JULY 9, 2021 – If I were an adversary of the United States, I’d be salivating over our current internal demise. Our self-destruction requires of our enemies, no outlandish military expenditure, no high-risk/low-probability-of-success sabotage, no complex of computer hackers, no advanced planning and expenditure of any kind; simply enough Americans—not even a majority—to believe their own home-grown, self-perpetuated, whole-cloth fabrications.
America is nothing if it isn’t a marketing machine. This explains largely why the country in aggregate has been so successful economically. But marketing expertise doesn’t discriminate across a broad spectrum of quality. In fact, marketing prowess reduces qualitative differences. The product or service touted by the loudest and most oft-repeated message wins.
No one understood this better than You Know Who. By this I don’t mean to assign him credit, for no one in a rational state of mind would extend credit to such a bankrupt soul. He deserves no greater credit than he warrants respect. His “understanding” is merely the obsession of an empty mind and vacant heart geared by abnormal psychology to fixate parasitically on the culture’s defining trait. He’s no accident. He’s our destiny.
The worst of our plight is that it’s playing out on weak foundations set upon unstable ground. Our issues are manifold, serious, and worsening. The effects (let alone causes) of climate change, racial injustice, income disparity, neglected infrastructure—tangible and intangible—to name a few, demand good governance. Good governance requires “good” politics, and good politics requires an electorate informed by facts and reason, not falsehoods and distortions.
It all gets back to marketing. How bright are your lights; how loud, your message; how shocking, your antics; how diverted, your reasoning; how commandeered, your attention? Cotton candy and curly fries sold under the brightest lights by the most boisterous huckster sell best. Fine for Cotton Candy & Curly Corp. but not so fine for a public that over-indulges to the point of clogged arteries and diabetic obesity.
The coming year will be a critical chapter in the story of America—that is, the story of American marketing. We’ve now marketed ourselves over the brink of democracy and into a contorted incongruity of authoritarianism and the uniquely American strain of “I-can-do-as-I-please-no-matter-how-harmful-to-myself-others” mentality. Having convinced ourselves that up is down and down is up, right is left and left is wrong, we’ve succumbed to the worst of marketing mayhem: that bad is good and good is bad.
Republicans, the party of marketing mavens, have made a killing hyping, marketing, selling cotton candy. Unfortunately, included in the killing is a functional democracy. The commodity Republicans are selling is bereft of policy or principles but loaded with the empty calories of raw power: seizing, holding, wielding control for short-term adoration of a sugar-high, deep-fried base and the illusory riches of monetary lucre.
Though in the majority, Democrats aren’t as adept at pushing, that is, marketing, policy and principles—the veganism of a market economy obsessed with loud, crass, repetitious . . . marketing.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
