Hillary Clinton Thinks You are an Irrational Beast

I’m not much of a fan of Hillary Clinton. My choice for the Democratic nominee is John Edwards, followed by Chris Dodd, and then Barack Obama. What has caught my attention in past couple days is the question panting scandal rocking the Clinton campaign. The campaign has had the feel of a corporate run, public relations blitz. Actually, it is a corporate run, public relations blitz, built to pander and give a nebulous message. Mark Penn is one of the main architects of the campaign.

Last week a saw an amazing documentary about the interaction of psychoanalysis, public relations, corporations and politics. Basically, people are not rational and are drive by their desires, therefore they can not be trusted to make choices in a mass based democracy. Interestingly, FDR still thought people were rational and spoke to them about policy through his fire side chats. (You’re still my favorite President FDR.) Well over the 20th century, manipulation of the public via marketing has become much more sophisticated. Republicans picked these techniques up first, but they were mastered by Clinton. There is one major problem for a democrat to embrace these techniques as completely as Bill and now Hillary. It fundamentally changes the relationship citizens have to politicians. If people are irrational, then an elite class must manipulate the citizenry in order to do what’s best. There is no such thing as democracy.

The question planting story feeds into this mindset that everything must be choreographed in order to market Hillary to the public. The flip side of this could be that the public is too dumb to ask meaningful questions and must be guided so that succinct, broadcast worthy sound bites can broadcast in the media. Neither of these are positive perspectives on citizens and democracy.

But back to the documentary. I have done a hamfisted summary of this great film. It is called the Century of the Self. Here is the link. I guarantee that if you watch the first 2 minutes of this segment, you will be hooked and have a different outlook on Hillary Clinton and most of the republican candidates’ campaigns.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1122532358497501036&total=33&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2