E-Mail 'Propaganda and My Prepping - Part 1, by St. Funogas' To A Friend

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1. The old native American Chief, was of Italian descent…He played the part well…
   Great article. Thanks for sharing.

2. No cinnamon rolls in the house so I am having to take it straight. Good start.

3. I still eat Grape-Nuts, they’re like eating a bag of ‘Ready-Mix’ and they stay with you half the day. I also remember Euell Gibbons and his books, I have all four. The pen and ink drawings are mediocre at best, but the description(s), habitat(s) and preparation(s) of the wild edibles are great and I use them as a cross reference with more modern books with color plates and photos.
   Good intro information in pt.1 of the article, looking forward to the ‘rest of the story’ (I remember Paul Harvey too…lol)

   1. I always love Paul Harvey.

      Here is a little something for you to chew on: https://www.npr.org/2014/10/09/354718833/the-rest-of-the-story-paul-harvey-conservative-talk-radio-pioneer

      Carry on in grace

4. Enjoyed this. Looking forward to the next two parts.

5. AMEN! One of my term papers my senior year in college (circa 1979) was titled “Propaganda is not a four letter word”. Most responses were… DUH, it has 10 letters. And these are the people leading our country now. Nuff said!

6. In the end all will be revealed. Cinnamon rolls and coffee?! What a great idea, I’ll make some for the next two installments–can’t wait for both!

7. I’m interested to see where this article goes, I was a Psychological Operations officer for the army and the amount of overlap between the tactics we were taught to bring about desired behavior changes in our target audience and what I see in marketing is nearly 100%. Google “repetition variation” to understand one approach you are bombarded with every day.

8. 1) There is a reason why witnesses in our courts are sworn to TELL the Truth, the WHOLE Truth and NOTHING but the Truth.

   2) Propaganda is dishonest and evil — esp when it calls itself “politics” or “public relations”. It is the enemy of the principles on which this nation was founded and of the Enlightenment.

9. I think I know where you are going with this and the suspense makes for more fun.

   Luckily, I have a package of Rhodes cinnamon rolls in the freezer now earmarked for tomorrow.

10. This reminds me of something I learned in the Navy years ago about psychology and learning.

    We were required to take a week long course about the dangers of drugs and excess alcohol. Nothing nefarious or even exciting but a laudible goal for a group of young knuckleheads. The course had a large group set in a big circle and it was designed to be highly interactive with the instructor asking the students to express their opinions about all manner of subjects. Boring and somewhat irritating but again nothing nefarious.

    One thing that was highly irritating was that prior to saying anything everyone had to preface it with “I make myself feel”. If you wanted to say “The sky is blue” you had to say “I make myself feel the sky is blue.” Some psychobabble was stated about this being a way to have people “own” their opinions or some such thing.

    This was highly irritating and at the end of the course I took one of the instructors aside and asked him what the deal was with the “I make myself feel” nonsense. The instructor confided in me the real reason for prefacing everything the way we did.

    The course was designed by the University of Arizona. The goal was in fact to get the student to retain some rather dry statistics about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse that we were in fact tested on. The university had tested just presenting the information and testing it right after the course and then testing six months later on the same information. The found six month retention was low despite good test scores right after the course. They then experimented with the “I make myself feel” business which was found by almost all to be awkward and irritating. Six month retention of the core facts and figures improved dramatically.

    The point was by strictly enforcing what someone is allowed to say and forcing them to use uncomfortable jargon, you open their mind to inserting other information that can have almost nothing to do with what you are forcing them to say. Forcing someone to speak in a particular manner that is unnatural to them, even in a minor way, is an effective brain washing tool. And it has been proven in research.

    Something I have always remembered since I watch the “language wars” that have accompanied the “culture wars” of the last several decades. And it illustrates one way information is “propagated”. Force people to new jargon and it is easier to manipulate them for good or bad.

11. “Editor’s Note: Please withhold making comments until you’ve read all three parts of this article.”

12. Some you may or may not remember:
    “Moma-mia that’s a spicy meatball”
    “Papa-san, Emer-son, Moma-san, Emer-son”
    “Aye, aye, aye-aye, I am the Frito Bandito!”
    “Sears, it’s where America shops”

    The 2nd and 4th were aimed at the Japanese-American consumers in the 70’s and 80’s.

13. I worked in the advertising industry back East and in the midwest at the tail end of the MadMen era. Propaganda and Crystalizing Public Opinion by E. Bernays was part of our weekend reading and Monday morning meeting discussions.

    The public is a herd of mindless animals that loves a fight (witness the endless contest shows- forging swords to baking cakes to dancing with the…well, you know what Im getting at. All with identical format, all completely interchangeable.)

    Looking forward to the rest of the essay. Tomorrow I’ll have cinnamon rolls ready!

    “Nothin’ says “lovin'” like somethin’ from the oven…”

14. “Don’t squeeze the…….!” I’d love to, if I could find any.

    1. chuckle, snicker

    2. I did find the Charmin. Not what I usually buy, it was the STRONG type, a might too scratchy for me. I’ve still got a couple of months left of the good stuff. Of course by then I may be limited to sand paper. “We’re all in this together!” (He says with that glassy eyed stare of the near brain dead.)

15. Thank you, St. Funogas! Can’t wait for the next chapter…

16. EVERYONE knows: the devil works in marketing…

17. “So if cattle aren’t designed to eat corn, then who benefits when they do?”

    The answer is all of us. I can’t afford $20 a pound beef. I can’t even afford $9 a pound beef. Raising cattle in feed lots creates a lot of cheap protein and the masses can afford it. I can afford to buy McDonalds for lunch everyday thanks to feed lots. If it were grass feed beef I would have to eat chicken instead.

    Good Swiss made cheese runs about $20 a pound. I’ve had some, it’s good. I can buy Walmart no name cheese for about $2-3 a pound. It’s good too. What is the cause of the difference in price? Simple, Swiss cheese is made from milk that comes from cows who are pastured on Alpen fields. Beautiful fields of good grasses and flowers and indeed the cheese reflects that quality. I just can’t afford it. If there wasn’t the cheaper no-name cheese available thanks to feed lot dairy cows I would have to eat velveeta cheese. (Actually I kind of like that too.)

    So I don’t know if it is Walmart that profits or Monsanto but thanks to both of them I and many others like me can afford some pretty good cheese and other meat and dairy products. Ain’t capitalism great?

    1. It’s changes like this and a plethora of others that have hidden the truth.

       And that is our money system (earning making etc) is completely decoupled from any thing in the real world.

       As Ronnie Dunn sang cost of living is high and going up.

18. Taxpayer subsidies for corn and soy make feedlot beef appear cheaper than it is. Farmers raising livestock on pasture get none of that and are often harassed if not driven out of business by the USDA and comrades. So were most of the smaller processors that served them, raising costs for the survivors. There’s been a lot of propaganda that our government keeps us safe though.

    Watch “Farmaggedon” for free on Amazon Prime.

    1. Also on History Channel there was a show last year called “American Farm”. I’m hoping there will be a second season, though it doesn’t look promising. This gives a better idea how hard farming really is. Li’l Mikey Bloomberg should be forced to watch it. What an ignorant a-hole he truly is.

    2. What subsidies? I mean specificly what subsidies to feed lot owners get that cattlemen don’t? I know that farmers and ranchers all get subsidies of one form or another and that some of that is done to help them, some is done because congress is made up of special interest groups all dividing up the pie. But I doubt that feed lot owners get something vastly different than ranchers and farmers do.

19. Yep, the old advertisements. My favorite was Lindsay Wagner (Bionic Woman actress) doing an ad for AT&T. “Long distance, the next best thing to being there”.

20. It’s not called “programming” for nothing.

21. You’ll wonder where the __________ went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent!

    By the way, great start to an interesting and timely subject.

    1. (oatmeal cereal) ‘I want my M_____!

22. ” You get two!,.. Two!,… Two mints in one! ______rts with retsyn.

23. I’ve never forgotten at the end of Euell Gibbons obit in the NYT they said he had died “of natural causes”.

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