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The New Mastersounds - Monday Meters

The New Mind Control. “Subliminal Stimulation”, Controlling People without Their Knowledge

The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence that can flip elections and manipulate everything we say, think and do

Over the past century, more than a few great writers have expressed concern about humanity’s future. In The Iron Heel(1908), the American writer Jack London pictured a world in which a handful of wealthy corporate titans – the ‘oligarchs’ – kept the masses at bay with a brutal combination of rewards and punishments. Much of humanity lived in virtual slavery, while the fortunate ones were bought off with decent wages that allowed them to live comfortably – but without any real control over their lives.

In We (1924), the brilliant Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, anticipating the excesses of the emerging Soviet Union, envisioned a world in which people were kept in check through pervasive monitoring. The walls of their homes were made of clear glass, so everything they did could be observed. They were allowed to lower their shades an hour a day to have sex, but both the rendezvous time and the lover had to be registered first with the state.

In Brave New World (1932), the British author Aldous Huxley pictured a near-perfect society in which unhappiness and aggression had been engineered out of humanity through a combination of genetic engineering and psychological conditioning. And in the much darker novel 1984 (1949), Huxley’s compatriot George Orwell described a society in which thought itself was controlled; in Orwell’s world, children were taught to use a simplified form of English called Newspeak in order to assure that they could never express ideas that were dangerous to society.

These are all fictional tales, to be sure, and in each the leaders who held the power used conspicuous forms of control that at least a few people actively resisted and occasionally overcame. But in the non-fiction bestseller The Hidden Persuaders (1957) – recently released in a 50th-anniversary edition – the American journalist Vance Packard described a ‘strange and rather exotic’ type of influence that was rapidly emerging in the United States and that was, in a way, more threatening than the fictional types of control pictured in the novels. According to Packard, US corporate executives and politicians were beginning to use subtle and, in many cases, completely undetectable methods to change people’s thinking, emotions and behaviour based on insights from psychiatry and the social sciences.

The Organized Left and the Death of “Pragmatic” Politics

Shifting political winds are battering the establishment, as the breeze flows to the back of the populists. The left-populist Bernie Sanders didn’t conjure the hurricane but adjusted his sails to it. As the political storm grows apace with rising income inequality, new social attitudes are bringing fresh expectations, transforming politics as we know it.

What seemed impossible yesterday is suddenly necessary. This newfound urgency is testing the establishment, that looks unsteady in the face of Black Lives Matter, 15Now, climate justice, tenants rights, and opposing the public service cuts that devastated Flint Michigan and destroyed public education.

The populist-fueled organizing helped expose the wide gap in the establishment’s politics, whose corporate interests prevent the satisfying of such demands. Bernie recognized this was happening and seized the moment, running on a platform that connected with the emerging mood.

He’s far from perfect, but the Left could learn from Bernie’s approach. This political moment is a precious gift, but to receive it you need an open mind and a change of habit. The thousands of new activists across the country engaging in the above issues are largely being ignored by the organized left — Labor, progressive and even socialist groups, most of whom seem too timid to get their hands dirty organizing with the new movements.

Shocker: WaPo Investigates Itself for Anti-Sanders Bias, Finds There Was None

On Tuesday, FAIR published a straightforward recapping of 16 hours of Washington Post stories that displayed a remarkable run of negative articles about Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. The FAIR post and a corresponding tweet went viral: retweeted thousands of times, shared on Facebook and Reddit thousands more, and written up in TruthDig, The Young Turks, USUncut and the Daily Caller.

Due to this surge of coverage of our coverage of its coverage (yes, media criticism gets somewhat meta), the Washington Post (3/8/16) decided to respond to our criticism, staffing out the unenviable task to The Fix’s Callum Borchers, who gave us:

Has the Washington Post Been Too Hard on Bernie Sanders This Week?

Right off, the framing is inaccurate: The scope wasn’t “this week,” it was a 16-hour period after the Flint, Michigan, debate—and following a weekend in which Sanders won three of four state contests with Hillary Clinton. The do-or-die stakes for Sanders in Michigan couldn’t have been higher, and how one of the most influential newspapers in the United States covered his debate performance and his primary showing was important.

Politics and the Golden Rule

"What I’m not trying to do is just pass legislation. I’m trying to change the face of American politics.”

Pull these words out of the context of “the news” and let them pulse like the heartbeat of the future.

The words are those of Bernie Sanders, of course — engaged last week in a confrontational interview with Chris Matthews. Free college tuition? Matthews loosed his skepticism on the presidential candidate, who pushed back:

“You and I look at the world differently. You look at it inside the Beltway. I’m not an inside the Beltway person.”

“But the people that vote on taxes are inside the Beltway,” Matthews retorted.

“Those people are going to vote the right way when millions of people demand that they vote the right way on this issue. I have no doubt that as president of the Untied Stated I can rally young people and their parents on this issue. . . . As president of the United States, I would have the bully pulpit. What I’m not trying to do is just pass legislation. I’m trying to change the face of American politics.”

DONALD TRUMP, AMERICA’S OWN SILVIO BERLUSCONI

AS A WRITER who has covered Silvio Berlusconi since he became Italy’s prime minister in 1994, it has been difficult not to be overcome with a powerful sense of déjà vu all over again watching the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.

Some of the resemblances are obvious as well as uncanny. Both are billionaires who made their initial fortunes in real estate, whose wealth and playboy lifestyles turned them into celebrities. Both have had ugly divorces and brag of their sexual prowess. Trump notably defended his manhood at the debate last week, while Berlusconi once said, “Life is a matter of perspective: Think of all the women in the world who want to sleep with me but don’t know it.” (This was before Berlusconi began holding “bunga bunga” parties with prostitutes.) They are masters of media manipulation, Berlusconi as Italy’s largest private television owner, Trump as the star of his own reality TV show and creator of the Trump “brand.” Entering politics, both have styled themselves as the ultimate anti-politician — as the super-successful entrepreneur running against gray “professional politicians” who have never met a payroll and are ruining their respective countries.

The strategy worked well for Berlusconi — he won three national elections and served as prime minister for nine years between 1994 and 2011. Will it do the same for Trump?

Mass incarceration in America, explained in 22 maps and charts

America is number one — in incarceration. Over the past several decades, the country has built the largest prison population in the entire world, with the second-highest prison population per capita behind the tiny African country of Seychelles. But how did it get this way? Although it may be easy to blame one specific event, the US's path to incarceration was decades in the making — involving politicians as varied as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton.

Funk it, with The New Mastersounds.