Defense Against the Dark Arts

We have been doing pretty thorough analysis of President Bush's last couple of speeches (the V-J Day speech and the New Orleans address) and a White House briefing in a college propaganda class I teach. My students have been astounded (so have I) that Bush's techniques are right out of the textbook.

There is one chapter that is a case study on the Third Reich and, literally, nearly every major tactic therein described is something the Bushists do.

I had a student yesterday -- a Bush supporter, a member of the campus Christian prayer group, a Vietnamese immigrant and a good, smart kid -- pretty much have a meltdown. I had asked what the authors' purpose was in writing the book (Age of Propaganda, Pratkanis and Aronson, BTW). He answered: "because they don't like President Bush."

A few in the class chuckled. I asked them when the book had been published. They flipped to the title page. It had been initially published in 1992.

Then the student's face scrunched up, and he looked very confused. It was as good an illustration of cognitive dissonance as could be. I pointed this out, and asked him if that was the discomfort he was feeling. He said yes. I asked him what two opposite cognitions he was having. He said because he thought the book was written in response to Bush, and that it was written when Bush's father was president. I suggested that his competing cognitions were that 1. he liked and supported president Bush and that 2. President Bush's tactics are right out of our Propaganda textbook. He nodded.

I felt bad for him -- and for putting him on the spot -- but it was actually incredible. One of those lifechanging moments for him, and probably for the class.

He had to leave early, so I didn't get to talk to him about it, but the look on his face was that of someone whose belief system had just been smoked.

Powerful, powerful stuff.