We have three layers of consciousness, the id, ego, and super-ego.
Think of it as the evolution of the brain: from reptile, to furry mammal, to human.
We retain some of our original reptile and animal brain, just as we retain the vestigal tailbone, and the useless appendix... somewhere in our evolution, those vestiges may have been useful, but fell out of use... or in the case of our brain, were submerged deeply in our subconscious.
We retain the vestiges of our evolutionary ancestry... they are in our DNA, our historical record.
Propaganda at its most devious level, works on our reptilian and animal brains.
Reason and sympathy are high level, human, thinking... believing in things like social welfare, kindness to strangers, equality, self sacrifice, you know, what The Master taught... are the highest level thinking, also known as humanitarianism or, to some of you koolaide drinkers, "bleeding heart liberalism".
Propaganda, on the other hand, appeals to baser instincts, the older brain: Madison Avenue and Hollywood discovered this before Karl Rove did.
Sex sells, violence sells, but put the two together and that ticket is SOLD!
How does a thinking person cut through the propaganda?
Simply put, check your organs. Hit the pause button and analyse how you are being spun. Put it together. If you can take the time to solve Sudoku or watch soaps, you can take the time to analyse how the latest "new story" is being crafted.
Does a "news story" appeal to your sexual nature? thats id, the reptilian side of us all. Some bury it deeper than others, but we are all basically sexual in some way or otherwise sex wouldn't sell so well. Adding the sexual component to a story makes it catch your attention, and buries the hook.
Does the "news story" threaten you, make you angry or frightened? it appeals to the furry mammal in us who had to evolve in a dangerous world of flight or fight, thats ego. The violent threatening story affects our major organs, the heart, the lungs, the skin. After a shock, the blood pressure, the breathing go back to normal, but the physical memory was implanted, to be roused again with every reference.
Most "news stories" don't appeal to your humanitarian brain. We wouldn't be in the world we are in today if the stories that appeal to reason and humanity were the important stories of the day. If you care enough to follow the un-arousing story, you will never be popular at parties, you will be a news geek, a documentary watcher, a book reader.
Have you ever noticed how When the war drums are beating we are repeatedly manipulated by "news stories" about blond women being sacrificed? (How does that appeal to the Bohemian Grove in you?)Soccer moms standing in line at the check out counter focusing on the weekly tabloid magazines LOVE this stuff. Princess Diana, Martha Stewart, the blond disappeared while on spring break in Aruba, Jessica Lynch, Jon-Benet?
We are being double hammered right now with the return of the little raped and strangled beauty queen story, leading right in to the pedophile-polygamist Mormon sect story. Turn the channel and its war, war, war.
Reminds me of a f'ing King Kong movie. Fay Ray, writhing, tied to the gates of the tribal village, drums beating, the monster Kong, in the dark jungle of our deep reptilian past, coming.
How does this relate to my anti-war thesis?
Well, GANG, remember how I told you during the Dubai Ports news cycle, that was enhanced by the racist Mohammed cartoon brouhaha, back a season ago... remember how I told you that we were going to nuke Iran, and Dubai Ports was the shot across the bow by BushCo. against Iran? The additional racist cartoon story allowed our racism (fear=ego) to surface and be fed. All preparation of the citizenry for war.
Surprise, surprise... now everyone is talking about my "wild" Nuke Iran theory.
At the time jaws dropped and tin hats were joked about, but, fact is, you have to expect that everything is propaganda. Every "news story" turns out to be spun somehow. Even weather and accidents are used to elicit response in the population. How's that for tin hat theory?
We are living in an Orwellian novel.
Expect Iraq to be our enemy one day, and Iran the next. The official journalist-stenographers are having a hard time keeping their fingers on the right key... q or n... q or n...
This is take right out of 1984, remember? Eurasia was Oceana's enemy one day, then right in the middle of a broadcast, the enemy of the state changed without the blink of an eyelash. *
Doesn't NPR's "latest horrible story" out of Iraq (the Shiite turning Sunni patients out of hospital beds to execute them) breathlessly reported by a young woman reporter from the WaPo remind you of the pre- First Bush War story fifteen years ago reported by girl (was it an ambassador's college aged daughter) posing as a witness to a prpoaganda story about Saddam's troops turning Kuwaiti babies out of incubators? Co-ink-i-dink? Right.
Frankly, Big Brother is gining up the "need for troops" in Iraq. Who says our leaders can't make lemonade out of the lemons of an Iraqi civil war? And we can even hear the high-minded Juan Cole comment, now that the war plans have been cast in concrete.
*Wikipedia:
In the novel, an orator, mid-sentence, alters the alleged enemy of Oceania, and the crowd instantly transfer their same feelings of hatred toward the new alleged enemy. In Notes on Nationalism, Orwell describes transferred nationalism as swiftly redirecting emotions from one power unit to another, as if not by reasoned change in opinion, but as if one's beliefs are serving one's loyalties, which can be altered, but with the original fanaticism intact. Orwell lists Communism, Political Catholicism, Pacifism, Colour Feeling, and Class Feeling as examples of transferred nationalism.
O'Brien, in one of his most conclusive statements, describes nationalism for its own sake: "The object of power is power; The object of torture is torture."
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