In a letter from the White House responding to one I had sent, on immigration policy, the presidential flack who wrote it said, purportedly in Joe Biden’s voice,  “… Despite these tough times, I have never been more optimistic for the future of America.  I believe we are better positioned than any country in the world to lead in the 21st century not just by the example of our power but by the power of our example.”  Now there’s a prime example of a false parallel, a rhetorical device designed to befuddle the thinking of its hearers or readers.  Whereas  our example does have undoubted power, whether that is based on our generous response during natural disasters or the way we have treated the First Nations, or African Americans, or Vietnamese or Afghan farmers, bombs backlit by bombs.  It is the example of our power, which is simultaneously the threat that we will use it again that buys us the deference to which the White House flack refers.  This sort of linguistic dodgery is meant to misdirect our attention, much as a magician’s sleight of hand pulls our eye away from the substitution of a card, so that we are amazed when we swivel back and find the grand surprise – the card we had only thought of, or the real live rabbit, surprisingly large as well as apparently impossible.

Misdirecting our attention is the province of P.R., the bastard grandchild of Sigmund Freud by way of his daughter Anna and his nephew Edward Bernays.  These two geniuses believed that people were too stupid to make their own choices and therefore had to be manipulated into preferring the “right” or “correct” option.  And the history of advertising is littered with the boasts of the admen innovators that they had hoodwinked the great unwashed in this or that new way, from Robert Rosser’s claim that his job was to make us believe that “this quarter is worth more than this other quarter” to David Ogilvy’s blathering texts for Hathaway Shirts.  The horrifying aspect of this is that it works.  We do believe – or we act as if we believe – that a pair of Nike’s Air Jordan blues really is worth between $110 and $440.  And we do this in spite of our ability to establish, via google, that the cost of manufacturing a pair is $16.25.  The remaining $93.75-$423.75?  A bit goes to transport, say generously $3.75 per pair, leaving between $90 and $420.  Nike then sells the shoes to retailers, at about 50% of the retail price.  That leaves between $45 and $210 for advertising (including Mike’s royalties) and profit.  That is insane.  The actual product is completely obscured by the fog of spray-on P.R., whether that product is a pair of sneakers or a politician.  Or an ideology.  No economy so skewed, so far beyond sanity, can last long. 

Though come to think of it, there have been plenty of insane societies throughout human history, from the berserkers to the Court at Versailles to the bureaucracy that ran the concentration camps, to India’s caste “system” and so on.  It’s our choice: do we believe the hype, or do we create a common reality?