sweeping unilateral executive orders, border enforcement reversals, or judicial appointments, voters readily forgive what they previously condemned.
The mechanism relies on catastrophic framing: *«If we do not act unilaterally, the fascists win; if we do not break the norm, democracy itself ends.»* Once this binary trap is set, institutional norms become an unaffordable luxury. Surrendering principles is reframed as courageous statecraft, and the partisan voter feels not like a hypocrite, but like a savior.
### 2. The Instrumental Principle: Foundations Turned into Hammers
A constitutional republic relies on procedural safeguards — judicial independence, congressional oversight, due process — that serve as a **foundation**: a common ground that limits everyone equally, regardless of who wins the next election.
Under hyper-partisanship, foundations turn into **hammers**: tools pulled out solely to smash the opponent. When the same hammer threatens one's own camp, it is hastily locked away.
- **Selective Leaks:** When an anonymous leak from the intelligence community damages a political rival, partisan media hails it as heroic whistleblowing in the public interest. When a leak exposes wrongdoing within one's own administration, that exact same action is condemned as a criminal breach by rogue deep-state actors.
- **Institutional Legitimacy:** The courts are revered as the bulwark of liberty when striking down an opponent's legislation, but branded corrupt and illegitimate the moment they rule against the ruling party.
The rule of law is stripped of its normative power; it becomes temporary ammunition.
### 3. Curating Reality: Propaganda by Truth Selection
Sophisticated propaganda does not fabricate lies; it **curates truths**:
1. **Trimming the Timeline:** Deciding where the story begins. Starting the coverage of a geopolitical clash or an urban riot at minute forty-five casts one side as ruthless aggressors; starting it at minute forty-four makes them appear to act in self-defense. By deleting prior warnings, systemic neglect vanishes.
2. **Inclining the Grammar:** Reality is pacified through adjectives. An opponent's scandal is systemic institutional corruption; the same scandal in our party is an isolated personal lapse by an individual no longer affiliated with the movement.
### 4. Preference Falsification and the Silent Majority
Does nobody inside the party notice the contradiction? Many do. But they remain silent. Timur Kuran demonstrated that societies sustain false orthodoxies through **preference falsification**: the distance between private doubts and public compliance driven by social cost.
In an ideological echo chamber, raising a thoughtful objection brands you as a traitor or an enabler of the enemy. To protect their status, moderates swallow their doubts. And when dozens of sensible people stay quiet, **pluralistic ignorance** takes over: each assumes they are alone in their skepticism, handing undisputed control to the most extreme voices.
### Stepping Out of the Current
The school of fish moves together because it offers warmth and eliminates cognitive effort. But that safety comes at a devastating cost: the surrender of independent judgment.
Reclaiming intellectual freedom does not require cynicism or apathy. It requires something far more demanding: **refusing to let a partisan jersey dictate your moral compass.** It means holding your own side to the exact standard you demand of rivals, and daring to state clearly: *«What my party is doing here is wrong, and I will not defend it.»*
That moment of stepping into the cold may be uncomfortable, but it is the only place where a mind is truly free.
For readers interested in exploring the psychological architecture that governs modern politics, media framing, and public loyalties, these dynamics and the nine levers of social influence are dissected in depth in the book **«The School of Fish: How Identity Shapes What We Believe and How to Reclaim Independent Thought»** by **Katarina Expósito**.
Available on Amazon: [Get «The School of Fish» by Katarina Expósito on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=El+banco+de+peces+Katarina+Exposito)
~Media ~Politics ~Psychology ~Behavior ~Society
