The American Pipe Dream

George Fisher

4/29/06

The American Pipe Dream

The Merriam-Webster's dictionary definition of the word brainwashing is propaganda and salesmanship. It is impossible to deny propaganda's hold on people; shifting their priorities and altering their natural reactions to life. Ultra sex and violence change people's view of the real world by insidiously seeping into American minds through the electronic media world created by the growing American desire to consume products, and more dangerously, lifestyles. Nobody was born caring about celebrities but nine out of ten Americans over the age of fourteen know who Tom Cruise is dating and do not know who the secretary of state is. It's everywhere, bombarding us through every possible commercial medium. It is no wonder that childhood obesity is growing as a threat to tomorrow's free world leaders. Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Coca Cola and others sponsor schools with their fat filled products. Meanwhile, the parents are so busy working towards an insatiable dream to comfortably consume and consume and consume that they do not have time to properly feed and moreover raise their kids. Left with video games and television, kids are getting less exercise and are becoming tomorrow's comfortably numb super lifestyle consumer drones. And the cycle continues. Raising awareness for such problems is difficult because a) everyone believes that hey want to live the way they do (because they're told to) and b) the commercial media is everywhere to the point that it is invisible like a phantom telling people to waste and destroy themselves with a smile on their faces. There is, however, with enough awareness and effort, room to re-improve America's middle class.

The American economy depends on its people to consume what is marketed but the byproduct is an extremely cynical population culturally controlled to be by following the opinions that the corporations indiscriminately and deliberately deliver to meet their own needs and no one else's. Now, only corporations dish out what the people are to act like, talk like, wear, buy, drive and live in instead of the people deciding for themselves. So the national opinions are based on the agenda's of money hungry companies that will do anything for the most effective and efficient means no matter if the cost is nature itself. This has made the American people adopt the same mentality: consume now, worry about the effect later. This is unthreading the seams of the American Dream. The American Dream is still a desire to be better but with a new twist on the definition of better. Better has become self serving and unnatural, vanity has replaced humility, greed has replaced gratitude, and hope has been replaced by material possessions or the desire thereof. Dreams are meant to be intangible. People do not ever have it all, they always have new goals popping up just out of reach if they would stretch to achieve. The commercial media has really been a media monster, distorting the beliefs of the people, making them believe that the plastic wife, designer car and wardrobe, the two and half kids and having the 'cool' that no one but fictitious idiots have will fulfill their lives and dreams. People are chasing after a tangible ideal when really there is always work to be done and fellowship to be made stronger.

Super violence makes people afraid of strangers and neighbors because in the electronic world everyone is a cool guy with a gun and an attitude. Super sex in the commercial media paints a crippling picture of love especially for youth who believe that aggression and a finite number of character traits and 'looks' entitles them to sex, and they see nothing wrong with this, in fact, it is normal and young women contort their beliefs to match the men's over-egotism. The more oblique the public's beliefs get, the more oblivious they are to the matters that actually matter. Moreover it reverses the ideas of brotherhood and peace by instilling fear into the masses via news 'shows'. This electronic media plane of reality is so pervasive that it is infecting massive amounts of the millions of people who voluntarily subscribe daily to their own demise.

There are many types of propaganda used by the commercial media to assuage their obliviously adoring public through logical fallacies. Logical fallacies are arguments that are not true and feign validity simply by leaving it up to the audience to deduce the fallacious nature of the argument, and if the audience does not, the argument is automatically assumed to be true even though the arguments conclusion does not match its premise. By not consciously deducing the falsity of an argument, it is unconsciously assumed to be correct. Awareness of logical fallacies gives the audience a choice in whether or not to sign off on the arguments conclusion. Recognition destroys the exploitation of the argument. The Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA) identifies seven basic techniques albeit twenty or more exist. Name Calling is the propaganda technique that blatantly slanders someone place or thing by connecting them to a negative symbol without any evidence.(Aaron, Common Techniques) Contrary to the Name Calling device, Glittering Generalities attempt to rhetorically persuade an audience for approval without any evidence. (Aaron, Common Techniques) Euphemism is a propaganda technique designed to change the audiences opinion of someone place on thing by changing the definition of it using bland language in an attempt to soften the severity of its sound. (Aaron, Common Techniques) Transferring is another propaganda device designed to connect positive emotionally stirring symbols to programs or products that would otherwise be represented only by itself and its own validity without the directly demanding authority of a meaningful symbol. (Aaron, Common Techniques) Another propaganda technique, Testimonials cite famous figures to gain approval for a product or program. (Aaron, Common Techniques) The Plain Folks technique suggests that a program or product is "of the people," even though it may only be of the people because the campaigner or salesman said so. (Aaron, Common Techniques) Many of these Propaganda sources are not credible in spite of appearances. By referring to the audiences sex, occupation or religion, the salesman or campaigner proclaims that