We're not citizens anymore.

[Scuba]

Listen to Rep Chris Van Hollen refer to us not as citizens, but as consumers.

Chris isn't some Republican right-winger. He's the DCCC Chair and responsible for getting Democrats elected.


When did this happen?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsnbDgt4fhA

edited to include link.

[KharmaTrain]

1. Voters Are Consumers...

When it comes to politics, it's marketing and we are the consumers...users of the services our congresscritters are supposed to provide. IMHO, consumer means a lot more to these people than citizen...as their job is to keep the customer...the voter...happy.

[Scuba]

3. Brainwashing of the comfortabley numb...

...in another generation the whole concept of 'citizen' will be lost.

[KharmaTrain]

5. And This Is Brainwashing How???

Trust me, every April 15th, I'm constantly reminded I'm a "citizen". So please enlighten, how is this equate to brainwashing...

[elehhhhna]

23. and politics is like sports now, rather than governance

[KharmaTrain]

24. Thanks To Our Corporate Media...

Tweety calls it "Hardball" for good reason. Our politics has become a winner/losers game...a bloodsport that is exploited by the media that in turn is exploited by the politicians. The problem is there's a difference between campaigning and governing...a situation that the previous regime demonstrated to disastrous results. It's also what frustrated some on our side of the sandbox with this current President who has shown he's willing to compromise to get something done rather than play into the politics of gridlock and obstruction. It also demonstrates a big difference between the two parties...one that feels its responsibility is to govern while the other is to posture to its base.

Governance is not a sexy thing...it requires making tough decisions and setting priorities...it doesn't play well into the SportsCenter corporate news media world.

Cheers...

[LARED]

2. "We the people" became market segments

a long time ago. Elections are nothing more than slick advertisement campaigns design to convince that candidate A will make you happy, wealthy and wise, while candidate B will purposefully put grandma on a sewer grate to die, and hates puppies.

[lib2DaBone]

6. True. Elections are nothing but slick advertising campaigns...

For instance.. look at the recent bru-ha-ha about minerals in Afghaistan.

I don't know if anyone saw the General Patreus Awards Ceremony the other day from the American Eneterprise Institute.

William Krystal and the Neocon gang are getting ready to push Patreus for President in 2012.

The Afghan mineral thing is a smoke screen to keep us there forever (imho).

[onethatcares]

22. as rick scott, candidate for gov here in floriduh says.

"at the present time, people are responding to the message we are trying to SELL".

As Jackson Brown sings, "they sell us our president and leaders, the same way they sell us our cars" (or a very close version)

[jp11]

4. It is true but that is more an example of a poor choice of words, as he was speaking about

sides saying republicans side with corporations and not consumers, hardly a smoking gun IMO.

[Scuba]

7. It's indicative of a mindset.. If it's supposed to be about slick marketing...

...it fails when the marketing director uses a less-than-ideal term to describe his 'customers'. We're citizens, dammit.

[RagAss]

8. We haven't been citizens since November 22, 1963.

[newthinking]

30. OK, maybe I am showing ignorance of history. What happened on that date?

[RagAss]

32. What are you, banned from Google? Or just being snide?

[formercia]

9. US Military is the biggest Consumer of all.

Resources and capital down the rat hole.

[marmar]

10. I'm breaking free of that consumer mindset......

It's a very liberating feeling.

[Jester Messiah]

11. Boring. Haven't you heard there's a new XBox out!?

:evilgrin:

[snot]

12. Watch "Century of the Self" by Adam Curtis/BBC. It directly addresses that

that very question and much more. You can see the whole thing online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/century_of_the_self.shtml . It's absolutely brilliant, and I think every "citizen" should see it.

[HughMoran]

13. I watched it

:shrug:

What the heck are you talking about?

corporation is to consumer (and taxpayer) as government is to citizen.

[xchrom]

14. recommend -- if a repuke had said this you would find little to none

support for what this guy said.

but because he's a 'Democrat' -- some will jump to his defense.

what he said is awful.

[HughMoran]

15. fake outrage

What he said was hardly noteworthy. Talk about looking for controversy, and ye shall find it.

[treestar]

19. Amen, people here should watch the clip

Letting yourselves be manipulated is what is happening here.

[marmar]

16. As Noam Chomsky says:

"The goal for the corporations is to maximize profit and market share. And they also have a goal for their target, namely the population. They have to be turned into completely mindless consumers of goods that they do not want. You have to develop what are called 'Created Wants'. So you have to create wants. You have to impose on people what's called a Philosophy of Futility. You have to focus them on the insignificant things of life, like fashionable consumption. I'm just basically quoting business literature. And it makes perfect sense. The ideal is to have individuals who are totally disassociated from one another. Whose conception of themselves, the sense of value is just, 'how many created wants can I satisfy?' We have huge industries, public relations industry, monstrous industry, advertising and so on, which are designed from infancy to mold people into this desired pattern."

[Scuba]

17. So "he who dies with the most toys wins" was more than a cutesy bumbersticker.

[treestar]

18. He was talking about the relationship between the corporations and

the consumer. He was not talking about votes.

He was bashing the corporations, too.

[HughMoran]

20. You actually watched it too, didn't you?

I love a nice reflexive-reaction inducing post first thing in the morning.

:boring:

[newthinking]

31. I agree it was more of a "slip" in terminology than a "slight"

But in a way the fact that the term has become so integrated that it becomes easy to substitute for more personal and appropriate terms just shows how effective marketing and other propaganda is at replacing ideas.

Look over my other post down the page at why I think the difference between using this term vs others for "people" is important. Let me know what you think.

[Skidmore]

21. Time to take a deep breath and ratchet it down a bit.

We are both consumers and citizens and those two spheres are not mutually exclusive and they do overlap. I wish people would just stop with the wordplay when in a state of panic. There is much to be gravely concerned about in modern society but panic prevents clear thinking and is a hindrance to sound problemsolving all around.

[newthinking]

29. It's not just "wordplay". Our terminology goes to the heart of our dysfunction as a society

Words are more powerful than we give them credit for. Think of how a store employee might treat someone who walks in differently if they think of them in terms of:

1. "Consumer"

2. "Customer"

3. "Neighbor"

Sure, each one is descriptive, but they also carry with them a certain idea that can form a response in our minds and can change our actions or thoughts toward them depending on the descriptor.

#1 and #2 are impersonal.

I think most of us can agree that #1 is really an inappropriate way to think of any person you are "eye to eye" with. It is a term that when used, carries the idea that almost completely dissociates any level of personal interaction. It is really quite an antisocial terminology regardless of how it is implemented.

To demonstrate the power of words, let's say we could change what "consumer" means to form the idea that "consumers" should be treated like your "neighbors". That change would take a lot of energy and propaganda, but it could be done. Because the term is used extensively in business, it could actually make a difference in how businesses see the average person who buys their products. It could have a profound impact. That is how powerful words and the ideas behind them are.

[Billy Burnett]

25. Everyone should read about Edward Bernays and advertising propaganda

History is a Weapon
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop.html

American business community was also very impressed with the propaganda effort. They had a problem at that time. The country was becoming formally more democratic. A lot more people were able to vote and that sort of thing. The country was becoming wealthier and more people could participate and a lot of new immigrants were coming in, and so on.

So what do you do? It's going to be harder to run things as a private club. Therefore, obviously, you have to control what people think. There had been public relation specialists but there was never a public relations industry. There was a guy hired to make Rockefeller's image look prettier and that sort of thing. But this huge public relations industry, which is a U.S. invention and a monstrous industry, came out of the first World War. The leading figures were people in the Creel Commission. In fact, the main one, Edward Bernays, comes right out of the Creel Commission. He has a book that came out right afterwards called Propaganda. The term "propaganda," incidentally, did not have negative connotations in those days. It was during the second World War that the term became taboo because it was connected with Germany, and all those bad things. But in this period, the term propaganda just meant information or something like that. So he wrote a book called Propaganda around 1925, and it starts off by saying he is applying the lessons of the first World War. The propaganda system of the first World War and this commission that he was part of showed, he says, it is possible to "regiment the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments their bodies." These new techniques of regimentation of minds, he said, had to be used by the intelligent minorities in order to make sure that the slobs stay on the right course. We can do it now because we have these new techniques.

This is the main manual of the public relations industry. Bernays is kind of the guru. He was an authentic Roosevelt/Kennedy liberal. He also engineered the public relations effort behind the U.S.-backed coup which overthrew the democratic government of Guatemala.

His major coup, the one that really propelled him into fame in the late 1920s, was getting women to smoke. Women didn't smoke in those days and he ran huge campaigns for Chesterfield. You know all the techniques—models and movie stars with cigarettes coming out of their mouths and that kind of thing. He got enormous praise for that. So he became a leading figure of the industry, and his book was the real manual.

—Noam Chomsky

(From Chomsky's "What Makes Mainstream Media
Mainstream": a talk at Z Media Institute, June 1997)

Youtube doc on Bernays here...


Propaganda 1/4 - Edward Bernays
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM6-6sIhifA&feature=related

parts 2-4 at youtube link

[Odin2005]

26. I get angry every time I am refered to as a "consumer".

I'M A CITIZEN AND A HUMAN BEING YOU FUCKERS!!!

[Ikonoklast]

27. There, there, Number 77684099233.

You'll feel better if you go out and buy yourelf something nice.


This message brought to you by:

Your Owners.

[jtrockville]

28. I REALLY wish there was a primary challenger in MD's 8th.

[johnaries]

33. Not all consumers are citizens. But all citizens are consumers.

Even corporations are consumers.