America is Sick, Part IV: Paying to be Brainwashed
So far I have examined the way people think through examining cognitive dissonance. I've also broached two of the problems contributing to America's sickness: Tribal mentality and incessant arguing, though I probably understated the pervasiveness of arguing in our society. It reaches all aspects of our lives, from politics to home.
And it will continue. Why? Because there's profit in it.
When it comes to government, I am no extremist. I believe that the best government is a balance of opposites. A good economy needs mostly-free market capitalism to provide competition and incentive to invest and grow, but it also needs strong regulation to prevent the abuses of power inherent when power accumulates, as it necessarily will do with capitalism. Unless you believe that sweat shops, wage slavery and child labor are acceptable, you don't fully endorse capitalism. Unless you believe state control, extreme poverty and famine are acceptable, you don't fully endorse communism.
And most modern industrialized nations are a balance, even America, though the US leans far too heavily to the right, at least compared to the rest of the world.
But still, we need capitalism, but there are aspects of capitalism we do not need. And these three things are the main points of this whole essay, and you should dedicate your political energy to eradicating these three things: Lobbying legislators, political contributions by corporations, and unregulated advertising.
All three of these things could be summed up as "organizational free speech." It's what the famous Citizens United Supreme Court case granted to, in particular, corporations. Corporations have the rights of people in the US, but corporations and other organizations are not people. They have more power and less liability than people, and by giving them free speech, among other freedoms, we give them near unlimited power.
Already now I fear that they have too much power. That we will never be able to put the power back in the people's hands. What if all the corporations decided to move from America? It would be disaster. But aren't we already being extorted by that very threat?
I hope it's not too late.
Obviously, corporations control America. Of this, there is no doubt. President Jimmy Carter has even said that America is not a democracy but "an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery," meaning that America is ruled by the rich elite, not the people.
And until our government is ruled by the people and not the rich elite, then no other issue matters. Your opinion on guns or prayer in school or abortion or transgenders in bathrooms does not matter at all. You don't matter at all.
No matter how loud you shout, you will only have a voice if you vote for a candidate that says he will end Citizens United, who pledges to take control from the corporations and put it back in the hands of the people. It will take a Constitutional amendment and it's only the start, but corporations should not be considered humans.
Only one candidate in the current presidential election even spoke about ending Citizens United, Bernie Sanders, and he will probably not win because, in part, the powers that be do not want him to win. This means we will probably have to wait at least 4 more years before we can make significant changes, but this is a war, not a battle.
And we need to maintain focus. Something we sorely lack. Why do we lack it?
Because we're all brainwashed.
Everyone is brainwashed by something: Whether it's their religion, their school, their friends or their company. If you're reading this, you're brainwashed by a lot of things.
You are brainwashed by social media, the internet, cereal boxes, soda cans, and condiment manufacturers, pill companies who want you to notice you're sick not to get you well but to feed you their pills. You are brainwashed by your doctor, the laws, your significant other and the English language, because not all brainwashing is bad. You are brainwashed to hate people different of you, because a lot of brainwashing is.
Even if you're some Appalachian wild man who just happened to look at this screen on some tablet he found in the foothills and has never purchased or sold, talked to anyone since childhood or watched a television, even he has his parents to blame. And I'm trying to actively brainwash him now.
But chances are very good that you are much more brainwashed than that.
You may be sitting there, stewing in your cognitive dissonance produced from your pre-existing romantic belief that you are a person entirely determined by your own free will. And then your stomach growls, and you walk into a grocery store. Or maybe I should say supermarket, because you don't realize all the "psychic" knowledge stores have about you.
You open the door, and invariably, you will find fruit or flowers. Color and freshness overwhelm you. You feel like you've just walked into the Garden of Eden. (Maybe that's why the Bible starts with it, too).
The items the store wants you to buy the most are put at just the right eye level to catch your attention. Maybe you have a bit more freedom if you're drastically under or over average height, but they find other ways to snare you. The supermarket uses in-aisle gondolas or end caps at the end of the aisle to bait you with a succulent bargain that actually isn't. You pay more and feel empowered by finding a "deal."
The supermarket knows you will spend more the longer you are inside, and it knows you move more slowly the slower the pace of the music, so you won't be listening to punk or speed metal as you shop. You'll be listening to nice, somnolent easy listening that lulls you into a borderline hypnotic drone.
Items will not be alphabetized, because supermarkets know that if you find what you're looking for right off, you might convince yourself you don't actually need it. If you have to search a little, then you're so relieved when you find it, you won't consider passing it by. Everybody likes to win the little game.*
That's just one type of store. Think of the endless variety of advertising bombarding us constantly, and it's not just the obvious ads in television and other media. Corporate stadium sponsors. Corporate partnerships. Movie product placements. Even the news. If a disaster generates enough of the right kind of publicity it can even boost sales in the long run. Exxon, Tylenol and the Catholic Church have all survived and even flourished after well publicized disasters.
But all advertising does is raise awareness about products, right? Wrong. Advertising, by design, creates desire. The most successful combinations of advertising, timing and product design create entire markets of desire. Think of how we now need cars, planes, computers, cell phones, telephones and televisions, air conditioning units, anti-lock brakes, air bags, smoke detectors, plastic diapers, straws to drink soda at fast food restaurants. We don't need any of it, but we can't live without it.
And advertising is not only about selling products, it's also about selling political views, mostly through corporate media and political institutions, like think-tanks and groups like ALEC that design laws for legislators to pass. It's about manufacturing issues and sewing discontent. It's about selling cognitive dissonance, about manipulating the irrational and emotional, and about giving us something to argue about without accomplishing anything.
It's about everything I've written so far.
Take most hot-button political issues. Most of them are not very important. They might be important to a small group of individuals, such as transgenders using bathrooms or gay people getting married, but they aren't life or death matters like wars or health care.
Laws against transgenders using bathrooms are largely unenforceable and people could still marry without the law recognizing it, but of course, liberals like me support the rights of LGBT people because we want fairness and tolerance. And I do support their rights, but I see what's really going on, and what is going on is that the issues are crafted to keep the children arguing. We're the children, and we certainly act like it.
We should be demanding to be treated as adults, to have our votes count, but instead we are concerned about bathrooms. We should be taking back the power, but we can't follow an issue for more than a few days because corporate media constantly changes the channel.
But we have free will, right? We make our own decisions, right? While we're concerned with the latest hot-button issue. When was the last time you expressed your opinion about Occupy Wall Street or Casey Anthony or Elian Gonzalez?
Caitlyn Jenner becomes a story and within a year, politicians are passing opposing bills about transgenders and the president's administration is issuing an edict. There were transgender celebrities before and will be again, but I bet we won't be hearing as much from them once this cycle and the fire about transgenders cools down.
The media highlights black men being shot by other races, and then suddenly people are arguing about cops and Black Lives Matter on Facebook. Racism comes out of the closet, in part as a result, but the story passes by while the damage remains. Black men were being shot before and they are being shot now, so why only for a short while was it an issue? They weren't just being shot by people of other races and cops, so why are only those reported? Too much blame is cast at cops when the issue is much more broad. Black Lives do Matter, but little is being done to address the larger issues at play, like an unwinnable drug war that allows criminal organizations to support themselves and creates a predator-prey relationship between cops and poor people. Divisions are deepened, though we all want the same things: Peace, prosperity, trust.
Instead, we're at war with ourselves, and even though there are real issues in every hot news story and breaking headline, we don't remain focused long enough to have any real effect, to solve anything. It almost seems programmed, like a conspiracy, but it may just be the drive for profit, for ratings, for power and prestige thriving off of chaos and feeding itself eternally. But when groups work together to create profit or gain power, that is a conspiracy, and we call them corporations. We are the victims. And they are brainwashing us for their gain.
But the very fact that we have competition among those trying actively to brainwash us for their profit guarantees we will never have unison. So we need to find a way to shut them up.
* Most of the knowledge about supermarkets came from "Uncle John's Absolutely Absorbing Bathroom Reader" by the Bathroom Readers' Institute. Those books are fascinating at times.
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