Recovered from the wayback machine.
I’ve been visiting some weblogs lately where the discussion ranges about the ominous similarity between the Bush administration’s use of PR and spin doctoring and the Nazi’s use of the same before the WWII – with some implications of the awful consequences of said actions on gullible ne stupid populace.
(I’d link all the gentlemen having this discussion but have a suspician that doing so would peeve some of them so I exercised the better part of valor and leave them unlinked – but not out of disrespect.)
This discussion is based, in part, on the assumption that the American voters are both blinkered and easily led – just say the magic buzz words, and we’ll react on cue, like Pavlov’s dogs. More so: Pavlov’s dogs were assumed to be intelligent.
Here’s a flash for you: The American people are not stupid. We may be conservative, or frightened, or insecure, and this combined with our beliefs may make us rigid or gullible at times, but we are not stupid. Nor are we especially self-centered, or no more so than any people in any part of any country on this earth. The only reason that the American people are getting so much attention right now is that the American government is the power, the Bitch with the Pull if you will. However, fifty years ago it was Germany and Japan. About two hundred years ago it was Britain, and about two thousand years ago it was the Romans. Throughout the ages there have been people who have used their superior arms to invade or control, and they’ve usually been led by a man (or a woman) who knows how to use PR effectively. But that does not make the people being led, stupid.
This ability to play on people’s fears or to people’s vanities in order to dominate or invade was not invented by Bush. It was not invented by the Nazi’s, either, and stop giving them so much credit. It was not invented by Napoleon, or Alexander the Great for that matter. It was not even invented by Jesus Christ, Mohammed, or King Soloman.
Og saw that Nu had more meat and fertile women than he did, and he desired these. He told some of his people that Nu wanted their women, and scared them. He told others that they were strong and invincible, and flattered them. He then convinced all of his people to go to war so that he might have this meat and screw these women. Og, you might say, is the inventor of tools used to propagandize war and greed used by men like Bush and the Nazis. Og is also the inventor of brutality, genocide, persecution, fear, avarice, and the death of hope.
We’ve had these traits from Og all along. We know this. We don’t need a swastika to be reminded of this, and the consequences. We are not stupid.
Once we’ve established that the American people are no less intelligent than spider monkeys, dolphins, and Jorge, the bartender at that cute little place on the beach in Spain, we can proceed to have conversations that are not based on assumptions about players following stereotypes – current or past.