Propaganda is Inherently Evil

I've argued at times that propaganda is a tool, and that as a tool it has neutral ethical value. It may be used for good or evil.

For an example of propaganda, scroll down to the graphic about four posts back. Definition 2) in the link above is " Material disseminated by the advocates or opponents of a doctrine or cause: wartime propaganda.". My variant on that definition is: doctrinal concept distilled down to an easily digestible artifact, image, phrase or emotion.

The good thing about propaganda is that it penetrates the chatter of everyday life. It fires neurons. It's memorable.

The bad thing it that it reduces complex issues to iconography. People become more fascinated by the interplay of the icons than in the underlying reality. It's a wilfull version of the Plato's cave.

"Yeah, yeah, I know there's reality out there, but I'm scoring a lot of style points right now. La la la la la. La la la la la."

So the fact that more than half of America thinks Bush is a stupid liar (FINALLY!) gives me little comfort. The policies live on. The attack on international cooperation continues. Energy consumption soars. The peurile run on the country's credit card (with the People's fucking Bank of Red China) is unabated.. And young Americans continue to die for a lie. Every. Fucking Day.

Haha, Bush did something stunningly stupid the other day. Again!

- mark 6-08-2005 5:07 am [link] [1 comment]

too much verbosity

I'm trying to figure out how to distill the following ....