Bernays and Lippmann

Bernay has this way of making Propaganda seem necessary in life in order to understand this confusing world. He is confident, and backs up all of the positives of Propaganda. This action of his made me, at first, believable of what he was preaching. That is when it occurred to me. Bernay acts upon the rhetorical situation in discussing propaganda- he IS propaganda. But I did not completely dismiss Bernays’ idea at first about propaganda itself because he uses encouraging wordplay for it- “manipulating public opinion” or “mass distribution of ideas.” Diagnostic ability and sociology is apart of Bernay’s techniques. Lippmann, on the other hand, seems to read the rhetorical situation as corruptive, and sees politics and society as unitertersting in public opinion compared to previous years, or even decades. Even something like voting does not seem desirable to the public, as much as it is expressed as something people want to do.

Bernay’s approach to rhetoric included very persuasive methods. However, I think that he is not directly coercive; but eventually reaches the goal of getting the public to believe what he is trying to say. He uses the resources he has that he knows will eventually persuade the public, and he is persistent, but not so much forceful. Propaganda, I feel, is both persuasive and coercive.
Lippmann’s approach in explaining why voters do not have the basic desire to vote makes a lot of sense. He brings in factors that the citizen may be thinking or feeling when involved in the voting situation. He explains the tactics of agencies and how the public is uninterested.

It seems as though Bernays follows certain methods or general approaches with steps. He has the diagnostic ability and brings sociology into his experimentation with manipulating the public opinion. I don’t know how to characterize his approaches, but I do think that he believes that in order to have a mass production of ideas to be accepted to the public, every part of the public has to be informed of the public speaker’s ideas in multiple ways. He targets every group of people and every kind of idea- strengthening weak ones or making an old principle apply to people in the present. Bernays says that a prapagandist’s approach to the audience is also creating an even that will arouse attention in the public.