soapbox, please.

Personally, I thought this recent Texaco-sponsored Romney ad was a bit over the line.  Whether President Obama was born here or not, whatever his religion, or his extreme European Socialist views, what possible good can this sort of offensive negative ad do for our great nation?

(Full disclosure: the Texaco-sponsored bit of propaganda above was part of the war effort against Imperial Japan during World War Two and not an ad for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.  I am not linked with the Romney campaign, nor with any related or unrelated super-PAC or other charitable group supporting Mr. Romney, nor was the crude example of propagandistic rebranding strictly called for.  But, see paragraph below beginning “The Allies, Hitler pointed out…”)

But let us backtrack a bit and try to be a little more analytic.  What makes something propaganda?  A shameless and manipulative appeal to our emotions, brought to us via mass media.  What makes something good propaganda?  A well-paid ad agency, or government, or both, employing the most skilled people it can recruit.

1622, Pope of the Catholic Church, under attack by the so-called Reformation, creates an office to propagate the faith, sow it, let it flower.   Three hundred years later Hitler dictates the first volume of Mein Kampf, pauses to wipe the foam off his mouth and delivers a short, cogent lecture extolling the effectiveness of Allied propaganda in the recent World War.  That lecture concluded he resumes foaming at the mouth for the remainder of volume one and, presumably, in the secret, unpublished volume two.

Note: the editor of Mein Kampf was killed in “The Night of Long Knives”.

The psychopathic future dictator made several astute points in his discourse on propaganda.  One is that a lie, wielded without mercy or weakness, is almost always more useful in inspiring obedience and violent action than any sort of truth.  The Allies did not hesitate to lie about alleged atrocities committed by the Hun.  Hitler applauded this, it creates hatred of the enemy and also fear, which combined, engenders a determination to exterminate the enemy.   In contrast, the German authorities made a snobbish appeal to the superiority of their culture and troops, sneering at the contemptible unsophistication of the enemy.  

The Allies, Hitler pointed out, didn’t hesitate to make  up inflammatory captions to hideous photos– a gruesome pile of bodies waiting to be taken to morgue had not died of typhus (truth) but had been tortured to death, in a specific place and on a given date, by the Hun.  Not only that, they ran the incendiary picture in every paper for days running, with articles scrupulously documenting the invented crimes against humanity.

You starting  to get the picture?

Why did the USA get into the World War in the first place?  That is a question nobody to this day can give a very good answer to.  There’s no question American bankers had loaned many millions to the French and English war efforts, stood to lose a shitload of money if Germany won, but that alone can’t explain it.  There was a scramble for colonial possessions and a frenzy of competitive nationalism, but that wouldn’t be enough to have American farm boys, city boys and young collegians lining up to enlist.

It was the genius of George Creel and his Committee for Public Information that got them on their feet, cheering, patriotic and bursting to “make the world safe for democracy” to fight the “War to End War” and cover themselves with glory.  You can look it up.   Woodrow Wilson enlisted Creel and the Creel Committee, ingenious, tireless, unhindered by scruples of any kind, whipped up a great patriotic frenzy for war.   Lines of guys singing “Over There!” went over there to run to glory out of muddy trenches into barbed wire and machine gun fire, through mustard gas and aerial bombardment.

It begs the question of why America entered the World War. But it explains how.

Anyway, Google “propaganda”.  Look at the Wikipedia article.  I guarantee that the images you will imagine as you read will be based strictly on your political outlook, shaped by the famous confirmation bias.  Some will read the descriptions of the various techniques and see images of Cheney, Bush, Condoleeza Rice and so on.  Others will immediately see Obama, lying eloquently through wolfish teeth.

The one thing we can be sure of, effective propaganda costs a lot of money.  You have to saturate everybody, constantly, for it to work.

The Supreme Court told us recently that money is speech, the same way it once told us in the Civil Rights Cases* that biogtry against blacks had nothing to do with their status as former slaves, that nobody should get constitutionally huffy about it, and that the Fourteenth Amendment had nothing to say about it.  Go tell the Supreme Court they’re wrong.

“So, call me ‘pisher’,” the Supreme Court will shrug, “we’ll talk about this again in 90 years or so.”

As for me, I’m speechless.

*  see italic section near bottom of  post below for a full-bodied quote from that fascinating decision, it begins When a man has emerged from slavery

https://gratuitousblahg.wordpress.com/2012/08/07/my-fellow-americans-ignore-me-25-2/