Quote Originally Posted by Eric C. View Post
That's funny how American people on this thread blame the Congress and politicians for things like another Cold War, etc., while the Russians here tend to blame America for all the sh*t that's going on; I think that says a lot about the level of brainwashing on each side.
As for Russia, what is going on seems more like distortion of information about real state of affairs (or careful selection of information to be presented, avoiding certain aspects, or biased presentation) which is probably not so costly as brainwashing. I would apply brainwashing to something like neo-Nazi movements, or as a mild form to some religious propaganda. I am a big fan of presenting information 'per se' (which is one of the key premises of journalism as far as I understand) and it should be up to the recipient to conclude what is 'right' and what is 'wrong'. So by that logic any biased information can be regarded as something that shouldn't be believed outright, which is especially important when information is consumed over fast periods of time on the Internet. People also tend to make big conclusions based on superficial knowledge of the facts (that happens every day).