Why is money not simply speech anymore and why is it so dangerous to good government?
It is supposed to be a story about ‘quirky food news’, but is it really a quirk, or more likely, a dangerous feature of modern life? Those animals on the cereal boxes are looking at us for a reason.
http://www.latimes.com/...
Note several points, the animals who make eye contact with shoppers on a box of cereal are designed specifically for a target market: one approach for children, one for adults. The height and distance at which the boxes are placed on the shelf, matter. And animals that make eye contact give us a good feeling about a product. But most importantly of all, someone, somewhere, spent lots of money to figure all of this out, test it and implement it, just to make us buy one overpriced box of sugar badness over another. All without knowing why we were doing what we were doing.
Apply the same kind of money to politics. The same research into why we do what we do, and how we can be influenced, without it ever being apparent to us (or at least the vast majority who don’t delve into this for a living) that we have been manipulated. We are so inundated with these messages that never rise to the level of conscious thought all of the time now in numerous media formats, prose, photographs, video, twitter, television, movies, etc. that we accept the constant barrage by and large without ever thinking about it.
We are told of the genius of Frank Lutz’s messaging at this blog all the time. What percentage of the voting population would recognize his name or his methods? We know here at this blog of the enormous disinformation campaigns by the Koch Bros. and big oil and gas on the issue of the environment. But do we even take a hard look at all the psychology that goes into those messages and are we truly prepared to fight back?
There is a propaganda war going on in this country, and much of the rest of the world, funded by corporate interests who do not want people to know they are being propagandized, how sophisticated the techniques have become, how much information these companies have amassed about our brains and behavior and how it can be used against us without our even knowing it. There have certainly been seminal figures in developing this information and even telling us they were doing it, such as Edward Bernays. But they don’t fear telling us, because they know we won’t pay half so much attention to their academic tome as to what we saw on the tv.
And I see people who buy in here at this blog. There are overt trolls, but there are more subtle persuaders who show up to naysay some obvious and logical conclusions on everything from every tax law change to every Supreme Court decision that erodes the participation and rights of ordinary people in our political process. Money is political speech, and it’s a right, freedom! Money really doesn’t matter, people can still think for themselves when they go to vote.
And if you believe that, remember to frown at Tony the Tiger on the grocery shelf, the next time you see him.