Managing America- Businesses and Governments use of propaganda to influence the public.

”Idols of the Market place are the most troublesome of all, the proneness of men to allow their desire, pride, prejudice, hopes, and prepossessions to blind them to realities and men's inclination to trust their five senses, despite their fallibility, without enlisting the help of experiments, they are semantic fallacies, notions imposed on the mind by words which entangle and pervert the judgment”.  Sir Francis Bacon, 1597

Within the next years, Americans need to identify themselves with their destinations rather that their origins and old beliefs.

As we enter the new decade, one must as the question, why do our businesses and governments continue the parse the English Language when communicating to the general public?

A good example is the word budget. Every news headline, interview with officials, press releases, and autocratic statement uses the word “budget” to defend their requests for funding for their needs,  in reality requests for funding is NOT a budget.

So, when one hears the federal proposed budget is X or the state proposed budget is X, it is really NOT a budget, it IS a request for funds by the departments. 

This means there are NO budget “cuts”, only “cuts” in requests for funds. 

Once a decision is made on how much funding will be provided for the requests of funds, can the term budget be used. 

The challenge America will have in the next 25 years, will be how well our elected officials, not the autocratic department heads, handle request for funds.

The Influence on Public Opinion and Knowledge

People's actions are strongly influenced by their knowledge base. People act on their beliefs. Knowledge can make for independence if it helps people meet their world more confidently and realistically. One can manipulate a person’s actions by corrupting their knowledge base.

Propaganda; information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc. is used by warping knowledge, historical truth, or ignoring it completely. Those who have wanted others to remain independent have always recognized this fact and those who want others to become dependent have opposed the spread of knowledge.

Propaganda; the ten common uses are;

Bandwagoning

Bandwagoning is one of the most common techniques in both wartime and peacetime to influence the Collective behavior; Collective consciousness; Collective effervescence; Communal reinforcement and Crowd manipulation and plays an important part in modern advertising.

Card stacking

Card stacking is a propaganda technique that seeks to manipulate audience perception of an issue by emphasizing one side and repressing another s an advertising technique. Card Stacking is used when the best features of a product are emphasize but problems that the product can cause are made to seem less- extremely effective in convincing the public.

Sweeping statement

Generalities are words that have different positive meaning for individual subjects, but are linked to highly valued concepts an indefinite, unspecific, or undetailed statement: to speak in generalities about human rights. When these words are used, they demand approval without thinking, simply because such an important concept is involved.

Lesser of Two Evils

The "lesser of two evils" technique tries to convince us of an idea or proposal by presenting it as the least offensive option in politics and political science that of two bad choices, one isn't as bad as the other.

Name Calling

Name calling occurs often in politics, an attack to humiliate another person that draws a vague equivalence between a concept and a person, group or idea, by linking the person or idea being attacked.

Pinpointing the Enemy

Pinpointing the enemy is used in political campaigns and debates. This is an attempt to simplify a complex situation by presenting one specific group or person as the enemy.

Plain Folks

The plain folks device is one in which the speaker presents him or herself as an average Joe, a common person is an attempt by the propagandist to convince the public that his views reflect those of the common person and that they are also working for the benefit of the common person.

Stereotyping

Stereotyping used often to reduce a complex situation to a clear-cut choice involving good and evil used to influence prejudicial thinking.

Testimonials

Testimonials are quotations or endorsements, in or out of context, which attempt to connect a famous or respectable person with a person, product or idea.

Transfer

Transfer is often used in politics, an attempt to make the subject view a certain item in the same way as they view another item.

Fear

Fear immobilizes your ability to make decisions and locks you in a state of insecurity and lack of trust. 

When a subject is presented with goals are to create fear, just ask the questions;

Why are they telling me this?

Why should know is now? 

Is this their way to divert my attention from something else?

My favorite example of how to recognize someone is using fear to divert my attention from a real danger or truth is from a business trip to the fine New Orleans, LA. 

This three day trip included an evening “Alligator Hunt” with a flashlight, which I refused to go on. 

The kindly older gentleman who was the national sales manager of the host firm convinced me to join the 14 member party as a “good sport”.

Soon I was on board a flat bottom boat with very low sides and was being instructed how to use the flashlight by moving it slowly along the side of they boat to look for alligator’s eyes in the water.

Then came the warnings of dangers, do not put your hands or head over the side of the boat the gater’s will get you, we have lost four people that way last year. Do not yell, that attracts them to the boat and then we are all in trouble.

At that moment I got a tap on the shoulder from my host- the older gentleman behind me. 

He said, “Son let me tell you something about business and politics, you hear the boat pilot scaring you about the alligators, hell son we are only in 18 inches of water.  You put your foot in that water and you will be bitten by so many snakes you will be dead in 30 seconds.”

“So when someone is trying to scare you, always look behind the reason and look for the snakes.”

Historical Truth

"No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth."  Sir Francis Bacon

Historical truth, as Sigmund Freud conceived it, can be defined as a lost piece of the subject's lived experience that is accessible only through the work of construction.

For the historian, by contrast, the past is separate from the present, and even if there are causal links between the two, their order of succession remains unchallengeable,  since what endows an event with its historicity is precisely the fact that it occurred at one time that will never be repeated.

Was Adolf Hitler's rise to power an experiment in distorting historical truth and using in propaganda to control and create fear in the German and European public?

“When government ceases to regulate and begins to manage, ceases to be an impartial umpire in the economic game and becomes a player, it attempts to use the vast financial power of blank check government, uses the prestige of the executive office to purge truth from the undesired representatives of the people, and use an excess of law is despotism.”  Sir Francis Bacon 1605

A thought

The Government is afraid to allow men to use his own private stock of reason for their health care, they suspect that this stock is small and do better to avail themselves of the general bank of the nation.

Is our clear understanding that national health insurance is not necessary for our own ability to obtain good private health care?

Mr. Martin Chekel, a noted international businessman and author of the thought provoking “Managing America” six book series and the retrospective eight book series “The Diary of American Foreign Policy 1938 – 1945” that laid the foundation for US foreign policy the past seventy-four years.