Letters from a Young Radical

************************************ EDIT ************************************
I've just received a comment from Rick Shenkman, the author of the book I rail on in this entry. I'm posting the comment at the top of this post to give some context as to why I only slightly edited, and did not delete the post:
"I AM THE AUTHOR OF THE BOOK YOU'RE CRITIQUING WITHOUT READING.

SALON LEFT A MISLEADING IMPRESSION. I CERTAINLY DO NOT BACK LITERACY OR CIVICS TESTS FOR VOTERS, FOR INSTANCE.

AND I DO NOT BLAME THE VOTERS FOR ANYTHING. I ASK THEM TO ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR BEHAVIOR. FOR EXAMPLE, AFTER THE 9-11 COMMISSION REPORTED THAT 50% OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE STILL INSISTED ON BELIEVING THAT SADDAM WAS BEHIND 9-11 I SEE NO REASON NOT TO HOLD THE PUBLIC RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS IDIOCY.

TH INFORMATION WAS AVAILABLE FOR ANYBODY WHO CAN READ OR WATCH THE EVENING NEWS. THAT SO MNY FAILED TO ABSORB IT IS A SAD COMMENTARY ON OUR DEMOCRACY.

THIS IS A 10 ALARM FIRE THAT WE CAN'T AFFORD TO IGNORE ANY LONGER.

PLEASE GO TO MY BLOG TO FIND OUT WHAT'S ACTUALLY IN THE BOOK IF YOU ARE NOT GOING TO READ IT. THE BLOG PROVIDES A VIDEO, FOR EXAMPLE, THAT LAYS OUT SOME OF MY ARGUMENTS.

HTTP://HOWSTUPIDBLOG.COM

RICK SHENKMAN"

I removed the assertion about civic literacy tests and any unnecessary jabs at (or further mentionings of) the author. I think this is an interesting debate and I'd like to keep it up for that reason. I intend to dive into the author's blog (and book, if I have time) to hear it from the horse's mouth. I apologize to the author if I misrepresented his assertions in any way. This blog is certainly not meant to be a news source of any kind, simply a time capsule for an unimportant kid in some interesting times.


************************* ORIGINAL POST, edited *************************
As a huge disclaimer here, I don't often read Salon and I haven't read Rick Shenkman's book, "Just How Stupid Are We?". My knowlege of this book is based on hearsay about its controversial assertions and this one article. All the same, I have things to say. I'm going to make an uninformed guess that if Salon was trying to give a balanced perspective on the book and ended up criticizing it for a number of reasons, if they didn't mention the ones I have in my head, they probably aren't covered in the book either.

The basic proposition here is that We, The People, are stupid, and this is really a huge problem for democracy, because you know, we vote.

I'm not disagreeing with the statistics. I agree to a great deal that we are, not stupid per se, but ignorant of the government structure, current events, and generally how everything works. You can tell by how badly I wrote that last sentence that I'm among the many people who don't have a clue. It's definitely one of my huge weaknesses, especially for someone who argues that we overthrow the system (o! the irony), but this is something that's stuck with me my whole life. When I was young I had zero interest in politics, I still can't tell you the first five amendments, or who signed the Declaration of Independence. It's to the point where a few years ago I thought that reading Jon Stewart's America would actually help, and in actuality it only confused me!

So. Here I am. I don't consider myself a stupid person, although I'm wholly aware of my ignorance in many areas of life. I think I have just about as good a reason as any, and I don't think it's totally my fault. Yeah, so I thought history was largely boring, but is that due only to my own internal workings, which were grown in a complete vacuum? Hell no.

Shenkman's assertions according to Salon (which may actually not be Shenkman's assertions but are likely someone's assertions and are therefore interesting all the same) are generally that:
1. "they know nothing about government or current events"
2. "they can't follow arguments of any complexity"
3. "they stuff themselves with slogans and advertisements"
4. "they eschew fact for myth"
5. "they operate from biases and stereotypes"
6. "they privilege feeling over thinking"
7. "the hoi polloi no longer have anyone telling them how to think"
8. "Americans are very good ... at being manipulated and lied to"

What I love is that now its OUR fault that we're manipulated and lied to. I'm going to guess that psychologically it comes from the kind of rampant individualism that says "well I'm smart, why aren't you?" and completely ignores the brew that makes up people individually, and as a country.

Lets start at the top, with ignorance on government and current events, borrowing the example from the article that students forced to listen to NPR for an hour called it "torture". With what I've learned in my "adult" years about history classes and the textbooks they're based on, I would say its no wonder that kids don't retain this knowledge (or seek it again) into their adulthood. American textbooks expend a great deal of energy speaking on how great America is and how good our decisions have always been, refusing to admit guilt for any but the most blatant of mistakes (like, you know, exterminating entire tribes of Native Americans), and we all know that a story without conflict is B-O-R-I-N-G. Not only that but I think young people find it less believable. Imagine yourself (if you need to) as a 12 year old African American female - do American history textbooks say anything to you? Do they make you FEEL anything? Do they give you a sense of hope? No. Women and minorities can be found in American history texts, but they are few and far between, and dumbed down to a large degree. Those textbooks are HUGE, do you remember the back pains you'd get from carrying 3 of those around in your backpack? So students are expected to lug around heavy, inconvenient, boring, misleading and totally not inspiring books and go home attempting to rush through tons of pages because the books are too long to get through in a school year. Teachers are watched to make sure they don't add any nuance or explanation to what's already in the curriculum. Students are tested based on memorization rather than understanding or critical thinking. Students who are skeptical and question what they're reading are ignored or reprimanded. Students who are told in history that they live in the land of the free where they can be anything they want to be end up going home to an impoverished lifestyle where they can't just dream up opportunities are going to be skeptical.

So its no wonder that kids don't retain this info, and consider it boring. And I wouldn't consider this the fault of people, I would consider it a by-product of how our system is set up.

Moving on to "they can't follow arguments of any complexity"... well, I just find that insulting, but if we have to go into it I would call this a claim that Americans are generally uneducated. I don't think this is true, and while I think that - um, should we call it "logic illiteracy" or something? - can be found in all classes of people, it tends to be the case that many of us in the lower classes, even middle classes, have too much crap to do and worry about and want and wish for to have enough time for education. In the close-to-worst case scenarios of the working poor, there's a never-ending cycle of problems with health, medical bills, living conditions, working conditions, paychecks, food, family relations, personal emotions, civic engagement, community engagement, safety, and many many etceteras to worry about before one can have a head clear enough to learn and retain information. Again I say this is not a personal problem, but a systemic problem. Perhaps if we were willing to help out the working poor (or anyone) more financially, they'd have the time and emotional availability and confidence required to give their full attention to education.

Ok this one I adore. It's very adorable, "they stuff themselves with slogans and advertisements". Oh! Here we are again, WE stuff OURSELVES with slogans and advertisements. Oh yes, I've been seeking out good slogans to fill my brain with, I found some really really good ones but I just can't seem to get enough of them in my head. Please! Give me more advertising! I NEED THE SLOGANS MAN!!!!

I mean are you kidding me? Our hyperprofitobsessed culture is now our fault? Who made those advertisements? Who is benefitting from them? Did you even do any research on the effect of advertisements on people who even TRY their HARDEST to ignore them (such as myself)? Ok so I haven't found that information either, but I'm fairly sure that being obsessed with my weight, even though I know rationally that I shouldn't be concerned about it and that it was socialized into me by the disgusting for-profit media culture that surrounds me, is not quite my fault.

Culture is pretty damn powerful. Many people don't know this, it's true, but if you were never told, you may never know (it's as simple as that in MANY cases). I grew up believing in god, not because my parents were religious (they aren't), but because of what I heard and read and saw around me. Sometimes it takes us awhile to question what we think without being prompted. Sometimes it occurs to us, and sometimes it doesn't, but I would say even that is due to environmental factors that poke and prod us to reassess. I don't think MOST women take issue with at least one part of their body just because they're stupid Americans, I think its because the images we are RAISED with, and encouraged to believe are reality are very very powerful and highly effective. Most of us are just looking for direction, and media, advertising, slogans, entertainment, news, etc - are all too happy to give it to us (in order to make a penny). Just watching television for example, we're shown who to vote for, what to think about anything, what to wear (what's cool and not cool), how much to weigh, what hair to have, what products to buy, what car to drive, what music to listen to, ad infinitum. Now you can go ahead and say "yeah but you're stupid if you actually listen to that thing". I disagree, I think if you're 14 and you find a show that you and all your friends like (for the same reason usually, socialization) and you find characters you resonate with and respect, yeah you're going to want to dress like them and act like them and have similar morals to them. So if we continue to objectify women and make fun of homosexuality YEAH, it's going to have an affect on our culture! And I think it's naive to think otherwise.

Lets skip to 6 cause this is getting too long: "they operate from biases and stereotypes". Well, YEAH. Again. If you feed them biases and stereotypes from the top, and as the culture creators and the sources we go to to understand and categorize our world, YEAH people are going to operate on the language you give them, because they've experienced NOTHING ELSE!

And skip to 8, "Americans are very good, he says, at being manipulated and lied to". That's hilarious. There is no manipulator, only the manipulated. I think this speaks for itself.

Lastly I find this quote interesting:
"The upshot is that we are now "in the pitiful position that neither liberals nor conservatives are prepared to say to The People: stop and pay attention. Liberals cannot because their ideology leaves them unprepared to find fault with The People. Conservatives have not because The People repeatedly put them in power."

My take on that is that I agree that Conservatives tend to not blame the people because they repeatedly put them in power, but I think the part about the liberals is short-sited. Liberals (well Dems) are also put in power by the people and wouldn't dare to insult them for the same reasons, but they don't seem to want to blame the system either, because its even more responsible for their positions of power.

This is sort of a random, impulsive, spur-of-the-moment decision, but to give it some level of political force, I want to announce it here.

I'm going vegetarian.
I don't know for how long, I've never tried it before, but I want to give it a try.

I find it funny that I haven't made this decision before, and I've done a lot of reading (particularly those horrifying pamphlets they hand out) and I've been kind of shocked that I haven't found the sticking point for me.

Yeah, I don't like hurting animals, but as I'm not the one doing it, I've always just thought of it as natural (and to a degree, of course, it is). So animal cruelty didn't get me.

The whole animal cruelty thing in the factory farms is absolutely deplorable, I agree, so instead I shop for organic, vegetarian fed, free-range (etc etc etc) meat products. More expensive, but its a start.

Even the concept that it costs more energy to raise animals than vegetables didn't get me... until this morning.

I was reading Fred Magdoff's article called The World Food Crisis: Sources and Solutions, which begins with this shocking declaration:

"Of the more than 6 billion people living in the world today, the United Nations estimates that close to 1 billion suffer from chronic hunger. But this number, which is only a crude estimate, leaves out those suffering from vitamin and nutrient deficiencies and other forms of malnutrition. The total number of food insecure people who are malnourished or lacking critical nutrients is probably closer to 3 billion—about half of humanity. The severity of this situation is made clear by the United Nations estimate of over a year ago that approximately 18,000 children die daily as a direct or indirect consequence of malnutrition (Associated Press, February 18, 2007)."

Since my introduction to Socialism, I've seriously wondered how we can let this happen and call it fair in the "free market". But something about this week is really drilling it into me. How did we get so far down the wrong path?

Back to vegetarianism, I came to this passage with fire and brimstone going on in me:

"Feeding grain to more and more animals is putting growing pressure on grain stores. Feeding grain to produce meat is a very inefficient way of providing people with either calories or protein. It is especially wasteful for animals such as cows [...] because they can obtain all of their nutrition from pastures and will grow well without grain, although more slowly. Cows are not efficient converters of corn or soy to meat—to yield a pound of meat, cows require eight pounds of corn; pigs, five; and chickens, three (Baron’s, March 4, 2008)."

(Emphasis mine.)

I'm not sure if feeding grain to livestock instead of offering them basic pastures is a factory farm thing or an everybody thing, but screwing with food staple availability just to make more money faster really ticks me off. Not to say that we don't already have enough food to feed the world, it's just that using this type of raw material in such an inefficient way drives the availability down, and therefore drives the price up. This is one of the many reasons the food crisis is so dire right now, and I'm going to pull my penny-a-day on this one and go veggie.

I had a weird conversation the other day and reading about the causes of the global food crisis (short-term and long-term) has peaked my interest in posting about it.

It wasn't actually a conversation, more of a ghost of one. What was funny was that a close friend of mine was laughing at someone's use of terms like "giant mega corporations" and referring to them as a bad thing. My friend laughed as if to say, "this is just too silly, I can't believe he thinks this!". With a nudge and a grin I ask, "why are you laughing? You know I feel the same way!". He was completely disbelieving, so I said, "yeah I don't think there's a single good thing about corporations." He laughed again, half exasperated and half amused.

Then he starts in, "what about cheap prices?!". Two of them were on me now. "What about your laptop? What about the clothes you're wearing? What about...". We ended the argument before it could begin because we had work to do, so any grumbling I do now may misrepresent their actual feelings.

All the same I have to say, I seriously do not believe that just having cheap goods is any great payoff for all of the problems corporations cause.

First and foremost, a corporation is by definition an entity to make a profit, so by its very nature, it has no concern for human lives, and the people at the top seldom do either. That's why they're at the top. If they were concerned, the corporation wouldn't be successful.

Lets use agricultural corporations as an example. In many cases they move in, take over land with or without proper compensation for the subsistence farmers previously owning the land, they use techniques that are devastating to the environment, the employees, and the end consumer in order to make products more quickly, in order to have more of them, in order for them to be cheaper, in order to put smaller companies out of business, in order to make the most profit and dominate the industry. They can afford machinery which means they can employ less people which means less people in the town are employed.

Is that really worth the price of cheap goods for those of us in wealthy countries? Perhaps if we didn't buy so much stuff all the time, or if the things we bought weren't rife with planned obsolescence, low quality manufacturing by sweatshop labor, and weren't goods made for a throw-away culture (you know, goods that actually LAST?), then maybe we wouldn't NEED goods at the low cost that the corporations so generously provide to us.

Frankly, I'd rather pay more for something that won't break in a year, and didn't screw up the local ecosystem or the local economy, and didn't further impoverish third world nations.

We have to ask, what's the REAL cost of this product? It's much higher than it looks.

Let me start out by saying that I get accused of overreacting to things a lot, I understand I'm a party crumb, and yes I do think this parody is really hilarious. Well done even!

At the same time, this is one of those red flags in our in-transition culture that sends some amazingly mixed messages to me.

To set the scene, all WoW (World of Warcraft, an MMORPG) players in this piece are male. While this is obviously a huge percentage, it's a stereotype that only males play video games. Women make up about 1/3 of players of multi-player games and I believe have a heavy presence on WoW in particular. Males are also not the only sex that has the potential to spend a tad too much time on the game.

All WoW players in this scene are in heterosexual marriages. I'm pretty sure that there is a GLBT presence on the game as well.

While the piece seems to rail on traditional gender roles by portraying the men as weak and stupid and the women as strong and smart, there are many contradictions in this portrayal.

I know from personal experience that WoW tends to have an obsessive power over people (even me), and this can take a serious toll on romantic relationships that sometimes take a backseat to a game that, one you're high level enough, actually requires you to spend hours at a time playing, and unlike the games of the past, doesn't have a pause button and therefore contains a lot of social pressure not to leave during play. On the other hand, I find the nature of this portrayal, while important, to be pretty insulting to both parties.

The women/wives in this video are initially portrayed as strong women with a handle on reality. They're funny, they speak their mind, and they seem to be practical and without drama. Then we discover the secret to their power: their level 70 breasts (highest level you could get pre expansion pack). On one hand, we're aknowledging that women have a legit power over men, however this insults men by assuming that they are all complete slaves to sex, and insults women by suggesting that our strength comes from our ability to please men. There's still a huge debate over whether women who use their sexuality as a tool are empowered or oppressed.

It gets worse. In the beginning it's suggested that getting some time away from the game would be beneficial, but towards the end we find out exactly what the wives are training their pet husbands to do: stop messing with their flower bushes, wash the dishes (ok that's practical), and go to BABY SHOWERS.

Dude. NO ONE like going to baby showers. Ok, so maybe some people do, and I certainly wouldn't be very feminist by suggesting that women who enjoy baby showers are somehow uncool, but it's obviously portrayed as a huge burden to the men, who are now in the know again, and it's still a huge stereotype on both ends.

I really think they missed the boat on the wives thing as well. I mean, dude. If you're playing so much because your wife just doesn't do it for you, you married the wrong chick. Forget the boobs, find something that you actually WANT to quite a raid group for.

I think these contradictions really say a lot about the times we're living in (trying but still not quite there). I get the same feeling anytime I watch South Park (not often these days) - they'll try to give us a lesson in accepting homosexuality while giving us gay stereotypes to laugh at in order to tell the story. How about Christina Aguilera's video for "Beautiful" where she talks about inner beauty but is all made up herself? How about Danica McKellar's book encouraging young women to get into math, called Math Doesn't Suck: How to Survive Middle-School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail.

There's a lot of good intention toward accepting and respecting women for their intelligence, but as a culture we still suspect that beneath that, all girls really want are a tight-fitting tutu and some good old fashioned materialism. Yikes.

I ran into an apt blog entry on the Women in Tech blog, aboutthe new "reality show" (is it a reality show if its actually real?) "Nerd Girls" which attempts to prove to the world that women exist who are both smart and *gasp* stylish as well! WHO KNEW! Obviously you couldn't sell the interest of smart women on its own merit (and if you could, would that be sexist in its own way? "Gasp! Smart women! Crazy enough for television!").


Anyway. Vomit. This is why I hate being a woman. When we can get past using stereotypes to talk about how stereotypes are bad, I think we'll have made some progress.

I just want to say: I LOVE PLAYTEX (and Dove, too, of course).
Have you SEEN these new commercials? I don't watch tv, so I'm a bit late, but the online campaign is so brilliant. This will be brief.

Step 1: Watch the hilarity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liinxSNHfeo

Step 2: Take a note ... that women just took their breasts back.

That was my first thought when I saw that video (and the one where they try to list all the nicknames for boobs). I don't totally understand it psychologically - there's just something totally new feeling about women TALKING about their breasts, SHOWING themselves in bras on television (shamelessly I might add!), and then talking about them. That and of course showing women of multiple races, ages and sizes is still really rare and amazing.

The reason I'm so excited is because I'm so used to men talking about our breasts.

"A little cold there, Sally? Haw haw haw." The boys' club proceeds to elbow each other in the ribs.

I feel like men have defined us for so long (while woman have only been able to appropriate that language in an attempt to take back our own bodies; similar to black culture appropriating "nigger" and gay culture appropriating "fag"), and advertisers have defined us for so long (for men's pleasure, of course). This is the first time I feel like I'm seeing REAL women in advertising defining themselves in an honest and open and non-shameful way. That and holy heck are they hilarious or what? I adore the small and slightly round blonde, totally killer.

The only downside that got me was the girl that said that gravity was no longer her enemy, but brownies were. I feel if you're going to show women of all sizes who are proud of their beautiful bodies, why do we have to get into our constant struggle with weight-based self esteem? It seemed a bit contradictory. Also not sure about the whole "husband pleasers" thing, but I 'spose the point was to represent all kinds of women, including married ones (and who doesn't like to be attractive to their partner?).

Note: I aknowledge that I went at that discussion from a hetero/gender binary perspective, but I think its safe to say that the mainstream definition of the perfect woman and the one being pushed in most advertising is based off of a heterosexual man's ideal.

Suddenly it's this huge thing. Parties named after it, a film out. I haven't seen it, but I do want to complain about it. That's fair, right?

The movie feels like it came out of the blue (possibly because I've been so out of touch with mainstream culture). It feels to me like we were progressing as a culture away from stereotypes and to a more balanced view of women, and suddenly this hugely stereotypical movie comes out.

Feels like someone way up at the top suddenly decided that we women are getting breaking too much with the attitudes and desires that have been culturally shoved down our collective throats in order to:
Keep.
Us.
Buying.
So I bet some dude was like "shit we better remind them about shoe sales!"

I keep thinking about a feminist friend of mine who gets excited about women-focused services/events/products (even though she tends to have complaints about their execution, and rightfully). My tendency is to shy away completely from anything that's gender focused - rather than celebrate gender, I want to forget about it entirely (although I am trying to reexamine that as I'd like to be happy, rather than disappointed, in my womanhood). The reason I feel this way is because the only woman-focused things I ever see are covered in pink and materialism and old stereotypes. To me it feels if I want something that represents me, I go for something that's people-focused (or non gender specific) or even sometimes male-focused things. I'm not trying to say that the genre of shopping obsessed super feminine women shouldn't be represented, I just think its messed up that this is the only thing that can be called woman-focused. Perhaps the problem is that we've moved beyond gender in many ways in our culture, so trying to make something gender specific is actually guaranteed to bring back stereotypes and a bad taste in our mouths.

I'd be interested in seeing something woman-focused for the type of woman I am, and maybe then I wouldn't be trying so hard to separate myself from gender altogether.

I recently had an interesting conversation with a friend about the origins, definition and purpose of propaganda. The term hasn't always been thought of as negative:

"The Latin adjective propaganda, which is a form of the gerundive of the verb propago (from pro- "forth" + *pag-, root of pangere "to fasten"), means "that which is to be spread" and does not carry a connotation of information, misleading or otherwise."

It's been argued to me that the Bolsheviks pioneered modern propaganda during the Russian Revolution of 1917, but there are two things wrong with that assumption:

1. Propaganda as a tool had been around much longer, back as far as 515 BC and used skillfully by the Romans
2. Marxist/Leninist propaganda and agitprop were considered essential to the cause, because:

"The term propaganda in the Russian language didn't bear any negative connotation at that time. It simply meant the 'dissemination of ideas'.
Soviet propaganda meant dissemination of revolutionary ideas, teachings of Marxism, and theoretical and practical knowledge of Marxist economics, while agitation meant forming favorable public opinion and stirring up political unrest."

Two French authors, Gabrial Tarde and Gustav Le Bon, seem to be two of the earliest influences on modern propaganda, inspiring people such as Adolph Hitler, Sigmund Freud, Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays.

Now I haven't read enough to argue whether American propaganda or Soviet propaganda (be it from the pro worker's power Bolsheviks or the totalitarian Stalin regime that followerd) were more responsible for the modern sense of propaganda, which is:

"Propaganda is a concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behaviors of large numbers of people. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense presents information in order to influence its audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented."

I find it interesting that the Marxists of the Russian Revolution of 1917 considered propaganda to mean simply telling people about your ideas, whereas American Eddie Bernays took it and ran, creating with Lippmann the WWI propaganda posters of the Creel Commission (also 1917, "the mission of which was to sway popular opinion in favor of entering the war... and also encouraged censorship of the American press.") and going on to pioneer the Public Relations industry, heavily influencing advertising with theories still used today.

"The war propaganda campaign of Lippmann and Bernays produced within six months such an intense anti-German hysteria as to permanently impress American business (and Adolf Hitler, among others) with the potential of large-scale propaganda to control public opinion."

In cased you missed it, Eddie taught Hitler a great deal about controlling public opinion. Bernays is pretty much a goldmine of horrifying quotes:

"If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits."

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."

At least one could say he truly understood society in a way most of us would consider conspiracy, but he also helped those in power stick to these ideas, and I think we'd be naive to think the system isn't still working based on the belief that for things to function smoothly in a "democratic" society, people need to be controlled.

If you find this bit interesting, the BBC has an awesome documentary entitled, The Century of the Self, which talks all about how Freud and Bernays influenced the PR industry, and how these techniques led to modern advertising which aims at people's weaknesses and eventually their desire for individuality (influencing such other characteristics such as not giving a crap what's going on in the rest of the world and assuming that all homeless people are at fault for their situation).

During this conversation about propaganda I posed the idea that all advertising is propaganda, according to the basic definition, "Propaganda is a concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behaviors of large numbers of people."

I also suggested that some propaganda can therefore be good, so long as it doesn't lie by omission or mislead. I voted that sometimes disseminating emotional information is important (imagine how many more people would ignore those "feed the starving children" ads if they weren't horribly depressing?). Imagine save the rainforest campaigns that didn't show the devestation. Imagine posters asking for donations to Darfur that didn't emphasize how "HORRIBLE" what's going on there really is? I think in some cases it's important to appeal to people's emotions. My debate partner argued that we should never use or fall prey to emotion, that being rational is the only way to solve any problem. I responded that I think the trick is to use logic and emotion together, and never one without the other.

So what I'm trying to get to with all this is Obama. Yeah. I'm starting to get a LOT creeped out by this guy. To be perfectly honest, if I decide to vote, I will definitely vote for Obama. I like what he has to say a LOT - of course, that's why I'm suspicious of him. He truly does speak like a Socialist, and I know for damn sure he's not. It kind of annoys me that my comrades have been saying these things for years (er, centuries actually) - "change needs to come from the bottom up", "social movements are important for democracy and progress", "we need change", etc - and they get marginalized for it, while this guy has been turned into a SAVIOR.

Yeah I think "savior" is the right word. I've mentioned this before: what really bothers me about Obama fans is that they love him so much because he represents what they want, but they think he's going to do all the work. That he not only wants to but has the power to change EVERYTHING in their favor. I simply don't believe that. Even if he does believe everything that he says (which I doubt, as he had to change his campaign rhetoric to answer the demands of the people), even if it weren't all just electoral campaign PR, I've come to believe that once in the system (which I imagine largely disagrees with what he has to say), even the president has only limited power, if he (can I say "or she" yet?) wants to retain ... their... position. The ruling class is damn powerful, and coming in and saying "well I know your like your yachts but it's time for the people now", I dunno, I somehow just don't see that working!

But I'm a cynic, and I digress.

I was trying to get on to the graphic design done for Obama's campaign. I mean. Seriously. Scary shit. SAVIOR is the word I used. Don't get me wrong, it is SEEEEEXY. I love it actually! It's really really well done, perfect for the times yet not too web 2.0 obnoxious. It's brilliant. The problem is, it's creepy. What's all this HOPE! CHANGE! PROGRESS! Stuff? It reminds me of classic propaganda posters in a BIG way. I'm talking Mao, Stalin, Hitler, etc. Even Lenin whose ideas I largely agree with had the whole cult of personality thing which I'm just not into.

And that's really it - Obama is saying a LOT of great stuff, but he's also a big cult of personality victim, if I can call him that. He's probably the most charming presidential candidate in history, he's even a little cute, however he has yet to have any grand backup for his claims. You'd hardly notice though huh?

So yeah. What's with the creepy savior art for Obama? It seems blatantly transparent - in a bad way. I mean if he's all about transparency in government, and being honest to the people, why's he gotta go and act like the Second Coming in his imagery? That seems to me completely contradictory and really makes me trust him a great deal less. If I stood up and went outside right now, and had some really slick flair and yelled "I AM HOPE! I AM CHANGE! FOLLOW ME IF YOU WANT CHANGE!", people would put me in the damned looney bin. So why's it working for him? Does anyone else feel weirded out?

What I don't get most of all, is why Shepard Fairey would do posters for him:

This is the guy that created the OBEY (Andre the Giant) design, which - I guess I could be misinterpreting - seems like a reference to abusive kinds of propaganda used as social control... although I haven't really done my research there either.

In any case, the obeygiant.com message about the poster series talks about how much they really like Obama. That's great. It just seems to be a very contradictory message to speak on social control through propaganda and then uh... make some.

So yeah. If you're about transparency, honesty, moving forward with power to the people - why are you trying to come off as THE ONE? My guess is that either Obama or his PR manager are confused. It's absolutely contradictory to say that change has to come from the bottom up, from the people, and then to market yourself (in a blatant, cultish, idol-like way) as THE WAY, as the one person who can bring about change. It just doesn't settle with me.