Democracy For Sale

What if we apply the rule of "the right person for the right job" to the presidency? Wouldn't that be a novel idea...? Unfortunately that's not how we play the democracy game; we just choose the ones who are sold to us most successfully, as politicians are sold to us as if they were shampoo or a new car.

_{Image by mojzagrebinfo - source:}

"Democracy depends on the individual voter making an intelligent and rational choice for what he regards is his enlightened self-interest in any given circumstance."

These words were spoken in 1958 by Aldous Huxley, the famous writer of Brave New World, in the television interview I've linked below this post for your viewing pleasure; please take the 30 minutes to watch it, and if the subject of our failing western democracies is of any interest to you at all, I promise you won't regret it. Huxley once again proves to have been a visionary as he predicts exactly how democracy will end, and how it effectively has ended already in our era. In the quote above, Huxley reacts to the interviewer who asks him why he so often criticizes advertising, and how these same techniques will be used to market politicians to the populace; he explicitly mentions the use of "subliminal projection". He continues:

"What these people [the advertisers] are doing ... is to try to bypass the rational side of man, and to appeal directly to these unconscious forces below the surface, so that you are in a way making nonsense of the whole democratic procedure, which is based on conscious choices on rational grounds."

The interview goes on to describe how children in those days were singing the songs they learned from commercials, and how corporations know how important it is to get them at a young age so they become "loyal brand-buyers" when they're adults. Huxley rightfully points out the danger of mixing marketing techniques with the democracy, and how citizens will be raised with a very narrow ideological mindset if the tools used for propaganda are in the hands of a small group of people who share the same goals; the result will be a totalitarian state without the citizens even noticing it.

It's 2019 now, and we know that what Huxley feared has actually happened; only a handful mega corporations own almost all major mainstream media outlets in the world; the tools for propaganda are in the hands of an extremely small group with the shared goal of keeping the status quo alive. You know democracy is dead, that Democrats and Republicans are just the left and right hand of the corporate party, and that sayings like "the best democracy money can buy" didn't appear out of nowhere. I haven't watched television in years (except Formula 1 and MotoGP), but it gives me the creeps when I realize that I know some of the TV commercials from my younger years by heart; this is how effective this type of messaging is. I've heard the 30 second TV-commercial called "the most effective" long ago, but nowadays these ads are getting even shorter; in 2017 the six-second spot has been introduced (source), in accordance with the changing media-landscape. Attention spans are getting increasingly shorter; that's why political candidates have to answer complicated questions, that would normally take many hours to properly address, in mere seconds, reducing political debates to slogan-contests decided by applause-meters.

Now, 15 seconds seems to have become a standard duration, or length for a TV commercial (however, online, some have even been cut down to 6-second commercials). Most North American broadcasters now offer a selection to advertisers and they can choose to produce a 15, 30, or 60-second commercial.
_{source: VOICES.COM}

It's sad to say, but as a collective we don't vote on rational grounds and as a consequence we almost always vote against our own best interests. Huxley saw this coming from miles away, so please enjoy this interview:

_{Aldous Huxley interviewed by Mike Wallace : 1958 (Full)}

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_{source: Wikipedia}

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