I feel like there are a surprisingly large percentage of the population that just take most things at face value. It takes something painfully overt for someone to notice, and it’s usually only spotted on something trivial, like fifty thousand five star raving reviews for a beer coozie on amazon.
Astroturfing is real, and if you don’t think that a government would do it… Wow you have a lot of history to catch up on.
Not always. School shootings happen and suddenly crickets on gun control. “Think of the children” only applies to moral outrage, not tangible physical threat prevention. Also applies to school lunches and any other actual tangible thing to ACTUALLY benefit general child welfare.