Chapter 1

Organizing Chaos

     The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits
and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic
society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society
constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of the
country.
     We [in the U.S.] are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes
formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This
is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is
organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if
they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.
     Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity
of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.
     They govern us by their qualities of NATURAL leadership, their
ability to supply needed ideas and by their key postion in the social
STRUCTURE. Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition,
it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether
in the sphere of politics or business, in our SOCIAL CONDUCT or our
ETHICAL THINKING, we are dominated by a relatively SMALL NUMBER of
persons--a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty million-- who
understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is
they who pull the wires that CONTROL the public mind, who harness old
social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the
world.---Edward Bernays, Propaganda; 1928 [my caps]

Note: This subtle (and more often than not, not so subtle; see
African-Americans, Native Americans, Labor) authoritarianism was so much
a fundamental characteristic of the American kleptocracy since before
the republics inception that Bernays was able to publish his book at the
major NY house of Liveright without stirring public comment except from
a few 'fringe' groups. The books not so subtle implications for what we
now call the developing world are genocidal. Most Americans are such
lemmings, they aren't even aware of their country's authoritarian roots
or how the U.S. through implimentation of its brutal foreign policy
markets its global kleptocracy often using its own population as fodder
in its foreign incursions.
In other words, its a question of rival authoritarianisms. -CP