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This is a thoughtful essay and a good way to think of where we are. When I Marshal McLuhan's book Mechanical Bride and his critique of advertising, I thought he was a bit of a crank. Yes, businesses were creating fantasies to buy, but bad ideas would eventually fizzled. And what was wrong with the average Joe and Jane aspiring to be part of the perfect life? Up until the post-modernist era, many paintings depicted the ideal forms whether fruit or people. McLuhan quoted Gertrude Stein making fun of American GI's with their conformity and how the war saved Europe from that mindset. Considering she was a gay Jewish woman who survived by collaborating and thus going along with the propaganda, with the Germans wasn't mentioned. But what we are entering into now is more akin to the criticisms of Herbert Marcuse. However, like Stein, he got the direction wrong. We are in a soft (for now) fascist state being dragged along by leashes. If we are good dogs, we trot along happily but as soon as we show our independence, the masters yank on our leashes to get us to comply.
This is a thoughtful essay and a good way to think of where we are. When I Marshal McLuhan's book Mechanical Bride and his critique of advertising, I thought he was a bit of a crank. Yes, businesses were creating fantasies to buy, but bad ideas would eventually fizzled. And what was wrong with the average Joe and Jane aspiring to be part of the perfect life? Up until the post-modernist era, many paintings depicted the ideal forms whether fruit or people. McLuhan quoted Gertrude Stein making fun of American GI's with their conformity and how the war saved Europe from that mindset. Considering she was a gay Jewish woman who survived by collaborating and thus going along with the propaganda, with the Germans wasn't mentioned. But what we are entering into now is more akin to the criticisms of Herbert Marcuse. However, like Stein, he got the direction wrong. We are in a soft (for now) fascist state being dragged along by leashes. If we are good dogs, we trot along happily but as soon as we show our independence, the masters yank on our leashes to get us to comply.