Americans Elect. New political movement in the US...

[FBM]

Yes, because when you buy ads, that buys the office. Because clearly people have to listen to the ads because they're too stupid to think for themselves. So when I purchase enough air time I have 'bought' and election and undermined democracy! Clearly if that's true then democracy doesn't work because people are unable to think for themselves. It's fucking retarded. I can vote however I want, and you want to trust the politicians to right rules about how money can be spent to become an elected official?!

Modern advertising has its roots in public relations, which is just a rephrasing of the techniques of Nazi propaganda, put to use to make money. And it works. It works BIG. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

FUCK!!!! I am so tired of stupidity!!!!

Then stop participating in it. Educate yourself, wake up and admit what everybody else, including the spokesperson for Gingrich, quoted below, already knows:

You can basically blanket the airwaves if you have enough money. And I don't care what candidate is in the race, if you have $9 million in negative advertising against them, (they are) going to drop in the polls," Gingrich communications director Joe DeSantis told CNN's Candy Crowley on "John King, USA" on Wednesday.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/29/polit ... index.html

[Drewish]

If democracy can not withstand propaganda then democracy is a failed system. I can think for myself and see past propaganda, and I assume you believe the same about yourself. If you do not respect people enough to have the capacity to think for themselves, then what? You demand overlords to control the information so that the people can come to the 'right' conclusions? Hypocrite.

[PsychoSerenity]

If democracy can not withstand propaganda then democracy is a failed system. I can think for myself and see past propaganda, and I assume you believe the same about yourself. If you do not respect people enough to have the capacity to think for themselves, then what? You demand overlords to control the information so that the people can come to the 'right' conclusions? Hypocrite.

No, I'd say you demand better education and a system in the media which allows individual investigative journalists (or anyone else) to be able to hold media corporations accountable if they are shown to be deliberately spreading falsehoods.

[Drewish]

If democracy can not withstand propaganda then democracy is a failed system. I can think for myself and see past propaganda, and I assume you believe the same about yourself. If you do not respect people enough to have the capacity to think for themselves, then what? You demand overlords to control the information so that the people can come to the 'right' conclusions? Hypocrite.

No, I'd say you demand better education and a system in the media which allows individual investigative journalists (or anyone else) to be able to hold media corporations accountable if they are shown to be deliberately spreading falsehoods.

You mean laws against slander and fraud? Odd, I thought we already had those, and that is completely different from restricting the purchasing of air time with your own money.

[PsychoSerenity]

If democracy can not withstand propaganda then democracy is a failed system. I can think for myself and see past propaganda, and I assume you believe the same about yourself. If you do not respect people enough to have the capacity to think for themselves, then what? You demand overlords to control the information so that the people can come to the 'right' conclusions? Hypocrite.

No, I'd say you demand better education and a system in the media which allows individual investigative journalists (or anyone else) to be able to hold media corporations accountable if they are shown to be deliberately spreading falsehoods.

You mean laws against slander and fraud? Odd, I thought we already had those, and that is completely different from restricting the purchasing of air time with your own money.

No I mean laws against spreading misinformation, lies and propaganda. - When the freedom of the press was first held up as being something important, it was to fight for truth for the people against those in power, to prevent lies and misinformation. Now the media corporations have grown big, and they are those in power, or at least, they have very close ties with them. Power is held by parties with enough money to be able to publish what they want and influence the public on a massive scale.

This was clearly demonstrated in the referendum we had in the UK on electoral reform. The Daily Mail, amongst many others, were printing endless streams of misinformation, logical fallacies, and biased opinions, as if they were facts - and though all of them could be found to be thoroughly refuted on-line on blogs etc. the difference in audience size would be many orders of magnitude. I heard several of my friends, perfectly intelligent people, repeating the same misinformed arguments because that's all they'd been hearing from every conceivable direction.

[Drewish]

If democracy can not withstand propaganda then democracy is a failed system. I can think for myself and see past propaganda, and I assume you believe the same about yourself. If you do not respect people enough to have the capacity to think for themselves, then what? You demand overlords to control the information so that the people can come to the 'right' conclusions? Hypocrite.

No, I'd say you demand better education and a system in the media which allows individual investigative journalists (or anyone else) to be able to hold media corporations accountable if they are shown to be deliberately spreading falsehoods.

You mean laws against slander and fraud? Odd, I thought we already had those, and that is completely different from restricting the purchasing of air time with your own money.

No I mean laws against spreading misinformation, lies and propaganda. - When the freedom of the press was first held up as being something important, it was to fight for truth for the people against those in power, to prevent lies and misinformation. Now the media corporations have grown big, and they are those in power, or at least, they have very close ties with them. Power is held by parties with enough money to be able to publish what they want and influence the public on a massive scale.

This was clearly demonstrated in the referendum we had in the UK on electoral reform. The Daily Mail, amongst many others, were printing endless streams of misinformation, logical fallacies, and biased opinions, as if they were facts - and though all of them could be found to be thoroughly refuted on-line on blogs etc. the difference in audience size would be many orders of magnitude. I heard several of my friends, perfectly intelligent people, repeating the same misinformed arguments because that's all they'd been hearing from every conceivable direction.

In the US if somebody spreads a lie about you there's supposed to be slander laws. Those laws are even harsher in the UK. If they can't effectively stop those lies, then how could any legal system? Also you are talking about the influence of media companies. Media outlets don't have to pay for air time. Even if you stopped anyone from spending any money on campaign ads ever, FOX, NBC, ABC, they could all still push ideologically based 'news' at no additional cost. So regardless of campaign financing that's still going to happen.

In fact because the internet now allows for individuals to donate money to campaigns so easily, the ability to donate cash and purchase air time effectively fights against the major media outlets having the only say in what information people can hear (that and the internet itself.) So you think that large companies with a full time legal team, won't be able to find ways to get around laws, or to pay lobbyists to get the laws written in such a way so that they can put out ads? Do you think that a system that restricts what people can say and how or if they can spend money to purchase air time will improve the level of discourse? Really?

Want to know what a system without government control on speech or advertising looks like? The internet. And now the government wants to get their hands all over that with SOPA. And you want them to restrict what people can say and how they can say it further in the name of protecting us from bad information? AAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!

[PsychoSerenity]

No, perhaps I'm not expressing myself clearly. Sorry.

[Audley Strange]

If democracy can not withstand propaganda then democracy is a failed system.

Exactly, nail on the head. It can't, it is.

I can think for myself and see past propaganda, and I assume you believe the same about yourself.

Everyone thinks they are perceptive and can see past propaganda. This is not the case. If it were, business and governments would not waste money. Truth is it's just as effective and upon the literate and academic than it is the hoi-polloi. You don't bother with propaganda for them, you dazzle them with the Spectacle.

If you do not respect people enough to have the capacity to think for themselves, then what? You demand overlords to control the information so that the people can come to the 'right' conclusions? Hypocrite.

There is, indeed, the rub.

[FBM]

Anyway, I don't see any bias in the questions or range of possible answers in the online questionnaire. It may be true that some of the results reveal a more centrist or left-leaning attitude among the voters, but the test can't be blamed for that. That's just shooting the messenger because you don't like the message. I answered over 200 of the questions, and there were several asking about one's views on, for example, electric cars, more fuel efficient cars, etc, from a variety of angles. Same for foreign policy, economics, social problems, etc. Not just one-off questions, but a range of questions with possible answers that cover the full right-left spectrum. As far as I can tell.

[MrJonno]

Spend enough money and you can make most think anything you want them to think thats just reality. Want to persuade the majority of people that the moon is going to crash into the Earth next year unless oil production doubles next year no problem. The more absurd the concept the more it costs but that whacko idea could be sold for a few billion