I was just complaining to my therapist that Manufacturing Consent has been available for decades and yet few people seem to be conscious of how much bias exists in mass media. I alternate between educating and accepting what I cannot influence.

Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. Those who know history are doomed to know that it’s repeating. Those who have sought to develop media literacy are doomed to recognize the horror-show that is mass media and the effectiveness of it.

so much so that we can tarnish political figures by asking, “What is a woman?”

That's what gets my goat - you'll speak to people and all they do is parrot the right's culture war rhetoric like that. The recent Guardian article was headlined that this isn't a culture war but then they go "Starmer can't define what a woman is" (without, presumably, trying it themselves). I presume because they only get fed the ideas through social media, they don't realise this is being incubated by think tanks, spread by the right wing press and then amplified on social media.

"Well you have to admit Farage was stitched up". Something someone genuinely said to me yesterday (followed not long after by "Andrew Tate hasn't been found guilty yet" and today "this country is going to go to shit" when we are neck-deep in it already).

It's got the point that I pray trans rights don't come up when talking to feminist friends or politics when talking to young lads, as the conversation is more likely than not to go side ways. I worry about my niece and nephew as they enter their teenage years.

in a system that profits from our lack of media-literacy

And lack of critical thinking. You have to interrogate ever source and, just because everyone is saying something, it doesn't mean it's true.