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The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America (STUDIES IN POSTWAR AMERICAN POLITICAL)

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Today on the show we welcome Blake Minnerly, who is launching his own podcast show called, "Ambiology" which examines the political left/right spectrum in the United States from a historical perspective. Much of what we think is Left or Right politically actually has shifted over time - and this paradigm has become a significant stumbling block for citizens to view issues on a case-by-case basis that would allow for a substantive understanding of a given issue in a nuanced way. Instead, and consequently, this Left/right divide incentivizes people to lump issues together into a tribal identity, which creates a psychological barrier to useful and empowering insight on important matters. This ubiquitous and insidious paradigm conditions us in the U.S. to view political issues through a powerful filter, which oftentimes has us discount perspectives from the “bad” tribe without fully understanding the perspective in the first place.

This show will investigate the beginnings of Public Relations and propaganda with people such as Edward Bernays (the nephew of Sigmond Freud) who has been criticized for manipulating public opinion, often in ways that undermined individual autonomy and democratic values.

His best-known campaigns include a 1929 effort to promote female smoking by branding cigarettes as feminist "Torches of Freedom", and his work for the United Fruit Company in the 1950s, connected with the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan government in 1954.

And, Ivy “Leadbelly” Lee who preceded Bernays, who many historians credit him with originating modern crisis communications. He was retained by the Rockefellers in 1914, initially to represent Standard Oil, after the bloody repression of the coal mining strike in Colorado known as the Ludlow Massacre.”

Both Bernays and Lee were masters at shaping perspective on behalf of corporations and governments, appealing directly to the subconscious mind, often undetectable to the general public. Ambiology will reflect upon the writings and scholarship of people such as Noam Chomsky, who co-authored the book, “the Manufacturing of consent,” Marshall McLuhan who is known as the father of media studies, and most recently Hyrum and Verlan Lewis who wrote the book, “The myth of left and right: how the political spectrum misleads and harms America”

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