It is psychology - marketers mastered the art long ago

Posted on: December 12, 2017 at 16:17:50 CT

Those without a broad base of knowledge and experience are more susceptible to being manipulated by advertisers and salesmen. It isn't so much a lack of intelligence, it is a lack of critical analysis skills and knowledge. To compare and contrast you have to have evidence. To gather reliable evidence you have to have some knowledge of where to look. To correlate arguments in other areas to the issue at hand, you have to have knowledge of the other areas. To understand incentives, you have to have some understanding of business practices and the ability to place oneself in another persons position. When you live in your own small little world, and make little attempt to acquire knowledge independently of what is fed to you, you don't have those tools no matter what your IQ is.

Trump is a snake oil salesmen. That has been clear to me since the one and only time I watched one of the farcical republican presidential debates. It was one of the really early ones. Believe it or not, I think it was in late July 2015.

Plutocratic snake oil salesmen always come armed with a manipulative emotional appeal designed to dupe the gullible into supporting things they would ordinarily oppose. They have the resources to develop and distribute tactics and strategies and natural allies in other elites. They can also buy off opposition when necessary. The common man never gets organized. The organized elites always beat the disorganized commoners, until the exploitation gets so bad the lid blows off. We are a long ways away from that.

Edited by Knucklehead at 16:33:29 on 12/12/17