Manufacturing Idiocy

[Mika]

The Nature and Mission of U.S. Corporate Mass Media

{snip}

The generation of mass idiocy in the more commonly understood sense of sheer stupidity is also a central part of U.S. “mainstream” media’s mission. Nowhere is this more clearly evident than in the constant barrage of rapid-fire advertisements that floods U.S. corporate media. As the American cultural critic Neil Postman noted thirty years ago, the modern U.S. television commercial is the antithesis of the rational economic consideration that early Western champions of the profits system claimed to be the enlightened essence of capitalism. “Its principal theorists, even its most prominent practitioners,” Postman noted, “believed capitalism to be based on the idea that both buyer and seller are sufficiently mature, well-informed, and reasonable to engage in transactions of mutual self-interest.” Commercials make “hash” out of this idea. They are dedicated to persuading consumers with wholly irrational claims. They rely not on the reasoned presentation of evidence and logical argument but on suggestive emotionalism, infantilizing manipulation, and evocative, rapid-fire imagery.[10]

The same techniques poison U.S. electoral politics. Investment in deceptive and manipulative campaign commercials commonly determines success or failure in mass-marketed election contests between business-beholden candidates that are sold to the audience/electorate like brands of toothpaste and deodorant. Fittingly enough, the stupendous cost of these political advertisements is a major factor driving U.S. campaign expenses so high (the 2016 U.S. presidential election will cost at least $5 billion) as to make candidates ever more dependent on big money corporate and Wall Street donors.

Along the way, mass cognitive competence is assaulted by the numbing, high-speed ubiquity of U.S. television and radio advertisements. These commercials assault citizens’ capacity for sustained mental focus and rational deliberation nearly sixteen minutes of every hour on cable television, with 44 percent of the individual ads now running for just 15 seconds. This is a factor in the United States’ long-bemoaned epidemic of “Attention Deficit Disorder.”

Full article --> here.

[JayhawkSD]

1. It's easy to blame corporations and government for this,

but we are the ones who actually cast the votes. We are the ones who allow the "deceptive and manipulative campaign commercials" to lead us into re-electing legislators who have betrayed us.

Don't give me the "we are working hard and don't have time to find out the truth" excuse, because if you don't have time to preserve democracy then you have no right to complain the loss of democracy.

Don't give me the "they are lying and the truth cannot be found" excuse, because there is always some "still small voice crying in the wilderness" who is telling us the truth. It's usually something we don't want to hear. The politicians are telling us lies because the lies are what we want to hear.

Democracy is hard work and the ones who have to do that work are the voting citizens in the form of an informed and responsible public. We, presently, are nowhere close to that.

[Mika]

2. Would have been nice to read the article before commenting on it.

From it ...

The U.S. elite is no more successful in its utopian (or dystopian) quest to control every American heart and mind than it is in its equally impossible ambition of managing events across a complex planet from the banks of the Potomac River in Washington D.C. The struggle for popular self-determination, democracy, justice, and equality lives on despite the influence of corporate media.

[imthevicar]

3. How can We casting votes be

responsible when we have so little choice for who runs?

http://www.thirty-thousand.org