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I really enjoyed this, but I was a bit dismayed that he didn't really back up or explain his assertion that politicians don't believe in anything and are now re

• duncanawoods 12y ago
  The Adam Curtis "Century Of the Self" is where he explains this assertion in substantial depth. IMHO its much better than Bitter Lake. It has much more content and insight about the history of psychology in the hands of politicians and corporations. The short story is that during Clinton\Blair era of government, political parties changed from devising policies based on principles which they would then try to popularise to discovering what policies would get them elected from the voters themselves. They did this by using the new sciences of marketing psychology i.e. demographics, polling, focus groups, psychological profiling etc. to identify what appealed to the whims of the tiny minority of swing voters that truly determine the outcome of elections. This may not sound too bad but this is the "not believing anything" because any question whether foreign or domestic was answered by carefully designed focus group instead of a leader with a vision of what type of society we want to live in. It won elections but bred inconsistent, short-term, short-sighted, minority desire driven policy.