Marketing Romney, Ryan and Cowshit in a Shoebox!

A month or so I wrote another article about how the corporations have been steadily cutting their manufacturing costs while increasing advertising costs and shipping that enables them to take advantage of sweat shop labor on the other side of the world. They’ve been able to do this due to the fact that they’ve consolidated into a small number of oligarchies that don’t provide more than a token amount of competition against each other while workers are forced to compete with the lowest paid people in the world working in the worst conditions and with no regard for the environmental damage.

(This was originally posted on Open Salon August 21, 2012)

These oligarchies have also used their control of the economic system to avoid passing on their savings to the consumers for products that fall apart much faster than they used to implementing planned obsolescence to an extreme degree. Many items that used to last much longer including sneakers fall apart much faster. Sneakers that used to last close to two years now fall apart in under six months even when they’re not used as much. They’ve even begun marketing heavily in schools so that they can target children before they learn how to recognize the tactics that marketing people are using and many of these children have been growing up without ever realizing that they’re being manipulated by marketers and they often even think that commercials are beneficial.

This has gotten so bad that the quality of sneakers has become almost useless and I indicated that if they keep going in this direction they might as well try to merchandise cowshit in a shoe box. 

They didn’t get quite that far; there was a backlash by people like me and they seem to have improved on at least one pair of replacement sneakers that are better quality than the crap they’ve been selling. This was so obvious that they couldn’t make a case to justify what they’ve been doing so they replaced it as quickly as they could to get me out of the store before drawing even more attention to their tactics and the fact that they’ve been price gouging consumers for inferior products.

Now Mitt Romney is running for president and he’s chosen Paul Ryan for his running mate.

What is he selling that is beneficial for the majority of the public?

Why should anyone even consider voting for him?

Are they trying to market something better than cowshit in a shoe box?

The three main things that he had to run on didn’t turn out so well when people began to take a closer look at them. His business at Bain didn’t involve creating jobs as he indicated. The fact that he “saved the Olympics” from a scandal didn’t actually address the scandal; the scandal involved the bribes that were used to bring the Olympics to Utah and he promised openness but didn’t release the records and after he left they were destroyed; not to mention the fact that he embarrassed himself so badly at the London Olympics. His term as governor wasn’t something that he wanted to run on since it was full of scandal or incompetence that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny; job creation was actually down despite the fact that unemployment was low due to people leaving the workforce; infrastructure deteriorated during his term wages went down; and most important of all the one thing that was considered good by many people is the health care program which he is trying to run away from.

On top of that he’ involved in a debate about taxes that just won’t go away. He’s asking us to trust him about his taxes despite the fact that the last time he did that during the 2002 elections he got caught lying. (sources Maddow: Romney demanded opponents’ tax returns and lied about residency in 2002 and Romney Caught Lying On 1999-2001 Tax Returns) this isn’t the only time he got caught lying or flip flopping; in fact it is standard procedure. He does it so often that they’ve been Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, (Vol. XXX) for about seven months and now even Paul Ryan is getting caught in his own lies.

Is this why people should vote for him?

Mitt Romney is the most compulsive liar that I can remember ever running for president. It is hard to imagine why anyone would even consider voting for him unless they hate Obama so much that they will vote for anyone and they accept the false premise that they can only choose from the two candidates that the corporations present to them. This is why they need to collect such an enormous amount of money to control the message that the public gets about him as much as they can get away with. This was clear in the way they announced his VP choice on an early Saturday morning and tried to get as much non-stop positive coverage to boost his polls over the weekend. By announcing it on Saturday when MSNBC and other relatively left wing news outlets are beginning the weekend with much less political coverage than they do during the week it enabled them to conduct one rally after another that was packed with audience members that all supported Romney so that it would appear to many people as if he had an enormous amount of support.

This may have worked to some degree but as soon as the weekend was over it became clear that it wouldn’t be nearly that easy and that they wouldn’t be able to completely shut out the opposing views although the corporate media would ensure that the best opposing views wouldn’t have an opportunity to speak to the majority and they might at time be forced to resort to what they call heckling. Whether this is the appropriate way to describe these protestors is hard to tell since we have no way of knowing whether they made a reasonable effort to get their views across without resorting to heckling or if they had a legitimate point; however the way they control these campaigns is clearly designed to prevent many people with legitimate points of view from getting their chance to speak so it is possible that the only way for many people to get heard whether they have something important to say or not is to speak up when they can in these crowds and risk being labeled a heckler.

The first, that I know of, of several of these incidents happened in When 10,000+ Welcomes Romney-Ryan to Wisconsin, Drowns Out Obama Heckler With ‘‘USA’’ Chant. The video of this didn’t enable the public to find out what the “heckler had to say; instead the only thing that could be heard was the crowd and Mitt Romney who had the microphone, giving him a major advantage to get his statement across without any challenge. He said, “You see young man, this group right here is respectful of other people’s rights to be heard, and you ought to find yourself another place to be disruptive because here we believe in listening to people with dignity and respect;” and the crowd shouted him down with a “USA USA USA” chant that didn’t give him an opportunity to get his point across.

This claim that they “believe in listening to people with dignity and respect” is clearly just another lie that Romney repeats over and over again. If it was true then he would be much more inclined to listen to many other questions about many subjects and he wouldn’t hesitate to answer them. This clearly hasn’t been the case throughout his campaign when he has been trying to do everything he can to control the interview process and who gets to ask questions when. On one notorious occasion Mitt Romney's Press Aide Tells American Journalists to 'Kiss My Ass' during his trip abroad. The reason the reporter asked his question at this time in this manner was because the Romney campaign refused to make him available for questions so they had no choice but to ask their questions when they could or not at all.

The vast majority of the public has an even harder time trying to get their questions in when they want to know what he is going to do if elected which is why there is going to be many more incidents like this unless they shut out the public to prevent them from having any say at all in the interview process. There were at least two more high profile incidents like this including when Hecklers Interrupt Ryan at Iowa State Fair Stop to ask if he was going to cut Medicare. He didn’t answer this anymore than he answers any other question; although he did address the issue later in other manners but it isn’t credible since he doesn’t address the basic problems with the health care system any more than Obama does. Instead he just takes campaign contributions from the insurance companies and helps them provide an enormous amount of distractions to keep people from knowing what is going on while the advocates of a Single Payer System can’t get their views across to the majority.

The last one that I know of was when a protester asked Paul Ryan: “Why did you lie about accepting stimulus funds?” Once again they treated him like a heckler and implied that he was an Obama supporter although there is no guarantee that all these protesters are supporting Obama. Once again he declined to answer the question and acted as if people that disagree with him shouldn’t even be allowed to ask questions. He was also shouted down by flag waving supporters that chanted “USA USA USA.”

Is this how they’re going to respond to everything? Anyone that recognizes “Groupthink” might suspect that this might be the result of a crowd that has been coached in what to say under these circumstances. This may be true even if many people aren’t familiar with all the research available on the subject. Many people have seen this enough and can recognize it for what it is.

In the fifties Irving Janis researched what he called Groupthink and he was also involved in recommending other research into the obedience to authority experiments done by Stanley Milgram. Some of this research involved studying how to control crowds and many political operatives have studied this research whether it came from them or some other psychologists that have been studying crowd behavior.

They have studies what kind of slogans many people react to and this is why they come up with so many short sound bites that have little or no meaning but sound good to those that don’t think things through. This is why they keep saying things like they’re concerned about the poverty levels implying they’re going to fix it when their policies would clearly makes things better or that they want to protect Medicare. They come up with an enormous number of simple slogans and appeals to emotion but little or no discussion about actual issues.

One of the most common slogan is that they “need someone who is a leader;” which they say over and over again with conviction implying that they’re the good leader. This of course doesn’t involve actual discussion about policies.

When they actually do get some discussion about policies on any given issue then it becomes clear that the Republican Party including Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are clearly on the wrong side of the issues from the public on just about every issue. They don’t even consider Single Payer; they don’t think the environment needs any protection, or at least not when it comes to the environment where people without political power live; they don’t support any rights for workers or consumers although they pretend the “unregulated market” will provide them all the protection they need; they don’t defend equal rights to free speech; they don’t acknowledge inconvenient facts when it comes to one war after another that is based on lies and more.
Instead all they do is come up with slogans and appeals to emotion but these lies aren’t even very good!
If they can’t even come up with good lies they can’t possibly expect to win; which is clearly why they seem to be trying to rig election by suppressing the right to vote around the country.

But they’re not even doing a good job at that either since they would have to be much more discreet if they wanted to succeed. This is so blatant that they can’t possibly hope to get away with it unless the majority of the public is incredibly complacent which it is becoming clear that there are much fewer complacent people. With the scandal about Todd Aiken it will only become harder; furthermore this isn’t an isolated incident; they keep coming up with one scandal like Todd Aiken after another. The majority of the public isn’t nearly as fanatical as the GOP is becoming.

This is virtually guaranteed to create a backlash so big that they almost certainly won’t be able to rig the election and win the election for Mitt Romney.

They’ve been trying to do what they can to lead us to believe that the only other option is Barack Obama. The problem with him is that when it comes to many of the most important issues he isn’t much if any better than Mitt Romney and he takes almost as much money from the corporations to do their bidding as Mitt Romney.

Corporations don’t donate that kind of money if they don’t expect to get a return on their investment and Barack Obama has already shown that he’s willing to provide that return. His health care p[rogram doesn’t challenge corporate profits any more than the Republican system; in fact it was written with the help of lobbyists from the health care industry. He hasn’t tried to regulate the oil industry or Wall Street any more than Romney intends to; he isn’t trying to end American aggression abroad any more than the super patriot (“USA USA USA”) Romney intends to.

He may be better on a few social issues but even on those he has been slow to stand up for what is right, waiting for the grass roots support to get ahead of him. He has done the same thing when it comes to protecting the right to vote after all these voter suppression laws were passed. It was only after there was an enormous amount of grass roots pressure pushing him to mount court challenges to them and he hasn’t challenged all of the or done nearly as much as he could have.

This may not be a massive marketing scheme to sell Mitt Romney to the public despite the fact that he has no intention of looking out for the best interest of the majority on any given issue; it may be a massive marketing strategy to sell Barack Obama as the only thing that can prevent Mitt Romney from being elected and running the country over a cliff. The problem is that Barack Obama is just as bad and they use this trick every four years and every time it works the two evils get worse and everything deteriorates even more.
It’s not good enough to vote for the lesser of two evils!

It never has been and it never will be!

The more important thing is to break the corporate lock on the electoral system that is destroying this country.

Barack Obama has been reluctant to speak to the press and address many of the most important issues as much as Mitt Romney was until yesterday when he finally held a press conference. The timing of this press conference was surprisingly good for one reason or another. The first question was about the Todd Aiken scandal which was a gift since it was discrediting the other party. Then they asked a question that seemed like it was hard hitting about whether he was being unfair by asking to see Mitt Romney’s tax returns but he was able to turn this around quickly and easily making it appear as if he is the far better candidate. The problem is that this still doesn’t involve addressing any of the most important issues.

Mitt Romney may not be better than cowshit in a shoe box but Barack Obama isn’t either; it is almost as if the best that he can do is try to do a slightly better job telling lies; or perhaps putting a few air fresheners into the shoe box to cover up the smell.

Furthermore there are other choices that they don’t want us to pay attention to. These other choices are getting much more attention than the corporate media would have us believe and they include at least two other candidates that have access to the ballot in a large number of states and many more that are either running in a smaller number of states or as write in candidates. The two most prominent ones are Jill Stein and Gary Johnson. Both these candidates have enough ballot access to win and they could pull in additional votes through write in campaigns.

My own preference is Jill Stein since I think she is much better on the issues but there are many others on the right that aren’t inclined to vote for her and prefer Gary Johnson. Jill Stein has requested that her supporters “Tell Colbert, Maddow & Stewart that Jill Stein deserves air time!” Many of us have complied and she is getting much more attention in many alternative media outlets so it is becoming increasingly obvious to many people that the traditional corporate media can’t be trusted. This may mean that the alternative parties have a much better chance to win in many elections around the country perhaps even the presidency.

The Stein campaign has asked that we do “whatever it takes to get their attention (respectfully please!)”
I didn’t ask whether it would be respectful to include a request for additional requests in a blog about marketing cowshit.

Normally I would prefer to make my blogs more issue oriented but this would be much easier if it worked both ways. When they can’t come up with anything better than the things they’ve been coming up with it is extremely hard to avoid seeming disrespectful at times and if someone can do that all the time it isn’t me although I usually try.

However this is all the more reason why alternative candidates may have a much better chance this year. If they can’t offer something better than cowshit in a shoe box and there are enormous amounts of grass roots protests around the country then there is a much better chance to educate the public and convince them that they should stop believing in the big lie that we should settle for the two choices chosen for us by the corrupt corporations!

(For more information on Blog see Blog description and table of context for most older posts.)

The following are the original replies when this was first posted on Open Salon.

You should be walking around with your chest puffed out Zachery. You predicted it first. The republicans are throwing this election. Wall Street likes Obama just fine. Ryan is unelectable. I don’t care how many senile and mean spirited old people vote for him. America is not having him. You will see a military putsch first.

Jack Heart August 21, 2012 04:08 PM

I'm sure I'm not the first one to think about the possibility that the Republicans might be throwing the election; in fact I've seen several other predictions like this on the web due to the extremely bizarre behavior of the establishment it has stirred up bizarre theories from people that wouldn't have previously come up with them.

I can't be certain of this anymore than other reasonable people but I seriously doubt if Ryan or Romney is electable under any reasonable circumstances. I doubt if the seniors in Florida will be fooled by Ryan's mother when there is so much evidence from much more reliable sources that indicates that he would be devastating to them and they can't win without Florida or many other states that have almost certainly already been lost including Massachusetts.

Why would they even consider an candidate that almost certainly can't carry most of his own Home states??

Utah is the only home state of Mitt Romney that he has a big chance at winning because it is Mormon. In most other states Mormonism will make it harder to win the Evangelicals he needs to win.

Most of us don't even have so many home states.

zacherydtaylor August 22, 2012 10:07 AM