Decius:

I think that there ought to be more outrage about the Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford memo which you can read here and I highly encourage you to do so.

THIS is THE HEART of the problem with Democracy in America - special interests spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on cynical campaigns to discredit people because they can't win on facts. We know that this kind of stuff goes on, but in this case these people more or less spell out what they are doing in black and white. Everyone should read this memo. They need to understand the amount of effort that goes into lying to them and manipulating them.

Perhaps it's hard for the public to be outraged when you consider that the success (effectiveness) of these campaigns depends entirely on the public's unbounded susceptibility to these sorts of shenanigans. To grok this memo is to accept the fundamental, pervasive insincerity of the contemporary media landscape. In order to care deeply about this deceptive behavior you have to care deeply about the integrity of the political process. At the same time, these campaigns can be attractive because they work, whereas, who goes to the local city council meeting? What fraction of the voting population takes a deep dive into the text of a bill under consideration? The mass reactions are more visceral than principled.

I'm more inclined to be outraged about the apparent fact that these campaigns work. In fact they apparently work so well that, as Lessig has explained, a credible threat of a campaign is often sufficient to achieve one's objectives. To my mind, the underlying vulnerability is at least as worthy of attention as the various ways in which it has come to be exploited. High school students are expected to demonstrate their understanding of analogies on standardized tests, but no one seems to think it a worthwhile use of classroom time to equip them with the skills that would inoculate them against such false media manipulation.

RE: The Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford Memo