Many observers (on the right and left) are increasingly concerned that the Obama administration seems paralyzed when it comes to restoring civil liberties suspended under the Patriot Act, reforming Wall Street and ending the $2.
4 trillion unwinnable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia) - to say nothing of the looming, but potentially more crippling, energy and climate change crisis.
Many are coming to the conclusion that any real solution to these major threats to American civilization will have to be citizen led.
The reality, however, is that any successful citizen led effort must first surmount the major hurdle of getting reliable information about the urgent problems we face - as well as potential solutions - into the public arena.
The past decade has witnessed the launch of many fantastic grassroots initiatives around all these issues.
All engendered considerable energy and enthusiasm, flourished briefly and then, for the most part, fizzled and died.
The major stumbling block faced by all these grassroots efforts was the de facto corporate censorship that exerts near total control over the issues that reach public attention, and to a large extent, shapes the public response to these issues.
A lot has been written recently about the ability of politicians and the public relations (PR) industry to "frame" issues to provoke the response they want from the American public.
In fact Karl Rove and other public relations experts openly brag about their ability to provoke a knee jerk reaction from Americans, based on their ability to exploit basic human psychology.
The immense hurdle citizen activists face in presenting an alternative, "anti-corporate" point of view, is that successful "framing" is based on years of very systematic conditioning (i.
e.
brainwashing) we have all been subjected to from an early age.
The US isn't the only country to engage in deliberate deception.
For more than thirty years citizens of most industrial countries have been subject to a very sophisticated form of mind control, designed to create and maintain a mindset that promotes corporate interests.
The Birth of the Public Relations Industry An entire industry, known as public relations, was developed for this purpose.
As the late Alex Carey describes in Taking the Risk Out of Democracy, for the most part public relations techniques are based on mass psychology principles first articulated during the campaign by President Woodrow Wilson to "sell" Word War I to a profoundly isolationist American public.
The techniques used by Wilson's propagandists were later refined by Heinrich Himler, the propaganda minister who "sold" Hitler's Third Reich to the German people.
By the time the US industrial boom of the early fifties was in full swing, the science of mass brainwashing had advanced to the point that its influence could be seen in all electronic and print advertising, in school textbooks and in the more subtle marketing that occurs in the guise of journalism and news reporting and via the repetition of key ideological messages in films, magazines, books and other mass media.
The Hard Sell Over the next 10-15 years, a gigantic public relations industry would succeed in totally reframing Americans' attitudes towards their families, their communities and their elected officials - and most importantly towards money.
This major attitudinal shift, known in the industry as "consumerism," came about through bombarding Americans with dozens of messages everyday pressuring them to purchase an endless array of products they don't really want or need.
Exposure to this continual conditioning has earned the US the distinction of the highest level of personal indebtedness in the world.
In February 2010 it was $2.
5 trillion or $35,014 per household.
Prior to World War II, there was a strong expectation that working class families would postpone buying cars and major appliances until they had enough money in savings to cover the full purchase price.
In households where there was no disposable income (where the weekly paycheck was just enough to cover bare necessities), people could only afford major purchases by scrimping on basic living expenses (for example reducing meat consumption or buying second hand clothing, linens, kitchenware and small appliances), by taking in boarders or laundry or by borrowing small amounts from relatives.
Playing on Americans' Deepest Insecurities By the early sixties, thanks to a decade of psychologically sophisticated advertising, this attitude had drastically changed.
Now instead of saving for major purchases that were once considered luxuries (cars, dishwashers, garbage disposals, deep freezers, washers, dryers and air conditioners), families felt a strong expectation to borrow the money to buy them.
The "pressure" American consumers feel to buy merchandise they can't really afford is based on two powerful psychological messages.
The first plays on instant gratification as an entitlement.
The advertising industry has been putting out different versions of the slogan "You're worth it" for several decades.
The second group of messages play on basic human insecurities about being viewed as inferior and rejected by peers and/or the opposite sex.
In a way the public relations industry has reduced American adults to perpetual teenagers - by continuously appealing to the overwhelming peer pressure that is a normal phase of adolescent development.
While modern conveniences, such as dishwashers, garbage disposals, deep freezers, washers, dryers and air conditioners definitely reduce the drudgery of housework, they aren't in the strictest sense necessities.
However through slick advertising designed to play on peoples' insecurities, the public relations industry has succeeded in convincing the majority of Americans these expensive energy saving appliances are as essential to modern living as food, clothing and shelter.
Over time the range of items considered to be "necessities" has expanded to include a myriad of electronic toys that in no way relate to survival needs, such as color TVs, stereo systems, cassette and video recorders, personal computers CD and DVD players, cordless phones, cell phones, laptops, blackberries, ipods, palm pilots, and digital cameras.
Targeting Women for the Hard Sell When substantial numbers of women entered the work force, corporations and the advertising industry went after this new source of disposable income by launching the appearance industry.
Whereas previously only women who belonged to the wealthy elite could afford to follow the dictates of fashion gurus, suddenly there was enormous pressure for minimum wage office workers to purchase a brand new wardrobe every season.
This was immediately followed by a giant cosmetics industry that markets billions of dollars of make-up, hair, skin and nail products, teeth whiteners, breath fresheners by terrifying women - and increasing numbers of men - that without these products they will never attract the opposite sex.
Following the enormous success of the cosmetics industry, corporate America launched first the diet industry and finally the cosmetic surgery industry.
In addition to marketing sexual attractiveness, these new industries even more successfully marketed thinness and fear of aging.
Their success in convincing hundreds of millions of women world wide to hate their bodies is directly responsible for the epidemic of (often fatal) anorexia nervosa - a condition that is virtually unknown in the third world.
How the PR Industry Shapes Attitudes and Beliefs Aside from the psychological hard sell tactics used in direct advertising, the public relations (PR) industry has also played a major role in reshaping our ideological beliefs.
In fact there seems to have been a deliberate effort to convert Americans from thoughtful participants in a democratic society to passive, mindless consumers.
It should come as no surprise that the PR industry has a long and interesting relationship with US intelligence.
Unlike totalitarian regimes like the former Soviet Union or Hitler's Germany, the US has no Ministry of Propaganda.
However the CIA does have a supposedly "top secret" Office of Public Information which plays a major role in "planting" news stories favorable to American strategic interests in mainstream media outlets.
The operation is "top secret" as it is technically illegal.
Federal law explicitly prohibits the CIA from operating on US soil.
However the collaboration of the first CIA director Allen Dulles and Washington Post founder and publisher Philip Graham launched to launch Operation Mockingbird in 1948 is a matter of public record.
Their stated goal was to both recruit and "plant" CIA-friendly journalists at both wire services (AP- Associated Press and UPI - United Press International), Time, Newsweek, and US News and World Report, as well as several metropolitan dailies.
CIA-linked Foundations also Fund the Left Sherman Skolnick was the first investigative reporter to unearth CIA links to the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the other major foundations who fund the predominant progressive and left-oriented magazines.
It's actually quite an ingenious strategy on the part of the CIA to fund both the right and left wing perspective on popular issues.
It explains why much of the independent research on major government conspiracies, such as 9-11 and the JFK assassinations, is marginalized by the "official" left.
It also explains why none of these periodicals ever explore Gloria Steinem's (well documented) career in US intelligence or her role in the creation of a domestic intelligence operation to plant agents posing as radical feminists grassroots women's and black liberation organizations.
Other Sources of Government Propaganda The Pentagon and FBI have their own public relations divisions responsible for churning out propaganda (there is now a Pentagon Channel).
Obviously the primary focus of Pentagon and FBI propaganda is to promote popular support for American military goals and for draconian laws that suppress popular opposition to these goals.
However this is not a simple matter of inserting anti-terrorist and pro-war messages into the nightly news and crime and spy dramas.
The government and their public relations experts are also responsible for an increasing number of related messages that serve to distract the public away from the urgent issues that confront us.
Anti-civil Liberties Messages - fear inspiring messages used to make Americans so fearful of imminent terrorist attack that they willingly surrender their own civil liberties to prevent it.
Both Bush and Obama have used similar messages to convince the American public to surrender their right to habeas corpus (guarantees review by a judge whenever anyone is detained by law enforcement), their protection against warrant less search and seizure, government surveillance of phone conversations and emails, torture and extrajudicial assassination of so-called terrorists (unfortunately this could potentially include anyone who criticizes the government, as there is no burden to prove the victim's guilt).
It is also common for crime and espionage dramas (24 and Without a Trace, which both employ Pentagon consultants, are good examples) to portray warrants and non-violent interrogation techniques as an "inconvenience" and a threat to public security.
Messages promoting fear of dark skinned people - take the form of anti-immigrant hysteria directed against Hispanic immigrants from Mexico (who are portrayed as welfare cheats and a threat to American jobs) and dark skinned people from Middle East and Asia (who are portrayed as potential terrorists).
However there continues to be a disproportionate portrayal of African Americans as angry, violent and criminally inclined, both in unbalanced news reporting and racial stereotypes in TV and film entertainment.
Messages promoting American exceptionalism - carefully conceal corporate interference with elections and the legislative process (all the perks - gifts, meals, cocktail parties, free trips and free use of corporate aircraft - corporate lobbyists dispense as an inducement for favorable legislation).
They also systematically concealed the massive electoral fraud which occurred in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.
Messages promoting disengagement from the political process because it's too complicated and too corrupt - based mainly around the name, blame and shame focus that dominates political reporting.
Americans are most likely to hear their lawmakers mentioned in the mainstream media as a result of immoral, illegal or unethical contact.
However this message is mainly driven home via distraction - by making other aspects of modern life (such as Tiger Wood's infidelity) vastly more prominent than demanding a voice in whether the US gives two trillion dollars in bail outs to banks or engages in an unwinnable war in the Middle East
4 trillion unwinnable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia) - to say nothing of the looming, but potentially more crippling, energy and climate change crisis.
Many are coming to the conclusion that any real solution to these major threats to American civilization will have to be citizen led.
The reality, however, is that any successful citizen led effort must first surmount the major hurdle of getting reliable information about the urgent problems we face - as well as potential solutions - into the public arena.
The past decade has witnessed the launch of many fantastic grassroots initiatives around all these issues.
All engendered considerable energy and enthusiasm, flourished briefly and then, for the most part, fizzled and died.
The major stumbling block faced by all these grassroots efforts was the de facto corporate censorship that exerts near total control over the issues that reach public attention, and to a large extent, shapes the public response to these issues.
A lot has been written recently about the ability of politicians and the public relations (PR) industry to "frame" issues to provoke the response they want from the American public.
In fact Karl Rove and other public relations experts openly brag about their ability to provoke a knee jerk reaction from Americans, based on their ability to exploit basic human psychology.
The immense hurdle citizen activists face in presenting an alternative, "anti-corporate" point of view, is that successful "framing" is based on years of very systematic conditioning (i.
e.
brainwashing) we have all been subjected to from an early age.
The US isn't the only country to engage in deliberate deception.
For more than thirty years citizens of most industrial countries have been subject to a very sophisticated form of mind control, designed to create and maintain a mindset that promotes corporate interests.
The Birth of the Public Relations Industry An entire industry, known as public relations, was developed for this purpose.
As the late Alex Carey describes in Taking the Risk Out of Democracy, for the most part public relations techniques are based on mass psychology principles first articulated during the campaign by President Woodrow Wilson to "sell" Word War I to a profoundly isolationist American public.
The techniques used by Wilson's propagandists were later refined by Heinrich Himler, the propaganda minister who "sold" Hitler's Third Reich to the German people.
By the time the US industrial boom of the early fifties was in full swing, the science of mass brainwashing had advanced to the point that its influence could be seen in all electronic and print advertising, in school textbooks and in the more subtle marketing that occurs in the guise of journalism and news reporting and via the repetition of key ideological messages in films, magazines, books and other mass media.
The Hard Sell Over the next 10-15 years, a gigantic public relations industry would succeed in totally reframing Americans' attitudes towards their families, their communities and their elected officials - and most importantly towards money.
This major attitudinal shift, known in the industry as "consumerism," came about through bombarding Americans with dozens of messages everyday pressuring them to purchase an endless array of products they don't really want or need.
Exposure to this continual conditioning has earned the US the distinction of the highest level of personal indebtedness in the world.
In February 2010 it was $2.
5 trillion or $35,014 per household.
Prior to World War II, there was a strong expectation that working class families would postpone buying cars and major appliances until they had enough money in savings to cover the full purchase price.
In households where there was no disposable income (where the weekly paycheck was just enough to cover bare necessities), people could only afford major purchases by scrimping on basic living expenses (for example reducing meat consumption or buying second hand clothing, linens, kitchenware and small appliances), by taking in boarders or laundry or by borrowing small amounts from relatives.
Playing on Americans' Deepest Insecurities By the early sixties, thanks to a decade of psychologically sophisticated advertising, this attitude had drastically changed.
Now instead of saving for major purchases that were once considered luxuries (cars, dishwashers, garbage disposals, deep freezers, washers, dryers and air conditioners), families felt a strong expectation to borrow the money to buy them.
The "pressure" American consumers feel to buy merchandise they can't really afford is based on two powerful psychological messages.
The first plays on instant gratification as an entitlement.
The advertising industry has been putting out different versions of the slogan "You're worth it" for several decades.
The second group of messages play on basic human insecurities about being viewed as inferior and rejected by peers and/or the opposite sex.
In a way the public relations industry has reduced American adults to perpetual teenagers - by continuously appealing to the overwhelming peer pressure that is a normal phase of adolescent development.
While modern conveniences, such as dishwashers, garbage disposals, deep freezers, washers, dryers and air conditioners definitely reduce the drudgery of housework, they aren't in the strictest sense necessities.
However through slick advertising designed to play on peoples' insecurities, the public relations industry has succeeded in convincing the majority of Americans these expensive energy saving appliances are as essential to modern living as food, clothing and shelter.
Over time the range of items considered to be "necessities" has expanded to include a myriad of electronic toys that in no way relate to survival needs, such as color TVs, stereo systems, cassette and video recorders, personal computers CD and DVD players, cordless phones, cell phones, laptops, blackberries, ipods, palm pilots, and digital cameras.
Targeting Women for the Hard Sell When substantial numbers of women entered the work force, corporations and the advertising industry went after this new source of disposable income by launching the appearance industry.
Whereas previously only women who belonged to the wealthy elite could afford to follow the dictates of fashion gurus, suddenly there was enormous pressure for minimum wage office workers to purchase a brand new wardrobe every season.
This was immediately followed by a giant cosmetics industry that markets billions of dollars of make-up, hair, skin and nail products, teeth whiteners, breath fresheners by terrifying women - and increasing numbers of men - that without these products they will never attract the opposite sex.
Following the enormous success of the cosmetics industry, corporate America launched first the diet industry and finally the cosmetic surgery industry.
In addition to marketing sexual attractiveness, these new industries even more successfully marketed thinness and fear of aging.
Their success in convincing hundreds of millions of women world wide to hate their bodies is directly responsible for the epidemic of (often fatal) anorexia nervosa - a condition that is virtually unknown in the third world.
How the PR Industry Shapes Attitudes and Beliefs Aside from the psychological hard sell tactics used in direct advertising, the public relations (PR) industry has also played a major role in reshaping our ideological beliefs.
In fact there seems to have been a deliberate effort to convert Americans from thoughtful participants in a democratic society to passive, mindless consumers.
It should come as no surprise that the PR industry has a long and interesting relationship with US intelligence.
Unlike totalitarian regimes like the former Soviet Union or Hitler's Germany, the US has no Ministry of Propaganda.
However the CIA does have a supposedly "top secret" Office of Public Information which plays a major role in "planting" news stories favorable to American strategic interests in mainstream media outlets.
The operation is "top secret" as it is technically illegal.
Federal law explicitly prohibits the CIA from operating on US soil.
However the collaboration of the first CIA director Allen Dulles and Washington Post founder and publisher Philip Graham launched to launch Operation Mockingbird in 1948 is a matter of public record.
Their stated goal was to both recruit and "plant" CIA-friendly journalists at both wire services (AP- Associated Press and UPI - United Press International), Time, Newsweek, and US News and World Report, as well as several metropolitan dailies.
CIA-linked Foundations also Fund the Left Sherman Skolnick was the first investigative reporter to unearth CIA links to the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the other major foundations who fund the predominant progressive and left-oriented magazines.
It's actually quite an ingenious strategy on the part of the CIA to fund both the right and left wing perspective on popular issues.
It explains why much of the independent research on major government conspiracies, such as 9-11 and the JFK assassinations, is marginalized by the "official" left.
It also explains why none of these periodicals ever explore Gloria Steinem's (well documented) career in US intelligence or her role in the creation of a domestic intelligence operation to plant agents posing as radical feminists grassroots women's and black liberation organizations.
Other Sources of Government Propaganda The Pentagon and FBI have their own public relations divisions responsible for churning out propaganda (there is now a Pentagon Channel).
Obviously the primary focus of Pentagon and FBI propaganda is to promote popular support for American military goals and for draconian laws that suppress popular opposition to these goals.
However this is not a simple matter of inserting anti-terrorist and pro-war messages into the nightly news and crime and spy dramas.
The government and their public relations experts are also responsible for an increasing number of related messages that serve to distract the public away from the urgent issues that confront us.
Anti-civil Liberties Messages - fear inspiring messages used to make Americans so fearful of imminent terrorist attack that they willingly surrender their own civil liberties to prevent it.
Both Bush and Obama have used similar messages to convince the American public to surrender their right to habeas corpus (guarantees review by a judge whenever anyone is detained by law enforcement), their protection against warrant less search and seizure, government surveillance of phone conversations and emails, torture and extrajudicial assassination of so-called terrorists (unfortunately this could potentially include anyone who criticizes the government, as there is no burden to prove the victim's guilt).
It is also common for crime and espionage dramas (24 and Without a Trace, which both employ Pentagon consultants, are good examples) to portray warrants and non-violent interrogation techniques as an "inconvenience" and a threat to public security.
Messages promoting fear of dark skinned people - take the form of anti-immigrant hysteria directed against Hispanic immigrants from Mexico (who are portrayed as welfare cheats and a threat to American jobs) and dark skinned people from Middle East and Asia (who are portrayed as potential terrorists).
However there continues to be a disproportionate portrayal of African Americans as angry, violent and criminally inclined, both in unbalanced news reporting and racial stereotypes in TV and film entertainment.
Messages promoting American exceptionalism - carefully conceal corporate interference with elections and the legislative process (all the perks - gifts, meals, cocktail parties, free trips and free use of corporate aircraft - corporate lobbyists dispense as an inducement for favorable legislation).
They also systematically concealed the massive electoral fraud which occurred in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.
Messages promoting disengagement from the political process because it's too complicated and too corrupt - based mainly around the name, blame and shame focus that dominates political reporting.
Americans are most likely to hear their lawmakers mentioned in the mainstream media as a result of immoral, illegal or unethical contact.
However this message is mainly driven home via distraction - by making other aspects of modern life (such as Tiger Wood's infidelity) vastly more prominent than demanding a voice in whether the US gives two trillion dollars in bail outs to banks or engages in an unwinnable war in the Middle East
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