EXCELLENT COMMENTS: Responding to Corporate Media: the Enemy of the People

Mmmmm, sticks and stones….as I have written Street about the pejorative terms that he cannot help spouting about Trump leave most people cold as they do little to help fight this man’s real danger and unfortunately strengthen the personal nonsense of the diversion tactics brought by the media against the president that are meant to distract viewers and readers from his reality.

In that vein I am not entirely convinced that propaganda shapes people’s thinking to the degree that Street and the people he quotes are convinced. Looking at US television since I came to this country made me rather think that US television (the newspapers and ads fulfill the same function) are an exact mirror of what this society thinks and feels (much like Warhol’s silkscreens hold a mirror up for us about what we feel and think by his colorful images of the electric chair and Jackie’s distressed figure after the JFK assassination).

People who survived WW II in Europe (and I was a very young child) saw and were revolted by the Nazi propaganda. It was so twisted and cruel that it was beyond acceptance, but for the most part it showed healthy Germans loving their children, dogs and nature. To assume that vile images and text influenced viewers and readers to accept all its premises and become more fervid clean-living Nazis is a superficial assumption and frankly never has made sense psychologically.

To convince someone of certain values is impossible unless a fertile ground is already present just as it is impossible have someone under hypnosis do things (s)he would refuse otherwise. A Swiss psychologist studying very young children observed that the baby recognizes itself as a person when (s)he sees itself reflected in a mirror. Just so do people react when they see or read that what reverberates within them readily and they will say: ‘Yes, that is right for me’.

The US is a petty-bourgeois society of the poor and downtrodden from other lands who through hard work and dedication succeeded in reaching a modicum of living which is indeed envied elsewhere and living by the standards and economically driven determination of that class. Little can they care about social equalization as they are trained to be competitive and of necessity self-seeking. That principle is being reflected in the ads, in print, in movies and on the television screen. No indoctrination needed.

From child onward, the USA-er is taught to compete, to see objects as necessary proofs of success and to realize that (s)he is a lone individual in that pursuit. It is imbued in the social familial environment and that (s)he is more successful and virtuous than people elsewhere in the world are a given, otherwise the whole premise for this country would be null and void. It is also by the way why a real revolution here is well-nigh impossible to contemplate.

To make the media more socially responsible is a pipedream because they would not sell (they are after all corporate products of necessity just like toilet paper or deodorant). In all their callousness they show the real face of the USA as do movies and all advertising. They are commercial enterprises and products for sale ruled by capitalist principles and are not meant to change minds and hearts. To read and look at them is to understand the country.