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"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses [constitutes] an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our government." -- Edward Bernays in 'Propaganda,' 1928. |
March 4, 2008
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n February 22, 2008,
the on-line edition of the New Yorker magazine posted an
audio-visual commentary on the presidential primary campaign of Senator
Hillary Clinton by artist-illustrator Steve Brodner. I disagreed
substantially with Brodner's interpretation of Clinton's campaign, but I
was impressed by his creative association of its latest stage with the
1997 movie Titanic.
In thinking about that association, certain enhancements occurred to me and I decided to incorporate those into Brodner's original version. The main enhancements are:
The political significance of the Iraq issue in the Democratic primaries is, in my opinion, actually decreasing because of the party leadership's clever tactic of splitting the party's rank and file into feminists versus blacks. This guarantees that the super-delegates, presumably close to the party's conservative, impeachment-is-off-the-table leadership, will easily pick the nominee. This nominee, presumably Clinton, can be trusted to minimize the Iraq issue and guarantee that the presidential campaign itself, pitting two historically pro-war senators against each other, will not involve the war as a dominant issue.
If this analysis is correct, this well be the second presidential election during an extremely unpopular war in which the war itself is not an issue. How this can happen in an ostensible democracy is a subject for some serious political science.
If this analysis is not correct and the war becomes an issue, then the Republican candidate and his party will be destroyed by an enormously lopsided popular vote.