Propaganda 101

The United States does do one thing really well, to be sure. As a nation, we have honed to the sharpest our propagandist skills, our leadership maybe the most effective anywhere in pounding into our nation's collective head how superordinate is America.

Of course, it's the way of the world that all countries' powers-that-be undertake to control their people's opinion. Others for the most part just do it less competently than we. To really know propaganda, a study of American technique would serve those leaders well.

American propaganda is more clever, playing more so on emotional draw. It doesn’t depend on a reason that one might be inclined to readily disprove, it appeals rather to things no one would possibly off the bat object to.

Well-spun slogans and catchphrases work well keeping one from thinking so far as to rationalize. Roosevelt's Social Security Act and Four Freedoms address, Wilson's Safe For Democracy appeal, Bush's War On Terror declaration, who would be against any one of those just on the expression of it even? It's all in the branding.

Not to suggest of course, that everything so effectively promoted is bad, not at all. What is bad is when such gifted propagandists brand whatever issue with so much subtle positivity, that it precludes any propensity toward reasoning by the audience.

Propaganda for Dummies: Know that to be good it must not appeal to rationality.

Propaganda in some other less savvy countries, though, is just too much in-your-face. Straightaway from the beginning one can easily distinguish it as a mess of lousy propaganda, bringing up a thesis that could possibly be confuted.

Which would explain the extended protesting and insurrection elsewhere in the world by the masses exhibiting opposition to perceived questionable policies and orders of business in their neck of the woods.

Questionable and duly questioned, because those in charge pushing whatever decrees are not as ingenious as we are at figuring out how to better convince their subjects to blindly and quietly buckle under.

And I've gone on far too long, I feel without even really making my point. It's not about what might be right or what might be wrong, it's about the not thinking of most people over here. The thoughtless American simply buying in.

I might personally agree or disagree with this group or that one here at home, who dares to raise a ruckus regarding a specific matter. But at least I can respect and take account of their calling into question the substance of all the pretty words.