Propaganda has become a substitue for ideas...

excerpt from Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle  p. 45

Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, we are bombarded with the cant and spectacle pumped out over the airwaves or over computer screens by highly-paid pundits, corporate advertisers, talk-show hosts, and gossip-fueled entertainment networks.  And a culture dominated by images and slogans seduces those who are functionally literate but who make the choice not to read.  There have been other historical periods with high rates of illiteracy and vast propaganda campaigns.  But not since the Soviet and fascist dictatorships, and perhaps the brutal authoritarian control of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, has the content of information been as skillfully and ruthlessly controlled and manipulated.  Propaganda has become a substitute for ideas and ideology.  Knowledge is confused with how we are made to feel.  Commercial brands are mistaken for expressions of individuality.  And in this precipitous decline of values and literacy, among those who cannot read and those who have given up reading, fertile ground for a new totalitarianism is being seeded.

 

The culture of illusion thrives by robbing us of the intellectual and linguistic tools to separate illusion from truth.  It reduces us to the level and dependency of children. 

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