Another Limit on Narrative Control

Experience trumps partisan politics

Last week we looked at an important limit on narrative control: It’s hard to get people to believe something that defies common sense, regardless of how often or how shamelessly you propagandize them.

Today I’d like to look at other poll information which suggests a second limit on Big Brother’s ability to control what we think.

The Rasmussen Polling Organization reported the following poll findings on Twitter:

Mainstream Liberal media in the United States are still full-on supporting the ‘vaccines are safe and effective’ narrative.

The subtext is often that only ignorant right-wing Republicans would believe otherwise. Good Democrats are supposed to get vaccinated, and boosted.

The poll tells us that 85% of Democrats did what they were told and got vaccinated.

Since that time, it appears a significant number have developed something approaching buyer’s remorse: more than half believe that vaccinations have caused a significant number of deaths. One-third say they personally know someone who died of vaccine side effects.

Given a choice between believing what the government and the media tell them, and believing their own experience, Democrats are opting for the latter.

This also includes their own personal experience with the vaccines: 31% report experiencing a vaccine side-effect, and 6% report experiencing a serious vaccine side-effect. (These numbers pretty much mirror the VAERS data on side-effects in the general population.)

I suspect some Democrats may have also experienced what we could call a second-order radicalization. I can think of at least three very popular Youtube figures who started out solidly pro-vaccine, and have gradually been radicalized by the contrary data that has since emerged: Dr. John Campbell, Dr. Vinay Prasad, and Dr. Mobeen Syed.

The extremely low uptake we’re seeing on boosters, and vaccines for children, strongly suggests that most Democrats have become at least somewhat ambivalent regarding vaccine safety.

Dr. Peter Mccollough, Dr. Robert Malone, Dr Pierre Kory, Alex Berenson, Steve Kirsch, and a host of others have long challenged the ‘safe and effective’ narrative. But the mainstream Liberal media has savagely attacked all such figures as ‘conspiracy theorists.’ I suspect that many Democrats only became interested in what such people had to say after experiencing a gap betwwen the official narrative and their own experience.

I am focusing on Democrats here simply because Liberal mainstream media have worked so tirelessly to suppress any information which might challenge the ‘vaccines are safe and effective’ narrative. Conservative media has been much more diverse in its attitudes around vaccine safety.

I find it reassuring to see that, even though Democrats have been far more actively propagandized on this issue than Republicans, they cannot be convinced to hold beliefs that run contrary to their own personal experience.