In Ray Bradbury’s prophetic book Fahrenheit 451 Professor Faber remarks to the novel’s protagonist Guy Montag, “Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.”
Written in 1953, Fahrenheit 451 is a story about a future America in which books and reading are illegal. Firemen in this world start fires instead of putting them out. Specifically, firemen respond to anonymous tips about people who may have hidden books in their home. The firemen answer the “alarms” by burning down the houses with books, and sometimes burning the people who read them.
Citizens in Ray Bradbury’s novel get all of their information from television and radio that is broadcast directly into their ears via ear buds called “seashells.”
The television in the world of Fahrenheit 451 is used to inspire patriotic support for endless wars, to sell products, and to keep people “happy and having fun.” People in the book consider the characters in their favorite television programs as their “family” and there is a tighter bond between individuals and their television friends than there is between real people. The television is, of course, the tool for state and corporate propaganda.
The similarities of the role of television in American society imagined by Mr. Bradbury in 1953 and television in the American society of 2011 are just creepy.
The scariest part of Fahrenheit 451 is that it was the citizens, not the government, who created their highly censored world by abandoning reading and spending increasing amounts of time mindlessly watching television. The government in the novel simply took advantage of the public’s willingness to be ignorant.
Does this sound familiar? Can you say “Fox News” or “Koch-brother funded Tea-Party propaganda?”
Edward Bernays is considered the father of the American public relations profession. He lived from 1891 to 1995. He was a nephew of Sigmund Freud and he used his knowledge of crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to create his own style of propaganda to shape public opinion on behalf of his clients. He had an extraordinarily successful career as a public relations guru.
In 1928 Bernays wrote a short book called Propaganda that described his thoughts on public relations. The opening paragraph is two sentences long, and should serve as a wake-up call to everybody who believes they are making up their own minds about important issues.
From Propaganda by Edward Bernays:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”
In America today one of our two major political parties is ideologically opposed to thinking – and proud of it; I’m talking about Republicans. Consider Rick Perry’s recent address to a crowd of university students in which he openly bragged about what a poor student he was at Texas A&M. His message to students and the public is clear: Idiots make good presidents. That would be funny except that so many Americans agree with the argument that we need more stupid people in charge.
Reading, critical thinking and civil discussions about ideas that are unpolluted by “fair and balanced” disinformation is essential to the survival of a free society.
Our democracy is threatened more by our willingness to be uninformed than it is by terrorists or other perceived enemies of freedom. In America today people who read books and value education are labeled as “liberal elites” determined to turn the country into a socialist state. Anything that a “liberal elite” talks about is, according to radical right-wing pundits and their corporate sponsors, a conspiratorial hoax designed to undermine our society.
This labeling process makes the task of spinning corporate propaganda remarkably easy. If a liberal believes in something it must be bad, regardless of the facts. For example, the fossil fuel industry has worked very hard to label climate science as a product of the liberal elite establishment. Millions of Americans actually believe that there has been a decades-long conspiracy among thousands of scientists from all over the world to create a global warming hoax purely for the purpose of securing a few million dollars in research grant money. The people who believe this nonsense don’t seem to think that hundreds of billions of dollars in annual profits might be a motivating factor for a handful of oil industry executives to create their own hoax and distort the science behind anthropogenic climate change for their own gain.
In his biography of Benjamin Franklin (Benjamin Franklin: An American Life), Walter Isaacson recounts a story reported by a man named James McHenry about a remark made by Benjamin Franklin to a woman who asked about the outcome of the Constitutional Convention. The legend has it that a woman approached Dr. Franklin and asked him: “What type of government have you delegates given us?” Benjamin Franklin, according to Mr. McHenry, replied: “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”
We are bombarded by propaganda from special interest groups and corporations coming to us through our televisions, radios, the internet and even our telephones. Our government is corrupted to its core by corporate money. But reliable information on important issues is still available, we just have to make the effort to find it.
What would America be if citizens took it upon themselves to read and be informed and to have meaningful debates inspired by verifiable facts about the big issues we face? What would America be if we insisted that our leaders be smart, educated, sincere public servants and not simply good-looking morons who graduated at the bottom of their class and are willing to say anything for money and fame? I think we’d be a free society of enlightened people living fulfilling lives, and that would be terrific – if we could keep it.
Monte Ladner