Propaganda: dissemination of information – facts, arguments, half-truths, or lies – to influence public opinion. I know politics are important, but that’s not what this is about. Politics, at any level, make my stomach turn. What I want to talk about today is how propagandized the world has become and on how many levels. For instance, 30 years ago, in order to influence public opinion, and per this definition qualify as propaganda, a person had to go to great lengths. We threw the term “grass roots effort” around quite a bit in the late 80s. Someone else had to champion your cause, spread the word in an internetless world, play the role of your hype man. Nowadays, you just have to be ostentatious enough to attract enough social media followers to start a movement. Advertising is free. This is great, they said. Be your own hype man, they said. But, no one remembered to agree to use our powers for good instead of evil. The waters, they are muddy.
It was the summer of 2020. The madness of Covid had descended upon us. My daughter-in-law thought it was the perfect time to gather together for family pictures. We had never done a single professional picture as a fam bam. So, we threw caution to the wind and all (gasp) gathered together: the rents, the kids, the grandkids, and my mom with her recent Alzheimer’s diagnosis. It was a fiasco. That’s how family pics go when there are little ones involved. Ezra was newly 2. He hated everything back then. He hated rain. He hated clouds. He despised grass. He flew into rageful fits at the sound of his grandmother’s singing voice (that’s me, incidentally). And, almost 5-yearold Chynna Rose was no better. Kids get to that awkward age where they don’t know how to smile, except for perfectly resting their top teeth directly on top of their bottom teeth and looking straight down at the ground. So, Ezra screamed, and Chynna stared at the ground with a serial killer-esque mouth contortion while we walked through a pasture in heels that sank in mud just as the mosquitos made their evening debut. They call that time of day “the golden hour.” I call it “heck to the naw.” But, magically, exactly one week later, we received a link to our photo proofs, and they were beautiful, magical even! “But, I don’t remember Ezra smiling that much,” I gasped to my daughter-in-law, feeling like my memory of blood curdling screams were imagined. “He didn’t,” she deadpanned. “He smiled ONE TIME. The photographer photo shopped his smiling head over his screaming head in every pic.” But, to look at these precious pics, the last ones that would feature my beautiful mom before dementia stole her sweet smile, you’d think Ezra was an absolute living angel. That’s using the powers of propaganda for good.
Imagine a voice, bereft of accent, except for the tiniest sliver of Moon Unit Zappa Valley Girl lilt, where the speech is mid toned and one decibel about a whisper, every other word is “like,” & all the sentences end in questions that don’t sound like you really want a return answer. Now, add an ample dose of vocal fry at the end of each non-question. It’s commonly referred to as Speakdashian, meaning how the Kardashians speak. “You guyzzzzz. I’m not, like, even kiddinguhhhhh. This, like concealer, or whateverrrrrrr? It’s, like, so, like, gooddddddd? Like, I don’t know how I everrrrrr lived without thisssssss?” And, just like that, an empire was born from a single Instagram reel. But, guess what? The concealer is just ok. Also, Kylie Jenner is worth 1 BILLION dollars. Meanwhile, we’re happily refreshing our phone screens every 5 seconds on launch days to see if we can snag the perfume, or the shapewear, or the lip kits. Is it harmful? Not when you’re old enough to have birthed all the Dash girls, I suppose. But, to a young girl who wasn’t around when Kylie had her real lips and a slim, athletic figure, maybe so. Momma’s debit card isn’t going to make your life a better place. That is found only in your heart. For what it’s worth, however, Kim’s Nude 1 lipstick is, like, life affirmingggggggg. That’s a mid-level coin toss of propaganda.
The mechanics of Adolph Hitler were not relegated to enlistments or fear tactics or even vocal lies. The propaganda element was intense and unrelenting. Anti-Semitism posters depicted Jews in acts of conspiracy against the government, in an effort to convince non-Jewish Germans that Jews wanted to overthrow the government at any cost. Subtle, years long campaigns touted things like “true race consciousness” and attempted (clearly, successfully) to convince Europe that Jews were somehow linked to Communism and posed a threat to the entire balance of world peace. “They must be stopped,” Hitler told the people. “If we don’t stop them, they’ll kill us. Fear not, I’m just the man to help you.” It took an entire world and 6 million dead Jews before his propaganda fueled machine could be stopped. This is the dark and dirty side of propaganda.
These days, it’s increasingly hard to spot the truth. My left hand says my right hand is pulling the wool over my eyes, but my right hand reminds me that it warned me that evil left hand was going to pull this stunt one day. Perhaps we really do have nowhere to run to, baby, and nowhere to hide. Look for the golden hour.
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