DONALD TRUMP, ADOPTING HITLER'S PLAYBOOK, IS AMERICA'S PROPAGANDIST-IN-CHIEF

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside our Heads (New York: Knopf, 2016) ("In Mein Kampf [Hitler] suggests that propaganda need be like advertising, and seek first to attract attention" 'A poster's art lies in the designer's ability to catch the masses' attention by outline and color,' he writes. It must five 'an idea of the importance of the exhibition, but it is in no way to be a substitute for the art represented by the exhibition.' Similarly 'the task of propaganda lies not in a scientific training of the individual, but rather in directing the masses towards certain facts, events, necessities, etc., the purpose being to move their importance into the masses' filed of vision.' Those who are 'already scientifically experienced or  . . . striving towards education and knowledge' are not the subject." Id. at 111. QUERY: Has not Donald Trump, as America's propagandist-in-chief, directed his message (his tweets) to an uneducated, or ill-educated and unknowledgeable mass? "Hitler also intuited a few other basic truths about how we process information: since everything can be ignored, imprinting information in the memory requires a constant repetition of simple ideas. 'The great masses' receptive ability is only very limited, their understanding is small, but their forgetfulness is great. As a consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda has to limit itself only to a very few points and to use them like slogans until even the very last man is able to imagine what is intended by such words.' Nuance was nonsense; complexity was a risk:  'As soon as one sacrifices this basis principle and tries to become versatile, the effect will fritter away, as the masses are neither able to digest the material offered nor to retain it.' One couldn't overstate the intensity of the effort required, for the masses 'with their inertia, always need a certain time before they are ready even to notice a thing, and they will lend their memories only to the thousandfold repetition of the most simple ideas.'" Id. at 111. QUERY: Did not Donald Trump, as propagandist-in-chief, his surrogates, Fox News, etc., understand and use this throughout the presidential campaign, during the transition, and, probably, during the actual administration. Simple concepts, repeated over and over and over and over again, by Trump and all his minions? Build that wall." "Lock her up." "Make America Great Again." All simplistic. All void of cogent argument of justification. Have not at least 40 percent of the American people demonstrated that they either cannot or will not engage in nuanced and critical thinking, preferring the simple to the complex? "Finally, Hitler understood the demagogue's most essential principle: to teach or persuade is for more difficult than to stir emotion. And far less welcome: what the audience most wants is an excuse to experience full the powerful feelings already lurking within them but which their better selves might lead them to suppress." Id. at 111. QUERY: Did not Donald Trump. as propagandist-in-chief, appeal to the anger of, mainly but not exclusively, white working-class American, the "I-am-being-cheated" Americans, the xenophobic, racialist-thinking, if not racist, segment of America? He appealed to, and engaged in, dog-whistle politics. "'The psyche the great masses is not receptive to anything that is half-hearted and weak. Like the women, whose psychic state is determined less by grounds of abstract reason than by an indefinable emotional longing for a force which will complement her nature, and who, consequently, would rather bow to a strong man than dominate a wailing, likewise the masses love a commander more than a petitioner and feel inwardly more satisfied by a doctrine , tolerating no other beside itself.'" Id. at 111-112. QUERY: Perhaps Donald Trump, as propagandist-in-chief,' views American political as a harlequin romance novel. That is, viewed--and still views--a sizable portion of the American masses as just some love-starved old maids wanting some man, any man, to come along and just fuck them. If so, the masses are getting what they wanted. Donald Trump is going to fuck America through the ass. Enjoy.).