I ran across a footnote this morning that referenced an out-of-print publication and an article published in 1954: Saturday Review, “Who Tells the Storytellers”, by Elmo Roper. I vaguely remember a thing called a”Roper Poll.” Elmo Roper was a leader in the field of market research and public opinion polling. The article is not available, and (maybe a comment on modern culture) the rights to it and all of the old Saturday Review articles is owned by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione.
The footnote caught my eye because it was an observation about American society from 56 years ago:
Elmo Roper’s classification of influential groups in the United States is well known: about 90% of the population is “politically inert”; they become active only accidentally, when they are set into motion, but they are normally “inactive, inattentive, manipulable, and without critical faculty.”
In other words, only about ten percent of us are paying attention. Once every two years the 90% are shaken awake and inoculated with intense agitation propaganda otherwise known as the “political ad” – sound and image-bytes meant to appeal to prejudice and emotion, constructed to manipulate, carrying no substance, and made with the understanding that the viewer is clueless but will soon vote. We then head in masse to the polls and present our views to our leaders, and our media dutifully analyze what the public “thinks.”
Let’s be honest – we can talk freely here, as that 90% of public will not be found reading political blogs. I noticed this as I went door-to-door night after night in 1996 in my run for state legislature – the faces were vapid, the “issues” meaningless, and the arbiter of all that was going to happen on election day was the television, always in the background. That 90% is a whale on the beach, breathing but unable to move.
The “public mind” is a joke – it “thinks” in the same manner as a voice recorder. It plays back the opinions of leaders (with a great deal of background interference). The methods by which opinions spread are subtle and covert. Only rarely does a voice on television say something meant for the value of its content. Virtually all news and commentary is meant for subtle effect. (Thus we have the apparent contradiction wherein most of the American public, and virtually all of the Fox News viewership, thought that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks. It was no accident – that message was sent out in subterfuge and coded clues, very deliberately. That is how public opinion is formed. There is virtually no useful information dispersed by television.)
There is manipulation going on right now – agitprop and an angry segment of the voting public being activated – to what purpose I do not know. But the “Teabaggers” are about as spontaneous as a prom dance. They are interesting not for the content of their message, which is typically muddled and incoherent. They are interesting because some group, some moneyed interest, plans to use them for some nefarious purpose. Stay tuned.
The Citizens United decision tosses another spice into our stew. It is based on the premise that “advertising” and “speech” are synonymous. That is a ludicrous notion. Advertising is subversion of the individual, psychological manipulation. It has power because it is effective to the exact degree that we think it is not. If we think ourselves immune to advertising, we are its slaves.
Now given the power to spread their message with virtually unlimited funds on a population that is “politically inert, inactive, inattentive, manipulable, and without critical faculty,” we are pretty much screwed. Public opinion is now owned by corporate masters, and by extension, so are all virtually politicians (with the exception of odd and out-of-the-way places like Boulder, Missoula, and Vermont).
Citizens United is a master stroke, a calculated pandering to power masked as reasoned jurisprudence. It will plunge us into darkness.
Where is hope, oh gloomy one? Certainly it is not in that 90%. C/U merely formalized the ownership of them and electoral politics by the corporations.
But we are still left with the 10%.
But who are “we”? We are intellectually alive, diverse, and stuck in the mud. Assume that every living is ideology expressed to some degree within our numbers. What is the mainstream of thought among the thoughtful? Right now it is “free markets,” but that cannot last as it relies on the fictional man as its mainstay. We are not the simple economic beings they think us to be. Soon to return is the community man, the generous and caring citizen, the man willing to give of himself in return for the good of his family and friends and community. That is our better nature. These are indeed dark times, but that nature does not change. We have been sidetracked by free market economics, but will get back on track after another economic disaster or two. Takes time …
In the long run we are all dead, and yet, in the long run, there has always been progress towards a better society.
Piece of Mindful 
Mark,
We are not the simple economic beings they think us to be
But we are!
Economics is the science of Human Action – and in such action, things that you attribute to economics like money, price, competition, wealth, accumulation, loss, mitigation, etc. comes into being.
The latter does not create the former!
Human Action creates Economics.
A must-read – Mises’ “Human Action” will help you significantly – but be forewarned. It is long, deep, thick and probably best read on a summer’s beach during a long vacation.
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Mark,
But back to your point.
Do not worry about the Masses. They are not important.
They do not create change. They do not think. They do not understand. They are a mass – an unthinking mob.
Do not consider them in any plan. They will move with the wind. All you have to do is be the hurricane.
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I do not disagree that economic considerations are an important factor in just about every decision we make. But you’re not looking at the whole person. Economic considerations are only one thing, and often not the most important thing. In cultures other than ours, where people are not at each others throats and pocketbooks from day one of kindergarten, you don’t find this constant deception and weaseling that we have here in the US. Muslims, for example, believe that all who acquire wealth are obligated to use it for their brethren.
In other words, there is the economic man, and there is the socialized man, taught to care for his fellows. Sure, he looks after his own interests, but often as not tries to help others out too.
Most of what I think is going on in this country is the Randian view that caught on and carried forward from her time – the idea that wealth trickles down. that society is comprised of great people and hangers-on, and that greed is good. Nothing is true or false there – there is something to all of it. But it is not hard-wired true. There is that 4-6% factor – the sociopaths, and they are to a large degree at the center of the accumulation game. Much of the Randian world circles about them. I am truly surprised at times how little she knew of humanity, lacking it herself and isolating herself form it in others.
And then … this is the thing that we will never agree on – greater good. Even if you are right, and I don’t think you are, but say you are right – that it is proper to allow everyone to keep everything their earn, to have their duty to society not be a duty but rather a voluntary thing … even if you are morally correct, and I don’t think you are, the world we end up with is highly stratified, with pockets of extreme wealth amid vast reaches of poverty. You might say that is nature at work and we must leave it alone – I disagree with that too, but say you are right, that this is nature’s way. Then I say screw nature. We can do better.
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“During the American Revolution, the active forces in the field against the King’s tyranny never amounted to more than 3% of the colonists. They were in turn actively supported by perhaps 10% of the population. In addition to these revolutionaries were perhaps another 20% who favored their cause but did little or nothing to support it. Another one-third of the population sided with the King (by the end of the war there were actually more Americans fighting FOR the King than there were in the field against him) and the final third took no side, blew with the wind and took what came.”
Some things never change.
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Very interesting, Swede. I also remember reading somewhere that during that time there was a huge migration of people to Canada, and that there was no just compensation paid for property left behind. This has led over the centuries to a basic anti-US attitude up there – not that they don’t like us, but that a large number of them think we are erratic and unstable. Canadians are typically smug and condescending towards their American cousins.
It also doesn’t help that we repeatedly invaded Canada, during the revolution itself, and again in 1812, and a few times after.
Must do some fact checking -I’m giving you impressions here,maybe unsubstantiated. So what else is new?
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Fact checking not needed, it’s on the internet.
“The problem with quotes on the internet is that it is difficult to verify their authenticity”
—-President Abraham Lincoln
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