We Buy Manipulation!

Recently I had the chance to watch a documentary on the 2002 Bolivian election process called “We Manage Crisis.” It’s a film about James Carville’s political consulting firm and how they used American resources and tactics to direct that country’s future.

In the film they are upfront about planting stories about rival candidates in order to sully their names, using focus groups to find key issues that the politician can claim even if they don’t care about it and basically, the art of lying to the citizens in order to win. As I watched the strategy sessions and consulting meetings unfold I kept thinking about our process and how people like this are manipulating us daily. They want us to get angry about the price of oil, race, old age or crime and magically—that’s what we are debating. If one guy creates his message to get us to go north, the other one crafts one headed south.

The Bolivian experiment ended in anarchy and death in the streets—here, it just ends in our electing a person whose image is carefully crafted and his words are exactly what we tell him we want to hear. So, as we lose more and more of our rights—are they just doing what we’ve told them we expect?