Should We Swallow the Script if It Tastes Good?

by Micah Tillman

“Four more years of Bush” said the DNC performers again and again. Never mind that Bush is on every Republican’s “Most Loved” list, while McCain is on their “Most Loathed.” Never mind that McCain is the one who goes against his party while Bush is the leader thereof.

Using Ockham’s Razor we can come to the following conclusion: not a single person speaking on the stage was thinking. They were reciting lines someone else had written.

After all, is it likely that they each came up with the “Four More Years of Bush” line on their own? The simpler explanation is that one person came up with it, and everyone else followed her or his lead.

But the people on the convention stage enthusiastically played the parrot.

The question is: Who listens to parrots? Who isn’t annoyed by having a script recited at them?

Surely we’ve all had the experience on the phone. You call “customer service” with a problem, and then get stuck listening to the person on the other end reciting a script at you. The operator stops talking, and the scriptwriter starts speaking through him.

You can tell when the switch occurs, and your heart sinks. One moment, the person on the other end is talking to you; you’re being treated as a human being. The next, he’s reciting at you. You can tell he’s reading from a script and is mentally in some far-away land.

The reciter’s brain disengages as the script takes over, and yet yours is supposed to remain engaged. At the end of the script, you’re supposed to have been convinced.

That’s insulting. And no one falls for it over the telephone.

So who falls for it in politics?

Don’t people know when they’re being propagandized? Aren’t they disturbed when they realize that everyone is saying the same thing, and therefore no one is thinking? (They’re letting whoever wrote the talking-points do their thinking for them.)

Doesn’t Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” start to play somewhere in the background?

Obviously, the answer must be, “No.” Political parties keep using talking points, and customer service reps keep turning into telemarketers.

Either it works, or they’re all idiots for trying over and over again.

And Ockham’s Razor would tell us to go with the former. It’s simpler.

At least I think it is.

But you and I are smarter than the people on whom propaganda works, right? They may not notice when the eyes of the people on stage roll back into their heads and their mouths start droning as if on auto-pilot. But we notice.

Right? So the question is, what do we do about it? We’ve got two weeks of Party Conventions to get through, two weeks of the same scripts being read over and over.

What happens if we find ourselves agreeing? How should we feel when we start thinking, “Hey, you know, the script is right.”

After all, just because the robot reciting the script isn’t thinking doesn’t mean the script is wrong. Big Brother, or whoever wrote the script, may be a pretty smart guy.

And we all want to be smart, right?

Should we learn to stop worrying and love the script (as the old adage goes)? Instead of revulsion, should our response be, “Preach it!” (When we agree with the scriptwriter, that is.)

Just because someone’s reciting propaganda doesn’t mean they’re not speaking the truth. And we’re all for speaking the truth (especially “to power”).

Right?

Or what about when the script is right, but it’s leaving out some details? What about when the effect it would have on the propagandized is good (it would get them to vote for “our guy”) but it’s really not giving them the whole story?

What do we do then? Do we go with Plato and say the Good is higher than truth?

Or do we take the Christian route, and say the Good and Truth are one and the same?

The former is simpler. Or at least easier. It’s where we get “noble lies” from. It’s what the new Batman movie is based on.

And The Dark Knight is a great film. Heath Ledger especially made the script his own. The words may have been written by someone else, but his performance was brilliant.

Micah Tillman (micahtillman.com) is a lecturer in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America.