Why Americans Will Believe Almost Anything

[LiberalUprising]

We are the most conditioned, programmed beings the world has ever known.

Not only are our thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded; our very awareness of the whole design seems like it is being subtly and inexorably erased.

The doors of our perception are carefully and precisely regulated. Who cares, right?

It is an exhausting and endless task to keep explaining to people how most issues of conventional wisdom are scientifically implanted in the public consciousness by a thousand media clips per day. In an effort to save time, I would like to provide just a little background on the handling of information in this country.

Once the basic principles are illustrated about how our current system of media control arose historically, the reader might be more apt to question any given story in today's news.

If everybody believes something, it's probably wrong. We call that Conventional Wisdom.

In America, conventional wisdom that has mass acceptance is usually contrived: somebody paid for it. Examples:

* Pharmaceuticals restore health
* Vaccination brings immunity
* The cure for cancer is just around the corner
* When a child is sick, he needs immediate antibiotics
* When a child has a fever he needs Tylenol
* Hospitals are safe and clean.
* America has the best health care in the world.
* And many many more

This is a list of illusions, that have cost billions and billions to conjure up. Did you ever wonder why you never see the President speaking publicly unless he is reading? Or why most people in this country think generally the same about most of the above issues?

Characteristics Of Good Propaganda

As the science of mass control evolved, PR firms developed further guidelines for effective copy. Here are some of the gems:

* dehumanize the attacked party by labeling and name calling
* speak in glittering generalities using emotionally positive words
* when covering something up, don't use plain English; stall for time; distract
* get endorsements from celebrities, churches, sports figures, street people - anyone who has no expertise in the subject at hand
* the 'plain folks' ruse: us billionaires are just like you
* when minimizing outrage, don't say anything memorable, point out the benefits of what just happened, and avoid moral issues

Keep this list. Start watching for these techniques. Not hard to find - look at today's paper or tonight's TV news. See what they're doing; these guys are good!

http://www.shoutwire.com/viewstory/13690/Why_Americans_Will_Believe_Almost_Anything

[alarimer]

1. Without vaccination, a lot more people would be dead

of things like smallpox, polio, etc. That is NOT bullshit. It is scientific truth.

[depakid]

25. Without pharmaceuticals

There's be a LOT more dead than that!

Personally, I like modern medicine and dentistry- and find it difficult to give credibility to messages that evince such utter and complete stupidity.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. The same reason they can be manipulated into buying something they

don't need:

1. Freudian denial. They see and hear the truth, but it's so horrible, they opt for a more palatable version and call the truth false.

2. Supension of disbelief. Part of the denial process. A statement is made that is blatantly hard to accept as true, but the person who made the declaration is so truthworthy, that the reputation of the person overrides the natural inclination to accept a lie as a lie.

3. Lack of personal investigation. In other words, Americans don't have access to all facts, partly due to the circumscribed "news" that the mainstream media parses out. So they accept as fact whatever the nightly news, CNN, FOX, Rush, Sean, etc. tell them since the message is consistent and see #2 about the likeability and believability factors.

[Gregorian]

3. Have you heard about neural marketing?

There's a little known radio station in the San Francisco area. SFLR (San Francisco Liberation Radio). The FCC shut it down for reasons I've forgotten. But they pop up and broadcast from places like people's laundry rooms.

I was listening to a show last night on this subject. Along with thoughts about how MacDonald's uses subtle schemes to sell people dollar Cokes, which are extremely profitable, and how the average child in this country drinks over fifty gallons of soft drink per year, there was a bit of discussion about marketing research that is done on the youngest target group.

They are literally putting children in MRI scanners, and then locating the portions of the brain that identify product brands. It's now a science. Roll over Pavlov.

[gristy]

5. What do they do with this information?

As to what part of the brain identifies product brands?

[LiberalUprising]

11. Where might one listen to this show on

neural marketing?

[Gregorian]

20. Darnit. I don't know. I tried searching.

It was a live speech that was recorded. I wasn't paying too much attention as I was eating dinner at the time. If you Google sflr or liberationradio you can locate the station. They have an archive calander. But it didn't have anything on this show. That would be the only way I know to find out. Sorry about that.

[LiberalUprising]

22. Thanks for the reply and tips Gregorian

I look around and see if I can't find it somewhere.

[Jackpine Radical]

33. I think for many years they havce used physiological indices

such as electrodermal responses (aka galvanic skin responses), EEG p-300 waves, CNVs, heart rate variation, changes in breathing, etc. to assess autonomic responses to variou stimuli such as ads, logos, etc. And of course there are all those old subliminal advertising stories.

In the 50's there was some reportage of using subliminal advertising to sell Coke in a movie theater. It was supposedly very effective. Then some years later the story was debunked & there have been no more followups that I know of. Not in public anyway.

In fact, the basic psychophysiological science is available in the literature, as are the applications to psychoassessment therapy, but there is nothing much on the commercial uses of this stuff. I think people are doing it but they aren't talking about what they're doing.

[gristy]

4. That's quite an anecdotal list

Who nowadays believes that when one is sick, one must have antibiotics to get better? Or that antibiotics will even make any difference for many illnesses? I'd have to see a quality poll before I came to any conclusions on that one.

I guess I'm one of the dumb shits who believes that vaccination brings immunity. Doh! How could I be so stoooopid!

Most everything else on that list seems pretty obviously false to me.

[LiberalUprising]

9. You might try reading past the "anecdotal list"

[BlueJazz]

6. I think your whole Post is absolutely Ridiculous. The way you say it....

..there are controls put upon us in every aspect of..of..of...I Hungry..must go McDonalds...

:rofl:

[LiberalUprising]

8. The doors of our perception are carefully and precisely regulated.

Who cares, right?

[BrklynLiberal]

10. Exactly! Can you say "subliminal advertizing" for just one example?

[BlueJazz]

27. Oh, I care ...very Much. Don't let my attempt at humor undermine....

..your perception of my seriousness of the topic. :)

[LiberalUprising]

17. Highly Acclaimed Video Causing a Flood of Hate Mail

Click below to watch the free animated short video that that has created a major controversy across the Web. The video parodies the drug companies and conventional healthcare system and many are furious about the truth being exposed.

http://www.mercola.com/LT/track.asp?l=163

[BrklynLiberal]

7. Excellent article. The sheeple do not want to be told that the emperor is

naked, especially in the cases when they themselves are the emperor.

Politics is not the only area where people are easily fooled. Big business has been "brain-washing" the public for decades, and TV has become an invaluable tool for them.
Politicans are now merely using the tools that were first developed by advertisers for big corporate products like cigarettes, big cars, soda, fast foods, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals etc.

How many times have we found out that the Federal Agencies that are supposed to be protecting the public were actually pawns of some big corporation? They have allowed some product to be used by the public when the dangers were not properly investigated and/or revealed to the public. This has been found in cars, drugs, foods, food additives, cigarettes, and many, many more products.

But the advertizing and PR still gets the public out there to buy and use products that are either useless, or downright harmful. When someone tries to warn the public, the corporations use their superior financial & politcial clout to silence them. (An approach that BushCo has adapted very successfully as well.)

How many times have we seen the corporations put their bottom line over the public safety?

[LiberalUprising]

12. Yes it is

I ran across it here
http://tinyurl.com/l5qke

How many times have we seen the corporations put their bottom line over the public safety?

Ummm....

Every time.

[BrklynLiberal]

13. Mercola is also an excellent site for finding alternative, IE, actual

facts.
Obviously, those who were skeptical about your post, did not actually read the article.

[LiberalUprising]

14. Self delete

[I_Make_Mistakes]

15. I attended a corporate paid Creativity class. It was really cool

and took place a B&B for a completely un-corporate atmosphere, wish we could've stayed overnight it was beautiful.

It was really interesting, one of our projects was to come up with a product for the cardboard remainder of a roll of toilet paper. The first time around was fairly easy, but with about 25 in a class the third time really was downright difficult. There was one guy whose 3 ideas were all weaponry related, prob. works for DOD now. I made a mental note to stay away from this wacko.

The thing that struck me was the use of smell to manipulate us. The leader of the seminar was involved with scent development as his real job. He related a test that Nike had performed. They located 2 stores about 2 miles from one another. The first store charged 20% less for the same item as the second, who fragranced the products with a lavender scent (he informed us that lavender is the most relaxing of scents) and the second store had a much higher sales %.

The manipulation/conditioning occurs at a level that is not really overt to the avg. indiv. and yet has been happening for only GOD knows how long. This class was in the early 90's and he was speaking from prior experience.

It made me so paranoid, that I now pay attention to the scents, lighting, music, etc. when I am in a selling establishment (I despise the idea of being manipulated to do anything), and I am sure, that there are stimuli that I am not even aware of, that I rarely impulse buy as a response.

[LiberalUprising]

16. Interesting

thanks for sharing. One more thing to be aware of.

[BrklynLiberal]

19. Those who are not aware are probably very easily manipulated.

How many of us are even slightly aware of the subleties of manipulation?
There are so many tricks. :shrug:

[I_Make_Mistakes]

21. Well, paint me silly. If I had never attended that class, I know that

I would never have been alerted to this crass manipulation of the consuming public.

I also, purchase low end art, and have found the running water (water falls, which I have a very pretty copper one ($500.00) and, music Celtic Harps music (I have several of) that permeate the low end galleries, a relaxing stimuli to induce purchasing.

We are being coerced to buy, and in our naivete, never even noticed.

Well, I have been informed and as a result, make informed purchases!

[LiberalUprising]

18. thanks, great site, bookmarked

[Blue_Tires]

23. ttt n/t

[Odin2005]

24. Anyone who questions the use of vaccines is a moron.

These anti-vaccine people deserve to get TB.

The growing ludditism in this country is pathetic.

And just beecause anti-biotics can be abused doesn't mean they are bad, thats the same crap logic the anti-genetic engineering people use.

[LiberalUprising]

26. Oh please.....

Can't see the forest for the trees eh?

So you (along with a couple others here) are going to pick ONE line out of a two page article to base an opinion of said article on?

Did you even read past that line?

i just love knee jerk replies, could be that's why I don't post here that often anymore.

[muriel_volestrangler]

30. No, Mercola's business IS all about knocking vaccines and drugs

That's how he makes his money. That is the purpose of this article - to lump vaccines and pharamceuticals in with tobbaco, leaded gasoline and other things as "bad for you" - and then to offer Mercola's books and products as the solution. That's why this article appears surrounded by adverts for his products.

Someone there has a sense of humor, though - "This site is powered by the Northwoods Titan Content Management System". Named after an infamous false propaganda operation? :rofl:

[Lindacooks]

28. Yeah, and the increased lifespan we've enjoyed over the last

100 years is just due to ... what? Good luck? Ancient Chinese secrets?

It's due to conventional medicine, antibiotics, and vaccines.

Sheesh.

[LiberalUprising]

29. It is NOT about wether medicine, antibiotics or vaccines are good or bad,

it is about the manipulation of information to mold us all into easily managable consumers and subjects, selling us everything we believe in including products, government policy, patriotism, ideas, politicians .......

for the purpose of profits to corporations, at the expense of the people, while being sold as a benefit to the people.



t is an exhausting and endless task to keep explaining to people how most issues of conventional wisdom are scientifically implanted in the public consciousness by a thousand media clips per day.

Once the basic principles are illustrated about how our current system of media control arose historically, the reader might be more apt to question any given story in today's news.

Do you really suppose the major stories that have dominated headlines and TV news have been "what is going on in the world?" Do you actually think there's been nothing going on besides the contrived tech slump, the contrived power shortages, the re-filtered accounts of foreign violence and disaster, and all the other non-stories that the puppeteers dangle before us every day?

What about when they get a big one, like with OJ or Monica Lewinsky or the Oklahoma city bombing? Do we really need to know all that detail, day after day? Do we have any way of verifying all that detail, even if we wanted to? What is the purpose of news?

To inform the public? Hardly. The sole purpose of news is to keep the public in a state of fear and uncertainty so that they'll watch again tomorrow and be subjected to the same advertising.

Oversimplification? Of course. That's the mark of mass media mastery - simplicity.

And guess what, it works.

[I_Make_Mistakes]

31. I saw a show on C-Span or PBS that the expert said the most

important contributing factor to increased life span has to due with the sanitary conditions of our life, in terms of our food/water chain, ie., clean drinking water, the regulations on our the vegetable and meat industries. He said that these alone, have expanded the life span to say 67 and then, he said add another 10 for pharmaceuticals.

If you think about the leading causes of death in the early/mid 1900's, most were diseases or bacteria that were directly or indirectly attributed to the cleanliness of our environment.

[Lindacooks]

36. Tell that to polio and smallpox victims.

Not to mention victims of the ordinary flu. While governmental regulation of our air, food, and water is very important (and has been gutted since Reagan), vaccinations are equally important.

[Lindacooks]

35. Nope.

Every vaccine ever developed in this country goes through a rigorous testing process, and odds are calculated: are more people going to be saved by vaccinations, or will more die? Will more people die if the vaccinatnion is withheld?

Every single time, statistical testing proves that vaccinations save far, far more people, by orders of magnitude, than it hurts.

And no, I don't get that from the MSM. I get that from college courses and learning about the issues through peer reviewed studies.

[I_Make_Mistakes]

37. I am not arguing about vaccinations, I have had most of them.

My point was if the water had not be regulated and cleaned how many people do you think would die per year. If the water is allowed to set stagnant and breed mosquito's how many people would die per year. If we watered vegetables with unclean water how many people would die per year. If the air was dirtier than it is now (it is dirty) how many people would die per year.

That was my point, not against vaccines, but that it made sense to me that the environmental issues could wipe out a lot more people a lot quicker.

I do however, worry more about vaccines of late. I have seen the controversies about autism vs. vaccines. They had a physician on one of the hearings (C-Span) years ago that said the CDC has 5-6 databases that store the data disjointly, not integrated. The physicians are not permitted to access this info. Did you know that some vaccines have a higher negative incident rate and the physicians and patients are not permitted access to the info? Which vaccine would you want to give your child, the one with higher incidences? Oh, but your not entitled to know the risks associated with each mfg'er.

Oh yes, and why was the liability release to vaccine mfg'ers slipped into the Patriot Act (I think it was). Why do the pharmaceutical companies need to be absolved from any liability for their products. Does that make you feel comfortable, with the recent revelations of medications such as Vioxx?

[Igel]

32. This reminds me of a fundie minister I once knew.

He'd write things like this. A mix of things that are true enough that you can't say they're false, but which are so false that you can't say they're true--and if you try to explain what's true and what's false, it takes a few minutes for each point. People would be forced, by conversational conventions and assumptions, to agree; they'd be told if they agree they're superior and better and smarter than the 'intellectuals' and 'wise of this world'. The claims would get more and more self-serving as he built up to what he was selling, and by that time the people were locked in: if they suddenly said 'no', they'd have to engage in the mental effort to revise their evaluation of what they had been so assiduously agreeing with; they'd have to ponder that they'd been duped for the last few minutes, and didn't spot it--they weren't *better* than others, they were quite possibly deluded. That's impossible; egos won't allow it. And he'd have those dumb primates right where he wanted. They might pick at nits, but that's the extent of their disagreement with what he said.

I've seen others that were as cynically manipulative as him. Not many.

The guy who wrote this makes the fundie minister look like a piker.

Take one of his examples. "Vaccination brings immunity." Yes, no, and maybe. Yes; vaccines, in general, confer immunity against the viral or bacterial agent they target. Do they always work? No. Do they wear off over time? Frequently. Is the statement 'vaccination brings immunity' a valid statement? Close enough for common conversation, where it's taken to mean 'vaccination generally confers immunity," without stipulation as to the length of the immunity; but not in a framework where it'll be taken to mean 'vaccination invariably confers permanent immunity.' Since such a statement is intended to be interpreted in the first way, and the snake-oil salesmen want you to *shift the meaning* of the utterance to what's expected in the second context, this is merely an elaboration of a basic fallacy. Most of the other examples work the same way, or similar kinds of problems (omitted words, shifts in interpretation). But explaining them takes time; identifying the problem takes time. You have the length of time you hear or read the phrase; your brain makes the necessary assumptions, assumes they're true until you can figure out that they're not--but you never go back to figure out that they're not true. You've bought a lie. *And he's made you think you're more intelligent because you swallowed what he spewed.*

Snake-oil salesmen have known these techniques for a long time. How the brain actually processes information, and why these techniques work so well ... some was understood in the '30s, some in the '50s, and some bits were found out in the last 10 years. And some are still a mystery. Doesn't mean they can't be used. It takes some time and critical thinking (sometimes fairly sophisticated critiquing) to see through them.

And he uses them. In spades.

Physician, heal thyself.

[TexasLawyer]

34. BushCo propagandists operate right out of the playbook.

Propaganda

"All effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare
essentials and this must be expressed as far as possible in
stereotyped formulae." — Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

In his Coup d'Etat handbook, Luttwak explains the importance of propaganda in the post-coup period. "Our first objective," says Luttwak, "will be achieved by conveying the reality and strength of the coup instead of trying to justify it." 52 The goal is not to explain the legitimacy of the seizure of power, but simply to emphasize that it is a fait acompli to be accepted as fact.

<snip>

...(O)ur information campaign...{must}...reassure the general public by dispelling fears that the coup is inspired by foreign and/or extremist elements, and to persuade particular groups that the coup is not a threat to them. The first aim will be achieved by manipulating national symbols and by asserting our belief in the prevailing pieties.... 53

As Luttwak further explains, marginalizing whatever resistance might oppose the coup is equally important. By the same token, creating a sense of isolation and futility among oppositional elements is vital to prevent any possible unification against the coup.

...{N}ews of any resistance against us would act as a powerful stimulant to further resistance by breaking down this feeling of isolation. We must therefore make every effort to withhold such news. If there is in fact some resistance and if its intensity and locale are such as to make it difficult to conceal from particular segments of the public, we should admit its existence; but we should strongly emphasize that it is isolated, the product of the obstinancy of a few misguided or dishonest individuals who are not affiliated to any party or group of significant membership. 54

<snip>

http://www.lumpen.com/coup2k/framer.html?pg=8