Dieting & Ideology: Delusional Duality?

Remember Reagan?

He was a terrible President, one of the worst in American history. However, he was one heck of a salesman - and people bought his pitch.

That's consumer culture for you.

Don't forget, look how many people listen to Rush Limbaugh or receive their news solely from Fox News. There are a lot of stupid people that buy some of the dumbest ideas possible. The idea is pretty much making really dumb self-serving ideas sound better than they are through imaging and packaging.

Managing Mass Mind: Reason or Manipulate?

How do business and ideology manage the will of citizens who lack critical thinking skills? I suspect that the truly successful institutions do so my manipulation. The Matador with cape skills is more successful than one with rational skills. I suspect that often a mere patina of reason is sufficient to keep the citizen's eye focused upon the cape.

I think you're right - we seem to be very vulnerable to promises of having our cake and eating it too. I'm afraid I've become very, very critical of any sort of 'advertising'; so much so, that my compassion towards any kind of 'sales pitch' almost always invokes a very negative and distasteful response.

I'd prefer to have patience with those trying to make a living, but I too have had my fill.

Thanks

You might want to take a closer look at the 1988 base closure matter, coberst. It should relieve you of your concern that non-political, undemocratic methods were used.

A congressman devised the commission strategy as a means of resolving Congress's deadlock as to which bases should be closed. A group of other congressmen liked his idea and it was proposed in a legislative initiative and voted in. In this bill, Congress provided certain guidelines for use by the commission. Congress received the commission's recommendations and made them into law. It was all very political - very representative/democratic.

It also seems pretty doubtful that have-and-eat-cake delusions were involved. Everyone realized the need to reduce the number of bases. They just wanted to close the other guys' bases.

Coincidentally, I was active duty (USAF) in supervision when the BRAC teams did their thing. It was messy, painful and full of gloom and doom. From my perspective at the time; however, we knew closures had to happen and every base had reasons why their base shouldn't be shut down.

IMO Coberst is correctly using the BRAC commission as an example of how Congress - because of the self interests involved - wasn't able to make these hard decisions. Yes, they wanted to have their cake and eat it too. I should say; however, that the fact that congress did recognize this and ended up appointing this independent commision, to make the decisions they couldn't, speaks well.

Thanks