Lyrics by Bill Dyszel
(to the tune “The Caissons Go Rolling Along”
Soon our troops, every man,
Will get to Afghanistan,
Then we’ll turn right around
And come back.
If we try not to blink,
We might see the Taliban,
Which we wont have,
The time to attack.
When they ship your ass
To the Khyber pass,
You’ll see!
It isn’t Bali Hai!
It’s a stinkin ‘hole
Nobody controls,
So of course,
They’ll send in the G.I.s
The nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays started his business life as a publicist. While still in his twenties, he was part of the propaganda effort that drove the United States into World War I.
He personally advised several U.S. presidents, starting with Woodrow Wilson, and counseled numerous corporations and business associations. Hitler’s propaganda chief and Nazi henchman Joseph Goebbels was a reader and fan of Bernay’s writings and in particular Bernay’s book “Crystallizing Public Opinion.”
In this short excerpt from Curtis’s film we see one example of Bernays at work.
Bernays was one of the engineers of the Cold War. He perfected the technique of manufacturing a distant but ever-threatening enemy and then creating a constant state of fear by generating false news reports that endlessly re-stated and exaggerated the threat.
The stated purpose of Bernay’s methods was to give those in power greater control over what he called “the mass mind.” It worked well in the 1950s and sadly, it appears to be working quite well today… but maybe not forever.
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