Using fear...., BushCo has subverted American mythology and our national character.

[marmar]

from The Nation:



comment | posted February 22, 2008 (web only)
Art and Propaganda
Milton Glaser



Speaking at a symposium at the City University of New York Graduate Center February 15, renowned designer Milton Glaser examined the interplay of art, morality and politics. The text is published here as part of the ongoing Moral Compass series, highlighting the spoken word.

Some years ago, I was in Fez, Morrocco, with my wife Shirley. We had hired a guide and were being escorted through the Medina, the ancient part of the city that had 160,000 inhabitants and no telephones (although our guide assured us that he could reach anyone in the old city within two hours by word of mouth). We stopped momentarily to look into a courtyard through an open door where about fifty boys between the ages of four and five were seated on the ground reading out loud. "How long will these boys be at school?" I asked our guide. "Generally, two years. After that, almost all of them will go to work. "What do they study?" I asked. "The Koran." "Nothing else?" "No."

The memory of that scene and conversation has haunted me for over twenty-five years. These poor boys would never be able to question their own beliefs and could never understand how those beliefs had been systematically pounded into their brains. Every culture has its own way of indoctrinating its citizenry. In our culture, this indoctrination occurs through the use of advertising, television, schooling and the way news is reported. Because this indoctrination is so difficult to identify, it becomes essential to question all the beliefs we cherish most.

We live in an ocean of persuasion, most of it unrelenting and invisible. I once described making a low-calorie Greek salad for my wife and myself on a warm spring day in the country. After I chopped the tomatoes, onions, peppers and cucumber, I found a package of French feta cheese in the refrigerator, which I crumbled into the bowl. I glanced at the back of the package. It read: 70 calories per serving. Below that, in smaller type, it read: "Number of servings per package--7." I had just added 500 calories to our modest lunch.

...(snip)...

Propaganda not only inhibits our sense of reality, it frequently causes us to act against our own interests. It does this by affecting the primitive parts of the brain that are unaffected by logic or consciousness but respond to images and symbols.

The short recent history of the Bush Administration has demonstrated this principle. By using fear and endless repetition, the government has subverted our mythology and character and it has processed the American people into accepting a dramatic erosion of our civil rights and, perhaps most appallingly, to approve of torture. Sadly, the phenomenon is scarcely unique. In fact, it may be the inevitable narrative of human civilization. The intersection of fear and persuasion has created the world as we know it. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080310/glaser

[mrcheerful]

1. Theres only one small question I have, why weren't the kids of the 50's and 60's effected

the same as kids from the 70's on up? I remember growing up in the early 60's the fear tactics used against the USSR's nukes, though I admit I know nothing of the McCarthy years but from what I have read it wasn't all americans it was the conservatives that followed McCarthy, for the main part. We had drop cover hide drills and practice going down to the bomb shelters drills. But none of us believed that any day we would be nuked and we were not afraid if it happened, we figured that if we got nuked we were dead. We also knew Father Nows Best, Leave it to Beaver were just TV shows and that using old spice just meant that if you steped in dog crap the old spice would cover the smell. We also knew that drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon beer wasn't going to make us popular with women nor was having the latest greatest toy gun would make us the king of the neighborhood. But then maybe all the drugs we did in the 60's and early 70's did cause a gene mutation that de evolved future generations who believe what they see on TV is reality and life is whats fake thinking in todays youth.