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Uniform
In the long run, propaganda will reach the broad masses of the people only if at every stage it is uniform.
Will and Way by Joseph Goebbels
Billmon wrote a while ago:
If the t-shirt design catches on, then some other party hack might well develop a proprietary patriotic logo — something distinctly identifiable as a Republican Party symbol — to go on those t-shirts.
…
One people, one country, one leader …
One step following another.
The truly sinister thing — and the reason why that Slate story made the hair stand up on the back of my neck — is that even as these people move, like sleepwalkers, towards a distinctly American version of the cult of the leader, most of them honestly appear to have no idea what they’re doing, or creating. I’m not even sure the Rovians themselves entirely understand the atavistic instincts they’ve awakened in Bush’s most loyal followers. But the current is running now, fast and strong. And we’re all heading for the rapids.
Today another step was taken. The grand leader joined a fashion show to present the new Fans-of-Bush uniform (Made in China). The design will be available for late Christmas shopping in all counties that (were) voted in his favour with a more than 60% moral majority.
The Clinton pics aren’t the same – Clinton is wearing a non-uniform leather jacket with the unit’s insignia on it. Bush is wearing a uniform-type khaki with epaulets, the words “George W. Bush, Commander in Chief,” and – best I can tell- the presidential seal. Clinton was showing solidarity with the troops, Bush is asserting military rank.
Posted by: jr | December 8, 2004 04:31 PM
Clinton’s wearing the standard Air Force A2 flight jacket in the photos; each bears the insignia of the hosting Air Force command and, as pointed out, these and other service jackets are commonly given as photo-appropriate gifts to visiting Commanders-in-Chief, Secretaries of Defense, and other VVIPs. In the posted photo, Bush is wearing the standard Marine Service C jacket, displaying the U.S. Department of the Navy/United States Marine Corps seal. Rank-bearing epaulets are never worn on the shoulder flaps of this jacket, and Commanders-in-Chief haven’t anyhow any military rank to assert. They’re mere civilians, poor creatures.
Now for something that is, I believe, news to no one.
Investment adviser John Mauldin writes:
Don’t Confuse Me With the Facts
Last week, I heard a very disquieting commentary on National Public Radio by Dr. Drew Westen of Emory University. Westen is a well respected psychologist, but he was commenting upon how our feelings can predict our political decision irrespective of the facts. He graciously sent me some of his research and papers. Westen studies the way that psychology and politics intersect, and he says a familiar format in cable TV news works with the way our brains are wired. As I thought about it, there are some real ties to his research and how we also process investment information. Let’s look at what Westen said last week on NPR’s All Things Considered:
“We’ve grown accustomed to hearing two versions of every story, one from the left and one from the right, as if the average of two distortions equals the truth. You’ve seen this on TV. The journalist provides the skeleton of the story; it’s then up to partisans to try to graft flesh onto one side or the other of its clanking bones.
“A few weeks ago, for example, I heard a news anchor begin a segment about missing explosives at the al Qaqaa munitions dump in Iraq. He described claims that weapons were missing and then handed it over to a Democrat and a Republican to dress the skeleton in red or blue. In fact, however, the munitions were missing, and the subject of the debate that followed, when they disappeared, was a question of fact, not interpretation, unless, of course, Democrats and Republicans live in different time zones.
“Unfortunately, this format–from the left, from the right–capitalizes on a design flaw in the human brain. We have a tendency to believe what we want to believe. We seek information and draw conclusions consistent with what we want to be true. I’ve been studying this kind of emotion-driven political thinking over the last several years, and the results are sobering. For example, during the disputed election of 2000, we could predict whether people would believe that manual or machine counts are more accurate just by knowing their feelings towards the two parties and the two candidates.
“When people draw conclusions about political events, they’re not just weighing the facts. Without knowing it, they’re also weighing what they would feel if they came to one conclusion or another, and they often come to the conclusion that would make them feel better, no matter what the facts are.
“An experiment completed right before the election shows just how powerful these emotional pulls can be. Here’s what we told the participants. A soldier at Abu Ghraib prison was charged with torturing prisoners. He wanted the right to subpoena senior administration officials. He claimed he’d been informed the administration had suspended the Geneva Conventions. We gave different people different amounts of evidence supporting his claims. For some, the evidence was minimal; for others, it was overwhelming.
“In fact, the evidence barely mattered. 84% of the time, we could predict whether people believed the evidence was sufficient to subpoena Donald Rumsfeld based on just three things: the extent to which they liked Republicans, the extent to which they liked the US military, and the extent to which they liked human rights groups like Amnesty International. Adding the evidence into the equation allowed us to increase the prediction from 84% to 85%.
“A readiness to believe what we want to believe makes it all the more important for journalists to distinguish what’s debatable from what’s not. The line between facts and interpretations isn’t always easy to draw, but presenting fact as opinion is not objective reporting. It isn’t objective to preface news that’s unflattering to one side or the other with phrases like ‘critics claim’ when it doesn’t take a critic to claim it. There’s nothing like a healthy debate, but there’s nothing as unhealthy as a debate about the undebatable.” (NPR Radio)
Let’s look at one sentence which is stunning. “Adding the evidence into the equation allowed us to increase the prediction from 84% to 85%.” In his study he sent to me, the actual number was on 84.5%. The old joke is, “Don’t confuse me with the facts. My mind is made up!” This study, and others he and his team have done over the years shows that it is no joke.
They did studies on Clinton and Lewinsky, on impeachment and on whether Clinton actually molested Kathleen Willey. What you felt about several emotional issues reliably predicted how you felt about the above topics.
But even when it was not an emotional issue as above, and one subject to facts and potentially rational thought, it made no difference. The subject of whether or not machine counts or hand counts was accurately split along party lines.
The clear implication of the study suggests that if Gore had won the state by some 500 votes, the opinions about which method of counting votes would have been reversed. The “facts” would be the same, of course, but the emotions surrounding the facts would have been opposite. We believe what we want to believe because to do otherwise would upset our world. The potential emotional stress of a contrary opinion is too much for us to deal with, so we go along with the (personally) least stressful emotional choice.
[Though Westen’s studies concerned the impact of emotions on politics, Mauldin goes on to explain why the strong tendency to “go along with the (personally) least stressful emotional choice” makes contrarian investing so profitable, and so difficult. He also suggests that Westen’s conclusions point in the direction of some holiday-season soul-searching – preferrably among friends who shall all agree that you never ever allow emotion to trump fact. Just kidding. But not about the introspection.]
Posted by: Pat | Dec 9 2004 9:42 utc | 24
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