Amerika

Nothing recurs, or appears as if from nowhere, without having some utility, even if that utility fades over time. The ultimate test of any idea is time; if it does as well centuries after it is beginning as it did in the first decades, it has resiliency and ranks above competing ideas with shorter lifespans.

The mechanism of propaganda, repressed after the wars, simply moved into the bureaucracy and private industry, because it works:

Unlike traditional substance use disorders — which historically have been more common in older men — ultra-processed food addiction shows the opposite pattern: higher prevalence in older women.

One explanation may be the aggressive marketing of “diet” ultra-processed food to women in the 1980s.

Low-fat cookies, microwaveable meals, and other carbohydrate-heavy products were promoted as weight-control solutions, but their engineered nutrient profiles may have reinforced addictive eating patterns.

This means that forty years after the fact, people are still eating what The New York Times told them to eat back in 1984.

They have absorbed the “wisdom” that these things are good, therefore continue pursuing them to the point of addiction, because they trust the symbols in which they were instructed.

As time has gone on, we have found that not just processed food but carbohydrate-heavy foods are not working well for us, in an epidemic of preventable diseases.

Propaganda works, but do the ideas of its masters actually function in reality? Perhaps democracy went off the rails long ago in its pursuit of compromise and unity instead of having a goal and accepting the conflict that comes with it.

Tags: compromise, propaganda, ultra-processed food, unity