Thanks for linking the Red Sails article, I've finally gotten around to reading it. Interestingly, while the work critiques even the title of Manufacturing Consent, it provides a similar sense of fulfillment to Manufacturing Consent by providing a material, non-conspiratorial explanation to a more-or-less 'common sense' phenomenon (media control, brainwashing).

In a way, the premise and conclusion echo some wisdom I'd heard before, albeit in a different context: It's not enough to be right.

While that speaker had basically meant that theory is useless if it is never applied, and only used as an "I told you so" after-the-fact, this article makes a related case, that the correctness of an idea doesn't automatically mean it will be accepted by a typical healthy person. And as someone who veers towards a more academic and scientific side of life, where correctness is so valued and there's an expectation that everyone in the scene is on the same page about basic fundamental facts, the brainwashing framework is a convenient and intuitive (even if false) rationalization of why so many people can be so ignorant to these basics (like flat earth theory, anti-germ theory, that level of ignorance). It really is hard to empathize and not be condescending to people in relatively-advanced countries in the modern age still believing that kind of thing. The brainwashing theory is convenient - they've been dupped by a cult leader! the [religion/government] wants to keep them ignorant and encircled them with a false reality! they've been conditioned to be dumb since birth! This explains it! But that only goes so far, there is a point where a person has enough access to information that the brainwashing theory fails to justify their rejection of evidence. I know first hand, like many, that it takes time to dismantle the propaganda pervading our liberalist status quo, but it's not magical or hypnotic.