Mr. Time Magazine

 Mr. Time Magazine

When Time magazine isn't pandering to is barely literate audience or making goody-goody with mass murderers (Ex 1, Ex 2, Ex 3), they nominate lowlife scum like Edward Bernays as one of the most influential men of an entire century.  Granted, probably the only reason they did this was because if they got on Bernays' bad side, he would squash them in his soft, sweaty hands.  They've got too much to lose by printing the truth. JOURNALISM USED TO MEAN SOMETHING IN THIS COUNTRY!

Sorry about all that.  I just watched the Secret Life of Walter Mitty, so I have some pretty strong things to say about Mr. Time Magazine and Adam Scott's beard.  I digress.

In all honesty, Ol' Eddy B. deserved to be nominated as one of Time's "People of the Century" much the same way that Adolf Hitler deserved it back in '38.  Bernays revolutionized deception.  Con-men used to have to knock on your door before they could steal away your money and wife.  Bernays figured out a way to con an entire society without ever leaving his doorstep.  He claimed to use the techniques of his crotchety uncle Siggy Freud, but really what he did was take a singular fundamental aspect of it.

Freud built all of his ideas on the basis that people are fighting an unconscious war between the amoral, impulsive id and the rigid, moral superego.  Interestingly enough this seems to be more or less an expansion of Hobbes proposition that, "Every man is an animal."  Nobody talks about that though do they?  I spit truth and hellfire.

A loving family and admirers of Bernays

Anyways, whenever the big men needed to sell something to the public in the past, whether it be tissue wipes or engaging in a war that no one really wanted to get involved in, they had always tried to appease the superego, giving fact based pitches.  Bernays said phooey to that noise and decided to appeal to the id.  He saw people as emotional beings that could and should be manipulate for the greater good.  The greater good of whom I ask
pompously?  The greater good of the fat cats up on Wall Street and Capitol Hill.

And of course, Bernays approach worked.  He was able to convince people to do things not that they needed to do, but that they wanted to do.  Once he figured out how to do this, he started convincing people what it was they wanted.  He built up a whole new way of interacting with mass audiences called propaganda...ahem... public relations.

You want to know why our society is crippled by consumerism, look to Bernays.  Is he pure evil incarnate?  Yes.  But he would have had no power if the people hadn't listened to them.  If even we may not have had a choice in the matter, we are still to blame.  And even if Bernays had not risen to power the way he did, someone else would have.  I can sleep soundly at night knowing that the man responsible for the destruction of our society was a blue-blooded American through and through
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