Only slightly off topic:
I was reading about the history of political rhetoric yesterday and stopped up on this paragraph, written shortly after Hitler's ascent to power.
What Hitler's power grab has shown is that the "masses" are not reachable through rational argumentation. The way the tempo of everyday life has been turned up has compounded the masses' inability to concentrate or show patience. Propaganda, by necessity, needs to do its work almost unnoticed - in the same way commercial advertising works - with simple, impactful slogans that are repeated and repeated again, that are consumed passively and sink in without one being consciously aware of the fact. It is not about being explanatory or proving anything: The slogan hammers its message home to the masses on the emotional/feelings plane until it becomes part of the masses' subconscious understanding of the world.
What we do here, and what liberals have been doing since the death of JFK (the last great liberal communicator), is explaining to death. People do not have the mental capacity, time, and/or patience to be receptible to rational argumentation. Whenever a Democratic politician starts in on why and how their policy is better than the alternative, all people hear is the "waa-waa" of an adult in a Peanuts cartoon. Many on this forum have been pointing out the obvious for years: the Democratic Party is doomed to failure until such a time as they produce a real communicator, a person who is able to speak to the masses using a rhetoric they are receptible to.
Unfortunately, I am afraid the time when that could have been effective has passed for the US. The takeover of the federal government by the forces of oligarchy / kleptocracy / kakistocracy is pretty much complete. There is only the sliver of a chance left that anything resembling a fair federal election will ever take place again.
