Re: [OPE-L] Crashes, Panics, and Expectations

[Jerry Levy <Gerald_A_Levy@xxxxxxx>]

> Perhaps I should add that, through the media, we are also constantly faced
> with social phenomena that we have no personal experience of, making it
> more difficult to evaluate them objectively or rationally, other than "by
> analogy" with things that we do have experience of. But I think the
> argument I made is basically correct, at least, in my experience it is. A
> majority of  Americans seem to have very little notion of the rest of the
>world.

Hi Jurriaan,

I agree with the last sentence but think it rather undercuts your claim
that "people are normally pretty rational about the most important
practical issues in their lives, and very resistant to propaganda which
does not accord with their real experience of life ....".

Since there is little knowledge by US citizens about the rest of the
world (itself a _result_ of  the ideological role of the media, educational
institutions,  state agencies, etc.) that makes them _more_ liable to
accept pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist nationalistic propaganda.

For instance -- even though a large percentage of the working class
opposes the war -- a large percentage of  US workers support the
war in Iraq.  Yet, very clearly, propaganda and  deception was a means
through which Bush built popular support for the war.  Mass fear didn't
just happen,  it was created by the state and other bourgeois social
institutions.  Indeed, one could claim that while new communication
technologies make an expansion of  knowledge among the working
class possible,  some of those same technologies have become a  new
medium for deception and the creation or reproduction of irrational
fears.  What happened post 9-11 was an example of  manipulation
of  popular opinion through the creation of mass fear and hysteria.

In solidarity, Jerry