> This is why calling Bush the Fuhrer and the US government the Third
> Reich
> works. Sure facts say otherwise. So who cares? This is mass propaganda
> we're dealing with.
I think you have a point. But personally, I don't have the stomach to completely throw facts and rational argument out the window. Probably my misspent youth in the academy ruined me for life in this regard, like someone who was raised on the finest cuisine who finds him/herself suddenly thrown into a world where McDonald's and Pizza Hut are all you can have.
I guess we intellectual gourmets will have to let the propagandists with no conscience battle the Right for us, and hope that when the smoke clears (if it ever does), there are still some people left alive who can think straight.
On Oct 23, 2004, at 1:29 PM, snit snat wrote:
> I'd say understanding how propaganda works (and especially when it
> works effectively) is imperative if we ever want to use agit-prop to
> our own advantage. I'm pretty sure Moore's very effective piece of
> propaganda wasn't the result of ignoring how the conservative spin
> machine works. In fact, I'd say his insistence on plowing through
> supposedly 'bad publicity' and shrugging it off (and actually using it
> purposefully to his own advantage) was something he picked up from
> watching the cons.
Absolutely. How many average, U.S. persons on the street have the patience to work through these involved discussions about what which high mucky-muck report said about what? People like us on this list have a sort of hobbyist's interest, if nothing more, in all this detail, but a lot of politics-heads would be shocked to find out how little interest most people have in following these arguments.
I was rather amused, when F9/11 came out, to see, on the one hand, people flocking to see it in numbers that no left propaganda piece has attracted in my lifetime (what these folks actually got out of it is another question, of course), while, on the other hand, all the leftie "experts" ignored that fact and focused their fire on all of the minute "mistakes" the film contained, from the point of view of whatever their favorite line said.
> Finally, Carrol, some of us like watching the horse race and reading
> the sports page -- just like you like Milton and Pound. It's a hobby.
> This list is to talk about what's going on in our lives--with varying
> levels of analytical sophistication.
Hey, where's your academic rigor? The Revolution will never come unless we all pull up our socks and analyze like mad at the absolute height of sophistication with every breath we take. This is serious business! :-)
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe. -- Attr. to Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile