“You can’t be a man because you don’t smoke the same cigarettes as me.” The Rolling Stones sang this perhaps 40 years ago.
We are seeing the political equivalent of “you can’t be a good person unless you eat Frosted Flakes”.
That this is absurd, a non sequitur, is not recognized by the people who are targeted. For many people, the public recognition of their virtue through a carefully crafted propaganda apparatus is sufficient.
The divide of Frosted Flake people/non-Frosted Flake people taps into a deep tribal instinct.
It is the an odd, perhaps THE odd fact of our modern existence that we are biologically “built” to live in small groups where we know everyone and everyone knows us but that we never experience this feeling to its full extent. We build sub-groups, we build “voluntary associations”, but there is never anything given about it.
Modern propaganda targets both this latent instinct, as well as the latent alienation which inheres in not getting our needs for social inclusion and connection met.
And I speak of propaganda as a living organism. It is reasonable to ask how much of this is planned. Some of it is, clearly. And it may be the case that there is a small coterie of people somewhere devouring all the latest social science research. Certainly, Madison Avenue is.
But my feeling is most of this is institutional habit, and that our propaganda is not much more–or less–than a rumor which has no root in reality, but which gets bigger and bigger in the telling. Everyone loves salacious gossip, things that make you go OH MY GOD, and immediately tell someone else. Much propaganda is of that sort.
The Trump is Hitler meme, for example, depends entirely on the fact that most Americans don’t know jackshit about history, and really have no idea who Hitler was, other than that he has been the personification (not without reason) of evil for the past 50 years. I would submit Pol Pot was a worse person, by the way. Much worse.
I want to say something about empathy too, but have no time at the moment.