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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (273818)	2/1/2010 9:56:01 PM
From: Broken_Clock	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

But I'm still wondering why, if corporations have so much power, why they spend so much time and money trying to influence the voting public. --- Because it works. When something is working for you, don't stop. Be patient grasshopper, all will become clear: "Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995) was an American pioneer in the field of public relations along with Ivy Lee, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations"[1]. Combining the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Dr. Sigmund Freud, Bernays was one of the first to attempt to manipulate public opinion using the subconscious. He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the 'herd instinct' that Trotter had described.[citation needed] Adam Curtis's award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC, The Century of the Self, pinpoints Bernays as the originator of modern public relations, and Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life magazine.[2]" According to the BBC interview with Bernays' daughter Ann, Bernays felt that the public's democratic judgment was "not to be relied upon" and he feared that "they [the American public] could very easily vote for the wrong man or want the wrong thing, so that they had to be guided from above". This "guidance" was interpreted by Ann to mean that her father believed in a sort of "enlightened despotism" ideology. en.wikipedia.org ---- So how does this work? In real life? here's a recent example: infowars.com The US now admits it helped this whacko onto a plane...with a funky bomb in his underwear! Boy, that Patriot Act is really working. The gov't uses FEAR to move the sheep. Can you say Baa--aah! Hawk?