Selling Garbage

Forced Sale

What we have in the United States is the so-called "managed market." No manufacturer of mass-market products can depend on "free" individual decisions to purchase their products. For example, when domestic auto sales slow even a few percent, Detroit begins losing money on a huge scale. The same is true in the food industry, where the Atkins diet has ruined formerly profitable companies, such as the maker of "Wonder Bread" and "Hostess Twinkies." Even MacDonald's has been forced to change its product line because profits were reduced due to unexpected shifts in eating habits. (People are finally getting the message about unhealthy fast foods.) But, those were totally unexpected results, partly motivated by competing advertising campaigns. What the economic oligarchs want is a regular market they control, in which their advertising induces you to buy their scheduled production. (So much for Adam Smith: cf my Uh-Oh Boring ...) The genius of Karl Rove and conservatives, who have experience in business, is their realization that the same tactics work in politics. They are managing the political market.
 

There is a key difference between selling and telling the truth. The aim of selling is to convince you of something, so you will buy something. Telling the truth, pure and simple, is reporting what one believes to be so. Sometimes sales people are convinced of the truth of their spiel, but it is more usual that they are thinking about commissions. So, it is not uncommon for sales talks (literature, etc) to contain little "white lies," half-truths, exaggerations and loaded words or phrases, all of which is designed to suggest something that is not true. The object of such sales talk is to "press your buttons," to find some motivation in you that urges you to buy the product. Most of us were taught (about) these rhetorical tricks in High School, hopefully to help us avoid making tragic mistakes.
 

I think most people are familiar with used car and real estate sales people. If not, take a trip through the real estate ads, where you will find thousands of cute, perfect homes, none of which has ever had a problem. (Homeowners know that cannot be true.) Problems like 'needs painting' or 'new roof' are disguised in the sales pitch. For example, 'needs paint' could be sold as "ready to redecorate." I remember well the high-pressure tactics one Ford dealer applied to get me to buy a truck I did not want. I've known people who were too embarrassed by those tactics to say "no!", so they bought a car they didn't want. (I walk away, ignoring blaring bull horns and other intimidating tactics.) The beauty of such forcible sales methods is that, after making such a purchase, most buyers are too ashamed to admit what happened. The same syndrome works its way on women, who often don't report being raped.
 

The only thing that limits sales talks in our free-wheeling society is the fear of being sued, overt government regulation, and, sometimes, intimidation by pro-consumer, do-gooder organizations. In the absence of any prosecutor, the wildest claims are made about products. The worst of these appear on TV every day, claiming to help you lose weight or become the sexpot you always wanted to be. These claims are careful to evade the law, so they go on and on.

But, what does any of this have to do with politics? I say everything.

 

Mangled Ideas
 

Conservatives are selling people on their ideas, using every sales tactic in the book. Liberals, on the other hand, are still stuck in their version of Consumer Reports, trying to tell it "like it is." Liberals, including myself, believe that people will accept the truth and act accordingly, rather than believe deliberate "feel good" lies. Unfortunately, as Joseph Goebbels showed in his work (the foundation of modern advertising), people prefer and believe the lies. There's something about the human mind that can "trip out" on an idea, appropriately presented, and just refuse to see things as they are. This is related to our creativity - our ability to invent new ideas - as well as to the success of the Hollywood movies. Dreams trump reality.
 

I've written about this before, bemoaning the fact that conservatives are co-opting political language for their purposes. Terms that once had a certain meaning have been successfully redefined; meaning, advertising has made the new definitions stick. This has two advantages, if done well: (1) it takes over a certain set of meanings which advantage the owner and (2) it leaves the former owners speechless. Thus, the Estate Tax has become the "Death Tax." "Liberal" has become a term of derision and, even, hatred; being a conservatively-defined "liberal" has nothing to do with a wide range of political positions liberals actually hold. The point of the co-optation exercise is to get people to see things through the co-opters eyes, because the language itself forces that view. Thus, unwary liberals are unknowingly turned into conservatives. This strategy is most effective among the least educated. (Note that George W Bush has his greatest support among the least educated.)
 

Note: I'm not the only one making this point: Noam Chomsky has written extensively on it. His work is well worth reading, even if one has to struggle through its technical nature.
 

Other examples of twisted logic include "privatized Social Security" and "Medicare reform." The invariable result of conservative proposals is simply that the wealthy pay less and get more, while the poor pay more and get less. That, of course, is the objective of the sales program. One of the most hair-raising facts in the conservative propaganda war on working people is that "working people" no longer means people who work and earn median incomes (ca $41,500). "Working people" are now managers and executives earning $100,000 and more. I have no idea what most people call middle- and low-income workers, but Democrats refer to them as the "middle class." I call them "ordinary people," or, simply, "the people."
 

Note, in this last example, that no one can deny executives work, by usual definitions of the term "work." What conservative propaganda does, however, is expropriate an intellectual property of the Left: for over a century, 'worker' has meant a member of the proletarian lower class. In its original Marxist and socialist use, workers are, by definition, not executives, as workers are subjects under the rule of executives. Everyone used to know this, whether or not they agreed with socialist politics. Since the term "worker" has been abused - corrupted by the Right - how do Lefties describe class relations? We could go back to "proletarian," which, while accurate, suggests Soviet Communism to most Americans which is not the goal of democratic socialists. The Democrat's "Middle Class" has the word "class" in it, but their use completely eliminates any implication of class relations. "Middle Class" is entirely an economic term defined by income, not by how it is derived or the relationship of labor and management. The nearest thing left is "employees," which so emphasizes work that it leaves lots of other meanings (cultural, etc) out.
 

My best suggestion at the moment is going back to an older terminology, "common man," but I think feminists won't like that. That's why I have adopted the more neutral "ordinary people." The question is whether we can make this terminology stick, and suggest the things we need to suggest about the lives of ordinary people.
 

Another amazing conservative sales job has been convincing people they are rich. I am not sure of the source, but it appears some 60% of the people - mostly ordinary people - believe they are, or soon will be, among the top 20% of household incomes; i.e., rich. Now, clearly, this cannot be true; but, then, 55% of Americans believe Saddam Hussein had "something" to do with 9-11 and that he had WMD. The facts about social mobility are quite the reverse of popular belief, as recent studies suggest social stratification in America is more rigid than ever (as I noted in another story). The average family would only have about 1 chance in 5 to be rich, if that status were the result of a lottery. But, in America, wealth is not allocated by numbers on ping-pong balls: almost all those who have it, keep it, and very few others ever get near it.

Conservatives have hated the supposedly Marxist notion of "class" for as long as I can remember. Now, I think the motive for this rejection is simply that you may not notice the class differences, if you don't have the concept of class in the first place. During the 1960s, the original neo-conservatives (runaway liberals like Nathan Glazer) rejected the notion of social class, as demonstrated in earlier works like "Caste and Class in a Southern Town." What those formerly liberal sociologists preferred was the "classless" society, the notion the America was one, big, happy family. In America, unlike Europe, we have no classes, they say. My view is that such blatherings are the verbal equivalent of the Ostrich defense.
 

There are tons of studies that have shown wealth is concentrated in 500-1000 families. 1% of all families control well over 50% of all wealth. 5% of all families control 95% of all wealth. "All" here doesn't mean all in Dallas, Texas; it means "all" in the whole planet Earth. Bill Gates III, for example, is worth more than the entire State of Oregon, or most of Washington State excluding himself. The rich control an impressive pile of goods and the means of production, which is difficult for ordinary people to conceive. Meanwhile, those belonging to households having under $50,000 annual income own less than 1% of everything.
 

Note: These statistics are reported regularly in that voice of capitalism, the Wall Street Journal. The ultra-rich themselves know full well just how rich they are, and crow about it among themselves. It's just they don't want you - their serfs, ordinary people - to know it.

Why am I writing this? Because, in the first instance, we need to get ordinary people to understand their true status. Workers need to re-affiliate with the working class.
 

This means that the "culture wars" need to sharpen, not soften. People hate it; they hate politics. But that works in favor of authoritarians, usually conservatives: "Please, oh please, do my thinking for me; Decide for me." This is what we need to fight because making one's own choices is the core of democracy. We need to present conservatives as the dictators and manipulators they are.

Finally, a thought about the connection of religion - particularly, Bible-thumping Born-Again Protestantism - with conservatism. Evangelical ministers are most concerned about keeping their flocks "under control." Those are the words they use: "under control." They say unbelievers, such as myself, and free-thinkers are "out of control." Think about what that comparison means, and whether their goal is not thought (and behavior) control. [Hint: Conservatives use religion to brainwash people, as implied in 'religion is the opium of the people.']
 

I think the Left would do well to pick on such "little facts," and present those purveyors of the authoritarian society in a most unfavorable light. For example, one of my favorite (true) stories is that the Roman Empire was divided and collapsed shortly after Constantine made Christianity the official religion. After all, Christians, like Islamic Jihadists, are more interested in a supposed hereafter than in making anything better in this world. If you believe you will be rewarded grandly in Heaven, and you look forward to meeting your Maker, why would you lift a finger to improve or change anything here on Earth?