Why The American Mind Is So Fucked Up- 4 Newsweek Covers

[Jcrowley]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14975282/site/newsweek/site/newsweek/

In the US, corporate propaganda has played upon the high level of religious beliefs in the community, beliefs which leave its citizens predisposed to see the world in "Manichean terms''. This outlook leads towards a preference for action over reflection, a "pragmatic orientation'' that is perfectly suited to the corporate aim of identifying positive symbols with business, while assigning negative values to those that oppose them, such as labour unions and welfare provisions.

The organised dissemination of these symbols had its initial impetus in groups such as the National Americanization Committee, which succeeded in manipulating nationalist and patriotic symbols during World War I to associate corporate values with the "American way of life''. The psychological power of this association cannot be discounted: it has proved to be an enduring feature of the political climate in the US today.

Since then the corporate agenda has embraced all areas of society - media, schools, academia and the workplace - with focuses on different levels from "grassroots'' to "tree-tops''. It has succeeded via the mass media in identifying capitalism with democracy and in portraying any challenge to corporate elites as either "subversive'' or "extremist''.

Look at what a former New York Times Journalist John Swinton was saying about journalism all the way back in 1880 in free America:

“I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.”

“The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?”

“We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”