7/29/20
I worked in supermarkets for 38 years. For that entire time coffee sales were dominated by two brands: Maxwell House and Folgers, fairly crappy blended coffees which enjoyed huge TV advertising pushes in the 1970s and early 1980s. At any given time, cheaper, better, more pleasing coffees could be found on the same shelves, such as Columbian coffee, Italian and Puerto Rican espresso and store brand coffee packed by the same makers of the two leading brands.
In the early 1980s, these two TV coffees commanded 90% of sales.
That has steadily dropped as quality high end coffees have been introduced. However, long after the TV advertising pushes that made these crappy coffees the king and queen of the grocer’s coffee section, they still command as much as half of coffee sales in many markets.
A friend of mine recently discovered that generic Dollar Store coffee is much better than the two big brands and cheaper. Then I bought him 9 bricks of 6 ounce Café Morro Puerto Rican espresso for a dollar a piece and he couldn’t believe how much better it was than the TV brands.
Advertising and branding works.
It is our religion and has zero to do with product quality.
Millions of Americans spend a dollar more a gallon for Sunny Delight orange drink than for orange juice, based solely on advertising and branding.
Most Americans are nothing but consumers, just mouths served by minds that transfer consumption commands from the media programmer to the body.
Americans have long been addicted to blended products with a lack of quality and distinction as a reflection of the will of the true ruling class—the advertisers.
This is a long-lived affliction. I recall seeing the many ridiculous caricatures of African American people from past advertisements, which was an obviously an effective attack on that people’s self-image, shades of which remain with us as many leaders of these formerly maligned people insist their folk cannot prosper through work like others have.
Some people find it dismaying that European Americans have an almost universal self-loathing for their men and that it is common courtesy in America for a so-called “white” man to apologize for the condition of his birth, even if he was the son of a high school dropout who died in poverty. One need only look at commercial advertising, which targeted the female, for the fact that she controlled most spending. Since I was a child, most advertising depicted men like me as fools. Now they are all depicted as fools and goofs unless they are being directly marketed to for erectile dysfunction medication.
Advertising media has reduced the attention span of the American until he is an idiot by medieval standards and most often incapable of self-teaching.
Such attention reduction and audio-visual conditioning prepares the American Retard to be imprinted heavily by fictional dramas and to practice confirmation bias when passively consuming news. For instance, virtually all TV bad guys are depicted as bad guys, and in comedies and family dramas as fools. In fact, as I proof this article out loud, my Land Lady, who was a school teacher before she quit in dismay, informs me that her lesson plans were mandatorily structured in 10 minute activities to cater to decreased student attention span “dictated by an assumed reduced attention span due to media and video game consumption.”
I have conducted numerous studies of friends and family members consuming various forms of audio visual media and have observed an acute inability to perceive reality and a pronounced tendency to transpose imprinted fantasy over observable reality.
Look around you, wherever you might be while you take in your next TV or radio spot and realize that you are surrounded by people who have been rendered immune to reality.
The war for the American conscience is long over. The best one can do is attempt to preserve an alternative to utopia in some in some quiet corner of the hysterical world.
Sad but true on the student's attention span thing. Watching the adults that are supposedly teaching my kid, now that he's home and I see what's happening is highly edifying.
One teacher repeatedly misses class without a head's up at all. Later, the lame excuses like "I fell asleep and forgot to plug in and recharge my laptop.". It's hello bitch, even completely discharged you plug the fucking thing in and it works.
They show up 15 minutes late and leave 15 minutes early.
I got a note saying my kid was late for a class in "0" period? I sent back an email and asked what period is zero period, no response.
Hello....my kid is in a STEM school...Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. They have 2 english classed and a math class this year, in 7th grade! They guarantee a pilot's license when they graduate high school! I don't fucking think so. The teachers are the dumbest mofos I've ever seen. In Cali, the Cali history is a state mandated requirement. He hasn't had it in three years.
Nuff said.
I have heard so many ridiculous stories from parents about these zoom schools—even physical education on zoom!
Those who can do.
Those who can't teach.
That goes for me boxing as well—I sucked.
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.
Edward Bernays, 'Propaganda' (1928), "father" of modern advertising, nephew of Sigmund Fraud
His best-known campaigns include a 1929 effort to promote female smoking by branding cigarettes as feminist "Torches of Freedom", and his work for the United Fruit Company in the 1950s, connected with the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan government in 1954.
——————————————
That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia.
Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.
You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.
Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.
Be Angry At The Sun
Robinson Jeffers
Wow, this Jeffers poem is one of my favorites, but I never heard of the Bernay character and his Freedom Torches. Him and Dewey emerge as key influences on our mush-mind collective.
Thanks
Pilot? No problem. Dr. Lexus 'splains it all:
youtube.com/watch?v=l7ICZHPPTtY&feature=emb_logo
0:54: "My first wife was 'tarded. She's a pilot now."
From memory (hain't googlin no mo)
end of 'Shine, Perishing Republic'
"When the cities lie at the barbarians feets
The mountains remain"
(think eye left part out but glad you made it out of the
urban collapsum and into the bright air, James)
I love the image of shinning doom.
Thanks,
I'm back in another urban shithole and already thirsty for clean air again.