Is one free if unable to discern half-truths and whole lies?
By Dave Read, Lenox, MA, May 3, 2025 – As bad as it is in America today, when Ralph Waldo Emerson was on the scene, chattel slavery was legal in many parts of the nation. The anti-slavery abolition movement was prominent in Emerson’s home state of Massachussetts, where slavery had first been struck down in the courts as a violation of Christiain principles, and later by decree in the new state constitution of 1780.
Anti-slavery activists wanted Emerson to take a leadership role in their campaign to abolish the institution, but, true to his nature, the Sage of Concord would contribute only to the impulse of abolition, but not to the method by which it might be accomplished.
MAGA is what slavery looks like in the 21st century, the felon-in-chiel is the new slavemaster. MAGArians weren’t kidnapped by slave traders, their liberty was lost on the plantation of screens. Before long, what had been programmed for their consumption on screens, they accepted as real.
The old slaves were locked and chained on plantations, the new ones are locked in prisons of dishonesty and fuzzy thinking, where the liberating key of reason is programmed for the next episode, or is just over the rainbow.
Soon enough, a product of TV appears and sells them on the Big Lie that he alone will slay the smarty pants having all the fun at their expense, and then he’ll distribute all the booty among them.
TV is a commercial sales tool and so it speaks sales talk, not English, or any other language rooted in such precise definitions as to allow for accuracy and honesty of expression.
Sales talk is slippery and deliberately vague. Sales professionals are skilled engineers of human emotions – they locate our buttons and know how to separate us from our money.
Here is a 1965 commentary on the subject by popular philosopher Sir Mick Jagger:
When I’m watching my TV
And a man comes on and tells me
How white my shirts can be
But he can’t be a man ’cause he doesn’t smoke
The same cigarettes as me
One needn’t be as erudite as a British Knight to see through the flimflam that so easily directs the buying decisions of people who watch so much TV that they forget – or don’t even realise, that, in reality, they are being sold a bill of goods.
Even what is labeled the news is a program that has been snipped and trimmed and embellished and amplified for the initial purpose of attracting the widest possible audience; that allows programmers to maximize advertisement, sponsorship, and underwriting income so they can do more of the same, day after day.
In the early days, to satisfy terms of federal licenses, programmers would wrap 15 or 30 minutes of news in a commercial package. In 1948, the first regularly scheduled TV network news program was re-branded from NBC Television Newsreel to Camel Newsreel Theatre.
No matter that products such as Camels convert innocent consumers into drug addicts and early corpses, TV time doesn’t grow on trees.
In 1952, an FTC regulation was loosened to allow televised sales pitches to be aimed at kids, instead of being addressed to parents. An ad for Mr. Potato Head is the first example of TV programming designed to make kids nag their parents. It/he/she is still on the market, an example of which can be seen amidst the clutter of the Oval Office.
From the very start, and in clear-eyed recognition of the expense involved, the first goal of EVERY program on TV is to pay for the expense of production, with a little left over for the office Christmas party.
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The second purpose of all programming is to make viewers afraid to switch channels or to turn the set off. That’s why all Soap Opera weddings only begin on Fridays, to keep the audience on pins and needles all weekend to see if that cad or hussie has the nerve to show up at the church or reception hall.
That’s why the exploits of Bin Laden’s air force looped nonstop for three months. Dubya wanted your attention, he had to announce where and why the next generation of American treasure and blood would be squandered. Professional armed forces need to have their missions properly packaged and sold, too.
Nor does it take a British Knight to see that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan threatens the United States any more than any flea threatens an elephant. And just as Papa Bush knew the democrats wouldn’t dare question the character of Clarence Thomas, so too Dubya knew enough democrats in congress would believe whatever Colin Powell told them about WMD. Smart salesmanship, good applied psychology, too.
The republican party has always been the favored home of sales professionals. But one democrat who is demonstrably good at sales is Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, whose path to ultra wealth began when his father co-founded the Hyatt Hotel business. Gov. Pritzker traveled recently to the presidential campaign nursery of New Hampshire to call for “mass protests, mobilization, and disruption.”
And thus he plays right into MAGA’s greasy, trigger-happy hands. In 1968, when he was three, Chicago, Illinois was the site of mass protests, mobilization, and disruption, which the democratic mayor Daley took great delight in transforming into a police riot.
Two years later, when the campus of Kent State was the site of mass protests, mobilization, and disruption, Ohio’s republican governor deployed armed national guardsmen, who shot 13 unarmed kids, killing four of them.
Gov. Pritzker’s campaign speech, if heeded, will be all it takes to get the revenge-hungry, freshly-pardoned, Jan. 6 rioters back into their GI Joe costumes, but this time armed with assault rifles and drones, because their fickle friend is POTUS.
After they get the Battle of MAGA underway, I promise you the commander-in-chief will suspend habeus corpus nationwide and begin the roundup of anti-MAGArians from coast-to-coast, while he converts Puerto Rico into the new Gitmo.
Emerson made reference in a poem to NH Senator Daniel Webster, whose oratory would lead to passage of the Fugitive Slave Act:
“The God who made New Hampshire
Taunted the lofty land
With little men; —”
Let’s hope Gov. Pritzker gives another speech and begs all non-MAGArians to not put targets on their backs or fronts. If he’s eager for a little civil disobedience, a la Emerson disciple Thoreau, surely he has plenty of what most and truly motivates republican lawmakers. He could turn enough red votes blue in the house, senate, and SCOTUS with what to a billionaire is pocket change.
It won’t even be bribery – won’t even have his fingerprints on it. Thanks to Citizens United, he need only fund virtual think tanks in their districts (or favorite getaways) and give them the routing and account numbers. Unfortunately for the good governor, though, I think it’ll be a long, long time before America chooses another POTUS from the hospitality sector.