Don't Miss A Master Class In Propaganda By Cass Sunstein

At first some words by one of the true masters.

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) says the following in Nuremberg 1934.

... A good propaganda will always come along that serves a good cause. But propaganda is still necessary if a good cause is to succeed. A good idea does not win simply because it is good. It must be presented properly if it is to win. The combination makes for the best propaganda. Such propaganda is successful without being obnoxious. It depends on its nature, not its methods. It works without being noticed. Its goals are inherent in its nature. Since it is almost invisible, it is effective and powerful. ...

One more time.

... It works without being noticed. Its goals are inherent in its nature. Since it is almost invisible, it is effective and powerful. ...

Cass Sunstein's perspective and formulations are absolutely perfect if you really want to understand how the established elite promote the current Western culture.

One common and effective method is to find scapegoats or consequences of the restricted current Western worldview, that the people are trained to not be able to identify, and then blame everything on the consequences.

As the people are trained to not understand the relations between Cause, Effect and Context it is believable that there can exist something that just “happens” to be made in such a way so it is restrictive or plain stupid.

Accordingly it is possible to blame whatever for all the problems as there cannot be any concrete questions; or someone that is responsible.

The latest example of Sunstein has the perfect title: Challenge everything you think – democracy depends on it, The Guardian, 27 April 2017.

The fantastic ingress says: “Representative government rests on the shared experiences that online media increasingly filter out”

Sure, blame the ongoing collapse on the online media.

Read his text and admire how perfect propaganda is written. When you read his words; they are almost believable.

Save the established political elite! They do everything they can to help you. They even care for a real Democracy!

And there are lots of very good comments especially by Maharaja Brovinda Singh that takes up the thread about "Representative government".

My comment

The celebrated author Robert Harris about Cicero and the Destructiveness of Politics

As I write about the importance of to understand Cicero's formulations in chapter 30, in order to grasp the Western world of today, the following is as good as it can be.

...

An excellent sign of how essential Cicero (106–43 BC) is right now, in the total collapse of the world that he was central to manufacture, is that BBC World Book Club has produced, a discussion with Robert Harris regarding the first of his Roman trilogy, Imperium (2006), that is based on Cicero's life.

The BBC show is available as a podcast was first broadcast 3 April 2017.

Another example of the popularity of Cicero and Harris is that his story will be transformed to the stage; Royal Shakespeare Company to stage Robert Harris's Cicero trilogy, Maev Kennedy, The Guardian, 1 February 2017.

Observe Harris definition of Imperium in the beginning of the podcast. Harris says.

Imperium is the power of life and death as invested by the State in an individual; it is in essential the official power witch was confirmed by the senate and the people of Rome and the magistrate.

Perhaps, as he mumbles a bit here, he says the senate, the people and the magistrate.

The Roman Senate

The Roman Magistrate

The Modern use of the concept Magistrate

Nevertheless, Harris has almost the same definition in the book as a presentation of the content.

… By power I mean official, political power – what we know in Latin as imperium – the power of life and death, as vested by the state in an individual. ...

Google Books

Definition of Vested is according to Merriam-Webster: “fully and unconditionally guaranteed as a legal right, benefit, or privilege”

A conventional definition of Imperium according to Law Dictionary (Black's Law Dictionary) is.

The right to command, which includes the right to employ the force of the state to enforce the laws. This is one of the principal attributes of the power of the executive.

The conventional explanations offer the same relations as Harris definition; but Harris exposes the concrete meaning.

In short. The Roman doctrine or ideal, that also is, the foundations of the current Western culture; is that the State owns the people in order to eliminate the Athenian tradition based on, the opposite relation, that the people owns the State to make it possible for the citizens to improve the State.

Unfortunately, appears Harris at least the at the moment to have the political correct perspective of Cicero; consequently is Harris unable to grasp, that Cicero was one of them that constructed the current Western culture of total terror.

Regardless of my critique it is well spent time to listen to Harris explorations as he strives to be correct regarding the facts he mentions; and especially Harris reflections on how (not why) Cicero is essential today.

In the podcast, Harris answers this question (25:42): "What is the connection between the politics of ancient Rome and the political atmosphere now?"

I think power is something like nuclear energy it is highly destructive to anyone who handles it. It has to be encased in various lead lined boxes and dispersed; otherwise it will burn everything ... and that is a timeless theme. Almost inevitably we see parallels with the Roman world ...

But, it is hard to grasp that someone that has written so much about the area Politics and has for years studied the Romans have not stumbled on the simple fact that it was the Romans that made the area of Politics dangerous and very very, exceedingly stupid.

Perhaps the explanation is here.

… His smile is wry. “In my old age, I find I’m a Burkeian conservative, a believer in the power of institutions. …

From: Robert Harris: ‘MPs should elect the Labour leader as cardinals elect the pope’, Rachel Cooke, The Guardian, 18 September 2016

Perhaps will Harris someday realise that institutions is not the same as the existing institutions.


Some links to stuff that Harris talks about

The Personal life of Cicero

Writings and Speeches of Cicero

Pompey (106–48 BC)

The Renaissance

Plutarch (c. 46–120)

Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans,Wikipedia, Full text


The former French president François Mitterrand (1916–1996) and indifference.

“… Mitterrand, who said the most essential attribute in politics is “indifference”. ...”

François Mitterrand: The great deceiver, Andrew Adonis, New Statesman, 21 November 2013.

Observe, to be indifferent or to not care is can easily be said to be the same as the deadly Sin called Sloth.


Lenin (1870–1924) says in Our Revolution, 16 January 1923, Marxists Internet Archive.

… Napoleon, I think, wrote: "On s'engage et puis ... on voit." rendered freely this means: "First engage in a serious battle and then see what happens." Well, we did first engage in a serious battle in October 1917, and then saw such details of development (from the standpoint of world history they were certainly details) as the Brest peace, the New Economic Policy, and so forth. And now there can be no doubt that in the main we have been victorious. ...

Bismarck and Sausages

This quote is according Wikiquote Misattributed with reference to Quote . . . Misquote, Fred R. Shapiro, The New York Times, 21 July 2008.

Wikiquote suggest it was the American poet John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887) that made the formulation:

Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.

The Fearless Girl Gets Really Interesting Some Levels Up: The Animal Spirit In Dissolution

What was beautiful before 2017 is not the same as what is beautiful in 2017.

The statue Fearless Girl (2017) by Kristen Visbal in relation to the statue Charging Bull (1989) by Arturo Di Modica and the ongoing story about it all are extraordinarily interesting some levels up.

It all can be boiled down to: Humans against the Animal Spirit. Or today it is not enough to be bullish.

The formulated objective with the statue Fearless Girl was from the beginning to highlight the lack of so called Diversity.

Read slowly the following answer from the art activist Ron O’Hanley, State Street Corporation from, The Backstory Behind Wall Street's 'Fearless Girl' Statue, Bethany McLean, The Atlantic, 13 Mars 2017.

Bethany McLean: What was the genesis of Fearless Girl?

Ron O’Hanley: ... Since we are a predominantly passive investor, we don’t have the ability not to own a company, so we spend a lot of time on measures like diversity and effective, strong board governance. That includes diversity of thought and gender diversity. What has been frustrating is that there is a growing body of evidence that creating diverse boards does result in better outcomes. ...

One more time: "That includes diversity of thought and gender diversity."

But, if you try to define what Diversity is about in the current Western culture, you will get absolutely nowhere.

The current Western culture is simply based on to eliminate concrete Dynamic relations in order to force the people to an illusion of a Static world; where the people are doomed to accept how it is and obey.

It is also so that the formal definitions of the Church and the Academic tradition regarding human activity is, even if it is usually hidden, the Animal Spirit; in order to block out concrete definitions of Dynamic relations.

Accordingly, the statue Fearless Girl and the relations to the statue of Charging Bull and the ongoing story are, some levels up, hopefully all about that a growing majority of the people is finally fed up with to be restricted by the Static dogmas of the Church and the Academic cult; that force the people to live in a Static and Hierarchic, or top down, society.

And here is a nice reminder of what the message of the Animal Spirit is all about; to force the people to not understand in concrete manner how to cooperate by to fool them that they can only use violence and to kill to achieve anything.

In practice this means that to do business is the same as

... rip out their hearts and eat it before they die …

as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the former financial services company Lehman Brothers Dick Fuld said in 2007. Then something happened.


Much more about The Animal Spirit in chapter 15. The Bankers And The Naked Rambler Exposes The Illusion, that begins at page 141, in the current version of This Is How The State Fucks Your Mind.


Some links

Fearless Girl Sends a Powerful Message, State Street Corporation

Search Twitter: #fearlessgirl

Fearless Girl @makemepermanent

Edward Berneys Perfected The Hidden Obedience

Propaganda can only be useful when the people are trained to be unable to understand the hidden commands.

Accordingly is Propaganda effective in the current Western culture to, for example, engage the victims in war or extermination.

Even if the area of Rhetoric, the art of persuasion, is ancient is the form of Rhetoric that today is called Propaganda a new and a very special form of Rhetoric developed to not only persuade but to direct in a hidden manner.

The man that put together Rhetoric, Platonism and the use of the Massmedia and invented Propaganda as a practical tool was Edward Berneys (1891−1995).

Read his book Propaganda (1928), full text, and you will understand the current Western culture and your life.

Here is the beginning of Chapter I, Organizing Chaos.

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.

And do watch the eminent documentary The Century of the Self (2002) made by Adam Curtis that tells the story about Edward Berneys in the first section.



Curtis says in, How Freud got under our skin, Tim Adams, The Guardian, 10 March 2002.

… what we are seeing is a kind of pseudo democracy, which listens all too carefully to the population, but not really to its rational thought, and allows itself to be shaped by that. ...

BBC's presentation of The Century of the Self, 28 February 2002.