ID :
159417
Tue, 02/08/2011 - 16:38
Auther :
Shortlink :
https://www.oananews.org//node/159417
The shortlink copeid
The pitfalls of persuasion
TEHRAN, Feb.8(MNA) -- “What is the morality of subordinating truth to cheerfulness in keeping the citizen posted on the state of his nation?” author Vance Packard presciently asked in 1957.
A deep question relevant to our time indeed, considering how Americans have elected politicians representing the same predatory capitalist criminals who brought them -- and the rest of the world for that matter -- to the brink of financial catastrophe just two short years ago. How can we explain this breathtakingly blatant display of irrationality? Lurking behind this contradictory behavior is a calculated campaign of pernicious persuasion combined with mind-molding doses of compulsory cheerfulness.
Recently, in a second-hand store, I found a textbook for a sociology class I took in the early 1960s. Entitled “The Hidden Persuaders” by American journalist and social critic Vance Packard, the book, first published in 1957 and written in lucid language, provides deep insights into how Americans have been programmed to become easily persuaded, sheep-like people or “sheeple” (my thanks to colleague Hamid Golpira for this term).
In this seminal work, Packard examines the manipulative marketing methods developed by what was then called Madison Avenue, which even in the 1950s used a variety of psychological techniques, including depth probing, subliminal suggestion, symbol manipulation, hypnotism, conscious autosuggestion, and compulsory cheerfulness, now called positive thinking, all aimed at creating loyal, obedient customers for businesses.
Political strategists quickly realized that the same methods used to sell products to consumers could be used effectively to sway voters in elections. Already by early 1956, the bastion of corporate America, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was ebulliently proclaiming that in future election campaigns, “Both parties will merchandise their candidates and issues by the same methods that business has developed to sell goods.”
In the 1956 election, the merchandising of candidates was well underway. Substantive discussion of issues was curtailed by carefully orchestrated election campaigns, emphasizing candidate images and symbolism, and playing upon voters’ irrational fears and emotions. Republican campaign strategists hired professional persuaders from a New York advertising agency, who successfully steered voters into selecting incumbent Dwight Eisenhower over Democratic challenger Adlai Stephenson, as if they were choosing between “competing tubes of toothpaste in a drugstore.”
The corporate connection with the Republican Party was also becoming entrenched by this time. Democrats, seeking to mimic their rivals, sought to enlist a high-profile ad agency to market their candidate, but much to their chagrin, found none to be interested. The reason for this lack of success became clear in a post-election Senate report on campaign contributions. Of the 37 leading Madison Avenue ad firms, not a single one contributed to the Democrats; all their money went to the Republicans.
With Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan’s ascendancy to the presidency in the 1980 election, the gutting of intelligent public political discourse was virtually complete. Frequently confusing his facts, Reagan possessed an uncanny ability to shirk responsibility for his faulty decisions, which earned him the title of the “Teflon President” from the media. To deflect poignant questions, the “Gipper” would simply smile, shake his head and utter a cheery catch phrase like “There you go again,” effectively embarrassing the questioner into retreat.
Stressing in his inaugural address that “peace is the highest aspiration of the American people,” Reagan went on to support Saddam Hussein in his bloody war against Iran and oversaw a massive military buildup that included the B-1 bomber, the MX missile, and the “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). As a fiscal conservative, Reagan spoke frequently of balancing the budget while allowing the deficit to swell from $700 billion to over $3 trillion. He opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and making Martin Luther King’s birthday a holiday and supported the apartheid regime of South Africa while denying that he was a racist.
Purported to be one of the most popular U.S. presidents in history, Reagan mesmerized citizens with his cheerful, persuasive rhetoric. But now, the pitfalls of persuasion are becoming clear as Americans avoid grappling with complex issues that have resulted from this baseless optimism. No one has seriously addressed the problems caused by Reagan’s drastic cuts to social programs, or has held him culpable for the deaths of tens of thousands of Latin Americans who were slaughtered by the death squads of right-wing governments he supported. And of course, no one has dared to mention that Reagan opened the floodgates of financial support to the Mujahideen, some of whom later became known as Al-Qaeda, to fight a proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Elsewhere in his book, Packard warns, “We still have a strong defense available against such persuaders: we can choose not to be persuaded,” adding, “We cannot be too seriously manipulated if we know what is going on.” Unfortunately, most Americans have chosen not to know what is going on by deliberately remaining ignorant of what is being done around the world by their government in their name and funded by their tax dollars. Instead, they chose to believe gibberish from hawks like William Kristol, who in 1998 wrote, “There is no middle ground between a decline in U.S. power, a rise in world chaos, and a dangerous 21st century, on the one hand, and a Reaganite reassertion of American power and moral leadership, on the other.”
Following the Reagan regime’s intellectual emasculation of the polity, Bush and his henchmen came to power in the coup of 2000, which most mentally manipulated Americans still seem to regard as an election. The time had arrived for “a catastrophic and catalyzing event -- a new Pearl Harbor,” as the orchestrated attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were alluded to in a report by Thomas Donnelly, former deputy executive director of the Project for the New American Century.
The moneyed miscreants achieved their final victory over the residue of democracy and made a killing, trading put options while killing almost 3,000 unsuspecting people. After some 50 years of intense psychological conditioning, most Americans cringed in fear, believing everything they were told and ready to obediently comply with demands to relinquish their few remaining constitutional rights. They scarcely protest as their government monitors email and cell phone communications, or spies upon them because of their political activity or religious affiliation. Not only do they submit to humiliating full body scans at airports, but a majority of Americans actually support them.
As for the question of how Americans could have voted as they did in the last election, the billionaire Koch brothers merely capitalized on 50 years of perfected persuasion that played upon citizens’ fears and emotions. By bankrolling ultra-right-wing politicos through front organizations like the Tea Party, and aided by the Murdock-controlled media chain, they easily manipulated the ever-unsuspecting American voters once again into supporting the billionaires’ choices of candidates.
Addressing Packard’s question on the morality of subordinating truth to cheerfulness in keeping citizens posted on the state of their nation, I maintain that not only is it immoral, it is a deliberate, insidious mind control method designed to completely obliterate one’s ability for rational and realistic thought. Perpetual positive thinking has created a citizenry of starry-eyed zombies incapable of critical thought and in constant denial of the problems confronting humanity while cheerfully consuming two thirds of the world’s antidepressant drug supply.
Packard concludes his book by stating, “The most serious offense many of the depth manipulators commit, it seems to me, is that they try to invade the privacy of our minds. It is this right to privacy in our minds -- privacy to be either rational or irrational -- that I believe we must strive to protect.” After 50 years of unceasing manipulation of their deepest fears and irrational emotions, most Americans have willingly exchanged this right for politicians’ hollow assurances of protection against future terrorist attacks.
I am certain that if Mr. Packard were alive today, he would be shocked to see how Americans have squandered their defenses and willingly have become subservient marionettes controlled by the elitist moneyed manipulators, allowing them unobstructed access to their minds.
(Yuram Abdullah Weiler is a former engineer turned freelance writer from Denver, Colorado, USA. He frequently contributes to the Tehran Times).
A deep question relevant to our time indeed, considering how Americans have elected politicians representing the same predatory capitalist criminals who brought them -- and the rest of the world for that matter -- to the brink of financial catastrophe just two short years ago. How can we explain this breathtakingly blatant display of irrationality? Lurking behind this contradictory behavior is a calculated campaign of pernicious persuasion combined with mind-molding doses of compulsory cheerfulness.
Recently, in a second-hand store, I found a textbook for a sociology class I took in the early 1960s. Entitled “The Hidden Persuaders” by American journalist and social critic Vance Packard, the book, first published in 1957 and written in lucid language, provides deep insights into how Americans have been programmed to become easily persuaded, sheep-like people or “sheeple” (my thanks to colleague Hamid Golpira for this term).
In this seminal work, Packard examines the manipulative marketing methods developed by what was then called Madison Avenue, which even in the 1950s used a variety of psychological techniques, including depth probing, subliminal suggestion, symbol manipulation, hypnotism, conscious autosuggestion, and compulsory cheerfulness, now called positive thinking, all aimed at creating loyal, obedient customers for businesses.
Political strategists quickly realized that the same methods used to sell products to consumers could be used effectively to sway voters in elections. Already by early 1956, the bastion of corporate America, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was ebulliently proclaiming that in future election campaigns, “Both parties will merchandise their candidates and issues by the same methods that business has developed to sell goods.”
In the 1956 election, the merchandising of candidates was well underway. Substantive discussion of issues was curtailed by carefully orchestrated election campaigns, emphasizing candidate images and symbolism, and playing upon voters’ irrational fears and emotions. Republican campaign strategists hired professional persuaders from a New York advertising agency, who successfully steered voters into selecting incumbent Dwight Eisenhower over Democratic challenger Adlai Stephenson, as if they were choosing between “competing tubes of toothpaste in a drugstore.”
The corporate connection with the Republican Party was also becoming entrenched by this time. Democrats, seeking to mimic their rivals, sought to enlist a high-profile ad agency to market their candidate, but much to their chagrin, found none to be interested. The reason for this lack of success became clear in a post-election Senate report on campaign contributions. Of the 37 leading Madison Avenue ad firms, not a single one contributed to the Democrats; all their money went to the Republicans.
With Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan’s ascendancy to the presidency in the 1980 election, the gutting of intelligent public political discourse was virtually complete. Frequently confusing his facts, Reagan possessed an uncanny ability to shirk responsibility for his faulty decisions, which earned him the title of the “Teflon President” from the media. To deflect poignant questions, the “Gipper” would simply smile, shake his head and utter a cheery catch phrase like “There you go again,” effectively embarrassing the questioner into retreat.
Stressing in his inaugural address that “peace is the highest aspiration of the American people,” Reagan went on to support Saddam Hussein in his bloody war against Iran and oversaw a massive military buildup that included the B-1 bomber, the MX missile, and the “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). As a fiscal conservative, Reagan spoke frequently of balancing the budget while allowing the deficit to swell from $700 billion to over $3 trillion. He opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and making Martin Luther King’s birthday a holiday and supported the apartheid regime of South Africa while denying that he was a racist.
Purported to be one of the most popular U.S. presidents in history, Reagan mesmerized citizens with his cheerful, persuasive rhetoric. But now, the pitfalls of persuasion are becoming clear as Americans avoid grappling with complex issues that have resulted from this baseless optimism. No one has seriously addressed the problems caused by Reagan’s drastic cuts to social programs, or has held him culpable for the deaths of tens of thousands of Latin Americans who were slaughtered by the death squads of right-wing governments he supported. And of course, no one has dared to mention that Reagan opened the floodgates of financial support to the Mujahideen, some of whom later became known as Al-Qaeda, to fight a proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Elsewhere in his book, Packard warns, “We still have a strong defense available against such persuaders: we can choose not to be persuaded,” adding, “We cannot be too seriously manipulated if we know what is going on.” Unfortunately, most Americans have chosen not to know what is going on by deliberately remaining ignorant of what is being done around the world by their government in their name and funded by their tax dollars. Instead, they chose to believe gibberish from hawks like William Kristol, who in 1998 wrote, “There is no middle ground between a decline in U.S. power, a rise in world chaos, and a dangerous 21st century, on the one hand, and a Reaganite reassertion of American power and moral leadership, on the other.”
Following the Reagan regime’s intellectual emasculation of the polity, Bush and his henchmen came to power in the coup of 2000, which most mentally manipulated Americans still seem to regard as an election. The time had arrived for “a catastrophic and catalyzing event -- a new Pearl Harbor,” as the orchestrated attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were alluded to in a report by Thomas Donnelly, former deputy executive director of the Project for the New American Century.
The moneyed miscreants achieved their final victory over the residue of democracy and made a killing, trading put options while killing almost 3,000 unsuspecting people. After some 50 years of intense psychological conditioning, most Americans cringed in fear, believing everything they were told and ready to obediently comply with demands to relinquish their few remaining constitutional rights. They scarcely protest as their government monitors email and cell phone communications, or spies upon them because of their political activity or religious affiliation. Not only do they submit to humiliating full body scans at airports, but a majority of Americans actually support them.
As for the question of how Americans could have voted as they did in the last election, the billionaire Koch brothers merely capitalized on 50 years of perfected persuasion that played upon citizens’ fears and emotions. By bankrolling ultra-right-wing politicos through front organizations like the Tea Party, and aided by the Murdock-controlled media chain, they easily manipulated the ever-unsuspecting American voters once again into supporting the billionaires’ choices of candidates.
Addressing Packard’s question on the morality of subordinating truth to cheerfulness in keeping citizens posted on the state of their nation, I maintain that not only is it immoral, it is a deliberate, insidious mind control method designed to completely obliterate one’s ability for rational and realistic thought. Perpetual positive thinking has created a citizenry of starry-eyed zombies incapable of critical thought and in constant denial of the problems confronting humanity while cheerfully consuming two thirds of the world’s antidepressant drug supply.
Packard concludes his book by stating, “The most serious offense many of the depth manipulators commit, it seems to me, is that they try to invade the privacy of our minds. It is this right to privacy in our minds -- privacy to be either rational or irrational -- that I believe we must strive to protect.” After 50 years of unceasing manipulation of their deepest fears and irrational emotions, most Americans have willingly exchanged this right for politicians’ hollow assurances of protection against future terrorist attacks.
I am certain that if Mr. Packard were alive today, he would be shocked to see how Americans have squandered their defenses and willingly have become subservient marionettes controlled by the elitist moneyed manipulators, allowing them unobstructed access to their minds.
(Yuram Abdullah Weiler is a former engineer turned freelance writer from Denver, Colorado, USA. He frequently contributes to the Tehran Times).
