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Sunday, November 22, 2009

Despite bombast, there is cogent argument, "It is NOT a center-right country."

With charts and links, on KOS, here, a source I do not often link, but this one is worth reading and excerpting would only detract. Again, this link.

A point of effective propaganda is to repeat a false or debatable message to the point it is accepted as if it were undeniable truth, and the method is effective when opposing voices are repressed or weakly advanced.

Nazi uber-Mensch and unter-Mensch propaganda, without any public opposition viewpoint expressed, is the paradigm of the method's effective deployment.

Hence it is important that the kind of KOS presentation is seen and deliberated.

The Emperor's New Clothes is the children's fairy tale version of the concept.

We are a center-right nation, and, wow, is the Emperor ever well dressed. Have at it.

________UPDATE_________
Bob Ramsey left a comment, and rather than comment I am doing an update. I suppose I sometimes have repeated things, unnecessarily, but another criterion for propaganda success and effectiveness is an extensive gullible audience - I believe my readers are neither.

Bob and I have also discussed a problem with labeling and too easy labels, where sometimes people put labels in place and think it aids understanding or has provided universally accepted views of what a label entails.

Sometimes an unbiased succinct label does help, other times it obscures the range of policy and equity balances between opposing needs or views.

My current example - as of last night with 60 Minutes having a segment on end of life decision making and disproportionate costs of some elderly end of life short-run life sustaining effort yielding only short-term artificial extension of an infirmed situation, often at staggering costs. With Medicare, the public pays often where dispassionate cost-benefit analysis suggests the public treasury is being unduly burdened to beggar other probably more promising spending alternatives in terms of utility to the entire public. In emergencies triage happens for a reason. It is optimization where multiple interests and needs must be balanced.

In the context of that 60 Minutes segment, current "death panels" terminology generates far, far more heat than light.

I expect there was an intent to do exactly that when the wording was trotted out.

We execute criminals humanely by quick lethal injection while some elderly are counseled about ceasing to eat as a decision open to them if they see the practical end of life facing them.

How options are used in one situation and denied in the other seems strange to me, in terms of what is a "humane" way to handle options.

On a less gloomy tone - Good luck to everyone with the holidays close upon us, and let us all hope for prosperity in the new year. Yet, even hoping for a true and extended economic recovery near term, we must anticipate down side risk and costs and alternative still-negative scenarios.

Not to be bombastic, ...