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Censorship by advertising, and other BIG PICTURE ideas

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tbmorse
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Censorship by advertising, and other BIG PICTURE ideas

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Current events prove my point. We're all living advertising lives. We've been sorted into smaller and smaller categories (which have been given names like "Entitlements") until Mitt Romney could accurately note that one category encompassed 75% of Americans. ( Well, don't your kids or grandkids go to public school? Any of them use free lunch programs? Does granny get a Social Security check?) The effect of these "categories" is that there IS no big picture anymore. We've just spent the last few months obsessing over one tiny piece of a jigsaw puzzle (the Fiscal Cliff) until no one can even see that one piece clearly. News commentators have logged HUNDREDS of hours trying to explain to you what it might MEAN! You think that's a problem? Wait until you try to understand your health care "options!" But don't worry, we'll soon be able to hire a "health care expert" just like we can hire a tax specialist! I'm not joking here. Categories are dangerous. In the 1980's, category thinking was used successfully in a purge of the Social Security Disability system. Don't bother to look at individuals, or their special needs! Just sort out everyone over fifty, and anyone with kids! It works really well. Normally, artists in America would be the ones pointing this out, and urging you to defend your individuality, but they fell prey to category publishing years ago. I just had to advise my genius 11 year old granddaughter to stop reading teen fiction (which her mother prefers because it has no sex in it) because it also has NO vocabulary! Or were you aware that today's "category" books not only dictate number of pages and subject matter, but vocabulary as well. One of my favorite books is "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." I recently amused myself trying to list the "categories" it might appear under today. Let's see. There's Zen Buddhism. Then there's Motorcycle Maintenance. Vehicle Maintenance in general. Philosophy. True story. True family story. Self-help book. Personal journey. Technical writing. Fiction writing. Travel guide! There IS no category for "world view" or "the big picture." I recently wrote a post on a political forum about how my book "America's War on the Disabled..." couldn't get to a wider audience because, although I put it out for free on the internet, it was promptly pitched EXCLUSIVELY to people with disabilities! Having completed my post, I "published it," then returned to review it. I found it categorized under "Social Security" with an ad for "Social Security Disability experts" at the top of the page. Then there's my favorite recent ad. A young, healthy white woman with rich brown hair hikes along in a rustic environment and proclaims: "I'm only in my 60's, and I have a long life ahead. So, when I heard that Medicare doesn't pay ALL my medical bills, I looked into my options (quote may not be perfectly exact)." I want to redo that ad for You Tube, walking along pushing my walker, my wild white hair flying in the wind, my size 20 body packed into size 18 jeans. "Senior" is a category, one being defined by the ads as white, thin, and well off. "Jew" is a category. Just ask Hitler. Time for us to climb out of all these "little boxes" and look around at America, before the only category we "fit into" for sure is "second class citizen." Hey, I want to wear a button: "I'm one of the 75%!"
Tennise Broeck Morse is a 66 year old sometime writer and social activist, and the author of two books: "America's War on the Disabled: 1975-1992 (A History of Ronald Reagan's Social Security Disability Reviews of the 1980's)" and "The Christmas Pedophile (and Other Stories about My Mother)". Both are available as Kindle e-books.
youkrst

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Re: Censorship by advertising, and other BIG PICTURE ideas

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Yeah, the whole situation reminds me of "divide and conquer"

"divide and exploit"

To paraphrase David Mitchell "you take no interest in how the powerful exploit you for 40 years and you turn around and look what has happened !"
tbmorse
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Divide by DEFINITION

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Thank you for reading! The PURPOSE is division. The METHOD is language! The American perception of a large group of American citizens has been redefined (as in Babel 17) by a deliberately created language. Social Help Programs are NOT "Entitlements." Older people are not "Seniors." People "with Disabilities" are either Disabled or Handicapped (one can support themselves through work, and one cannot). God bless Obama and his advisers - he actually managed to turn around "Obamacare" and make it a positive slogan. By allowing one group of Americans to define the places of the rest of us, we've already "lost" the argument. But, we're NOT helpless. Take back American English. Every time you hear an "invented" word, fall back and say: "No, you're actually talking about..." Now there are two positions to frame the discussion, instead of a weak one and a strong one. You'd be amazed how far you get when you make people define their terms and fall back from "what everybody knows!"
Tennise Broeck Morse is a 66 year old sometime writer and social activist, and the author of two books: "America's War on the Disabled: 1975-1992 (A History of Ronald Reagan's Social Security Disability Reviews of the 1980's)" and "The Christmas Pedophile (and Other Stories about My Mother)". Both are available as Kindle e-books.
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