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Pink ribbons are advertising to gain money for a private organization (whether or not they do anything to help cancer victims). The Jesus fish is also advertisi

by genwin 14y ago

Pink ribbons are advertising to gain money for a private organization (whether or not they do anything to help cancer victims). The Jesus fish is also advertising, promoted by private orgs looking to gain money & power. The Darwin fish is a private viewpoint. "Support the Troops" is propaganda, "Information, esp. of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view." It's promoted by neocons or hawks or whatever you call them, who are seeking money and power via war. From Wikipedia: Political analyst Noam Chomsky has criticized the slogan, saying, "[...] the point of public relations slogans like "Support Our Troops" is that they don't mean anything [...] that's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody is going to be against and I suppose everybody will be for, because nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. But its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something, do you support our policy? And that's the one you're not allowed to talk about."

twoodfin 14y ago
But its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something, do you support our policy? And that's the one you're not allowed to talk about. And this is why Chomsky is the idol of nodding undergraduates everywhere. Not to put too fine a point on it, it's bonkers to say you're "not allowed" to debate war policy. That claim is a lie. It's readily disproven by reading any of a number of New York Times editorials or walking down any street in Berkeley, CA, or Cambridge, MA and reading the bumper stickers. Yes, "I support the troops" is not a particularly daring or radical point of view. But it's clear from a Google search for "I don't support the troops" that there's a vocal minority who disagree with it. There was a time not so many decades ago when a much larger, much more vocal minority disagreed with it, and thus it's not quite the nullity that Chomsky describes it as. In a free society, one opinion people are "allowed" to have is that their volunteer troops by and large deserve moral and material support even if their missions have politically controversial justification. That is an opinion a large majority of Americans currently hold. Some Americans hold an opposing view. In a democracy, this kind of disagreement happens often, and trying to convince me that one side of the disagreement has been influenced in the "exact" manner as the Nazis influenced the Germans requires a better argument than Chomsky's goofy proclamation that somehow we're "not allowed to talk about" war policy. Germans in 1942 were actually not allowed to disparage the war effort, lest they end up in prison or worse. Their primary sources of information on the conflict were all directly controlled by their government, who deliberately, actively misled them about its aims and progress. That is so many light years from a "yellow ribbon" campaign that I still can't begin to imagine how you think they're comparable.
- genwin 14y ago
  Good points. I don't say they're the exact same thing, like jellicle does, but I do think they're both propaganda, and for the same result: to make a few people richer and more powerful, via war. You're right that Americans could disparage the recent war efforts, but if you were doing that to someone with that yellow sticker, you were (in my experience) talking to someone who supported the troops by supporting the war. I'm confident that was the intent of the yellow ribbon.

by genwin 14y ago

twoodfin 14y ago

But its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something, do you support our policy? And that's the one you're not allowed to talk about. And this is why Chomsky is the idol of nodding undergraduates everywhere. Not to put too fine a point on it, it's bonkers to say you're "not allowed" to debate war policy. That claim is a lie. It's readily disproven by reading any of a number of New York Times editorials or walking down any street in Berkeley, CA, or Cambridge, MA and reading the bumper stickers. Yes, "I support the troops" is not a particularly daring or radical point of view. But it's clear from a Google search for "I don't support the troops" that there's a vocal minority who disagree with it. There was a time not so many decades ago when a much larger, much more vocal minority disagreed with it, and thus it's not quite the nullity that Chomsky describes it as. In a free society, one opinion people are "allowed" to have is that their volunteer troops by and large deserve moral and material support even if their missions have politically controversial justification. That is an opinion a large majority of Americans currently hold. Some Americans hold an opposing view. In a democracy, this kind of disagreement happens often, and trying to convince me that one side of the disagreement has been influenced in the "exact" manner as the Nazis influenced the Germans requires a better argument than Chomsky's goofy proclamation that somehow we're "not allowed to talk about" war policy. Germans in 1942 were actually not allowed to disparage the war effort, lest they end up in prison or worse. Their primary sources of information on the conflict were all directly controlled by their government, who deliberately, actively misled them about its aims and progress. That is so many light years from a "yellow ribbon" campaign that I still can't begin to imagine how you think they're comparable.

genwin 14y ago
Good points. I don't say they're the exact same thing, like jellicle does, but I do think they're both propaganda, and for the same result: to make a few people richer and more powerful, via war. You're right that Americans could disparage the recent war efforts, but if you were doing that to someone with that yellow sticker, you were (in my experience) talking to someone who supported the troops by supporting the war. I'm confident that was the intent of the yellow ribbon.