How do we manage electorates? What *moves* people: facts, or myths?

An astute analyst like yourself, I’m sure, can appreciate that factual arguments, however well phrased, often fail to move electorates; but the power of myth never fails to do so. Just look at the health care v. birther/deather dynamic.

Is someone purposely perverting Campbell’s powerful lessons to jack us all for obscene profits? I imagine you’ve learned, by now, from Scott Horton’s blog, No Comment:

Rove’s Monday Whoppers
By Scott Horton
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002498

He calls himself “Grendel,” “Moby Dick,” and “Lord Voldemort.” He is the man ever behind the scenes, manipulating and driving the events on the surface without being seen. His hand is behind the hiring and firing of U.S. attorneys and his manipulations were a conscious effort to put federal prosecutors to work for partisan political purposes. And his involvement is so sensitive that the White House had adopted a scorched earth policy to thwart all Congressional efforts to probe it. Karl Rove won’t appear before Congress, deliver up his documents showing his communications or dealings with Justice Department matters or raise his hand, swear an oath and testify. But he has no compunction about talking about these matters on Fox News, where he knows he’ll get one fluff ball after the next and never be asked for follow-up. Moreover, he knows that Fox will go to the mat, and will dispense falsehoods to protect him, one of their own. Over the weekend, Karl Rove sent his lawyer Robert Luskin and his spokesman (and former Justice Department spokesman) Mark Corallo to lie for him. Today, he enters the lists, bravely lying for himself. Here’s his appearance on Fox News:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpoz6YerDao&feature=player_embedded
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In my opinion (as a Zen poet and psychology grad school drop out [all-but-thesis]), the well known power of myth is powering weapons-grade domestic propaganda. Energy-releasing sign stimuli are being used, like the tones of a modem, to push our most intimate buttons, the icons on the control panels of our beings.

It’s clear to me that propagandists are using words like bullets: little energy packets fired on target audiences with the intent to force changes in behavior.

Take the Message Force Multipliers for example: how were they any different than snipers? 1) Hide intentions; 2) Target audiences with high-energy weapons systems; 3) Fire at will; 4) Make career-advancing killings.

It boils down to this: are we beings, or machines? Organisms, or mechanisms? Self-sovereign citizens, or merely the loyal subjects, fans only, of a pseudo-divine cosmic tyrant with the arbitrary power of life and death over us? If we are only mechanisms, then we are not the rational beings we believe ourselves to be: just machines. As such, the Roves and Brennans and Cheneys and Tenets really do know best how to manage electorates: like cattle.

Are we American citizens? Or just voting-machines on two legs: easily hacked and jacked to hell and back?