Sunday, July 8, 2012


One of the basic truths of a democracy is that we aren't all like each other. If we were, then we could just choose someone at random, and make them dictator, and it wouldn't matter because we all believed the same.

As mentioned previously, one of the basic techniques of propaganda is to create dichotomies. And this picture is a great example of that. Some of the distinctions drawn are somewhat exaggerated. "We struggle to survive. Romney flaunts his wealth." There are a lot of people struggling, but that "we" are struggling is creating a dichotomy: many people are, if not doing peachy keen, still not "struggling". And as for Romney flaunting his wealth, Romney isn't exactly the "flaunting" type. It might actually be better for him if he was. The last item is an especially strong blanket statement. "We've lost the American Dream. Romney killed the American Dream". While the morality of the type of corporate financing that Romney did is a very open question, both the fact that the "American Dream" has been lost, and that Romney (personally? all by himself?) killed it is a very overarching dichotomy.

Also, what is he doing on his fingers? Really counting his mansions?

But, to go back to my first point. In a Democracy, we have a variety of people with different backgrounds and beliefs, and sometimes we will support someone politically who doesn't have the same background as us. But it is also reasonable that we expect those people to have some type of understanding of us. So while the image uses some pretty base dichotomizing to paint Romney as different, it is also fair to ask whether he has the background to understand what we are going through.


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