Thus market needs supplant personality
by strip mining children of all that is personal,
implanting needs created by advertising
making them vassals of all things commercial,
clamoring to be filled with what the market purveys,
but these false needs can never be satisfied.
The constant effort to do so creates profit,
and that's the whole point of the enterprise.
There are more TV drug-delivery systems
in American homes than there are residents.
Hundreds of channels inject it 24/7
promoting non-existent TV characters as friends
to be imprinted on, bonded with and emulated
in the purchase/pursuit of the American Dream,
prompted by longings both real and created,
but both of which fulfill corporate needs.
Children are sitting ducks for the sale of junk
sold as a way off the island of solitary confinement
on which the perfect consumer, cut from the community,
lives a faux life that he is resigned to,
built on maximum conformity via pre-selected choices
of identical products that ensure profitable uniformity,
since mass production creates massive profits
in the futile struggle to buy style and identity.
And rather than educate, schooling trains children
to take their place in the assembly line of those seeking
the elusive and non-negotiable American lifestyle
as if it were worthy of achievement.
Children are schooled to
sit down
shut up
ask permission
and pledge an unquestioning oath
to xenophobia and imperialist aggression
in service to the enrichment of the already rich
disguised as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
as they provide the fodder,
both consumer and cannon,
which makes possible empire,
both military and financial.
No deviation is allowed from this rut
dug by consumers on the conveyor belt of debt slavery
into the financial furnaces of the American Mirage,
divested of reality and devoid of the context of history.
This focus on the OUT side, the vehicle,
rather than the IN side, The Driver,
creates a vehicle careening, directionless, through life,
oblivious of its blatant denial
that diverts the creation of character
and creates a socially-engineered emptiness
that eases the transfer of wealth from the worker/seekers
to the idle manufacturers of meaninglessness
who profit when compassion is ousted by competition
and empathy is eaten up with envy,
when addiction to lust is more important than love
and acquisition is more attractive than friendship
when winning brings more approval than fair play
and promises are temporary constructs
gratitude is seen as humiliation
and profit the sole desirable object.
The guard towers of religion and education,
psychology in advertising and public relations,
patriotism and control of information
are the bricks and mortar of this prison's foundation.
They make up the impenetrable wall
guarded zealously by corporate capitalism.
It encloses Americans' individual cells
and they don't know that THEY ARE THE KEYS to them.
"In our dreams, we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions fade from their minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning, or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have an ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to do in a perfect way the things their mothers and fathers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shops, and on the farms." - John D. Rockefeller's General Education Board's "Occasional Letter #1"
"Ours must be a leadership democracy administered by an intelligent minority who know how to regiment and guide the masses...The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group of leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and cliches and verbal formulas supplied to it by the leaders...It must be enlightened propaganda through the creation of circumstances, through the high-spotting of significant events and the dramatization of important issues." - Edward Bernays, architect of Woodrow Wilson's Committee on Public Information, nephew of Sigmund Freud and the Father of Public Relations
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