re: #398 Fozzie Bear

Political ads are propaganda, in the sense that they are carefully packaged information designed to elicit a particular action from the audience. In the case of political ads, the particular action elicited is voting for/against candidates. Propaganda does work. The more money you have to spend on placing that propaganda in front of the eyes of the target audience, the more people will vote the way you want them to. This is simply a fact. Votes can be bought, easily. It just takes money.

Whether the arguments made in a political ad are false or not is irrelevant to the efficacy of the ads. ALL that matters is how well-crafted the propaganda is, and how wide an audience sees it.

I just happen to think it is important to know who is buying votes for whom, why, and for how much. Call me crazy, but I think transparency in political funding is absolutely essential to the functioning of a democratic republic. We no longer have that in the US. This is a huge problem, and it is incredibly obvious to anyone who knows even a little bit about the political process.

You so crazy!!

If none of this mattered, we wouldn’t be trying to hammer out campaign finance reform for the last 130 years.

Is it too Godwin of me to call out Hitler? Rogue, I’m not saying that about you at all, but we’ve seen the extreme dangers of unchecked propaganda.