You are not immune to propaganda

I remember thinking as a child how fortunate I was to be born into all the right opinions.

“What are the odds?” I may have asked myself.

I pitied the poor wretches in some far-flung place who did not share my political bent or faith in the American way.

When one considers an unabashed despotism like North Korea, the frequent response is to balk at the common citizen. As an outsider, it could be easy to demean the crowds of tear-shedding acolytes at a statue of Kim Jong Un.

North Korean propaganda depicts the United States as a bloodthirsty empire and their southern neighbor as an occupied puppet state. In the American narrative, the Kim family represents an outdated 20th-century tyranny destined to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.

Just as in any group, there are true believers. It would be a mistake to characterize all residents of an opposing nation as secret Americans yearning for freedom and the Constitution.

There are hardliners in whatever competing ideology you can think of. These true believers understand the world through a paradigm nearly 180 degrees out of phase with yours.

It is a common trope for the American tourist to go abroad and poke fun or wax mournful at the propagandized masses of Country X. Never once does it cross these lampooning globe trotters’ minds if, perhaps, others see us the same way.

As Voltaire wrote concerning the Holy Roman Empire as not holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, a similar pithy remark could be made of the United States of America.

With interest in the 2024 presidential election at an all-time low, Americans find themselves caught in a disunited two-party system doing the bidding of everyone except the common citizen.

A state, in the context of international law, means a country. In America, it means a province.

If you asked a random sampling of individuals to define an American, not a single one would give you the same answer.

Voltaire may have written in our present day that the United States of America is not united, nor comprised of states, nor does it have a cohesive understanding of what it means to be American.

Yet every July 4th, we all trot out the flag and fireworks anyway. Every Black Friday, we engage in a democratized blood-sport as we gawk at rabid consumers gutting each other over an electric can opener.

Every election year, the two parties tout the same two wings of the same tired, old bird. Every day, billions of dollars worth of aid sent abroad frees up the budget of other nations to have subsidized health care while Americans commonly go bankrupt over a kidney stone.

We worship peace and prosperity on the altar of progress while attaining none of it. Picture the worshiper of Kim Jong Un once more. What would he or she say of these contradictions?

Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, you have been subjected to propaganda all your life. This is not to uniquely disparage the United States or any other country. Every government in history engages in narrative-shaping operations.

The peculiar thing about Americans, however, is their simple refusal to acknowledge this fundamental mechanism of government. There was a joke from Soviet times concerning this phenomenon.

An American tells a Russian, “I don’t know how you bear up under so much propaganda.”

The Russian replies, “Better than you. We at least don’t take ours seriously.”

One wonders if the master stroke of propaganda is getting a population to believe there is no propaganda at all. If history is written by the victors, the present cannot be any different.

Joe McGraw is a staff writer at the Daily American Republic. He can be reached at jmcgraw@darnews.com.