What propaganda? I don't see any propaganda, do you?

[mqbush]

When some people dismiss talk of a long-term, wide-spread propaganda effort by the right, dismiss it as wild-eyed conspiracy theory, other people can offer as validating evidence the undisputed phenomenon of people voting against their own interests. Detailed and scrupulous surveys of what Americans want America to be have consistently, over the decades, shown a strong socialist leaning in the people of this country. High majorities want non-profit universal health insurance, non-profit Social Security, high taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals, less spent on the military, more spent on the people.

Yet so many of these same people, away from the quiet soul-searching of the survey questionnaire, speak sternly about the unfairness of supporting lazy people, and vote for politicians who promise to lower taxes to starve out social safety nets,-which will severely impact these very same voters. Somehow, between the questionnaire sheet and the backyard fence or the voting booth, the common-sense shrewdness of pooling resources so that catastrophic injury expenses and the like can be covered, is replaced by a system that only makes sense if everyone were very wealthy.

Where do these divorced-from-reality ideas come from, if not from conditioning by the propaganda mills? Ideas, it’s clear, can overpower even strong instincts. Consider honor killing. In some cultures, a daughter who brings shame to a family by being raped has to be killed in order to erase the blot on the family name. One of the strongest of instincts is to nurture and protect one’s children, yet this idea of honor killing trumps it. To other cultures, the idea of honor killing is bizarre and horrifying,-certainly not compelling, as it would be if it were a primal urge. It is purely an idea, yet it overrides everything else.

If some cultures can be imbued with a notion such as honor killing, it shouldn’t seem far-fetched to posit that other cultures can come up with other ideas that also defy sense, ideas such as counteracting the instincts of community with some strange ethos of strict isolation of individuals. This ethos of “individual responsibility” really means “you’re on your own.” The fosterers of such an idea, of course, would be those who have the most to gain by its adoption,-the wealthy. During the 1950s and 1960s, the middle class made its greatest strides ever, aided by a 91% tax rate on the wealthy. This tax rate obviously didn’t discourage the wealthy from investing, as this period also saw the most robust growth in the industrial economy. But some didn’t like the idea that the wealthy were being “unfairly” taxed, and considered the buying of politicians and media to change the paradigm to be money well-spent.

[electropop]

1. That's a great analysis - if propaganda can socialize counter-instinctive ideas,

can it also socialize ideas, which are more in tune with our better instincts? Intuitively, one would think that ideas which appeal to our common sense and good nature would be easier to sell than ideas which pander to our base and destructive impulses.

[mqbush]

2. Intellectually, such ideas don't need selling. The kind of

visceral involvement that makes bad ideas conquer good sense is what the techniques of propaganda achieve. That's why there IS propaganda,-to sell ideas that nobody would buy without emotional manipulation.