TERENCEP. MORAN* PROPAGANDA AS PSE UDOCOMMUNICA TION

Abstract

s THE COUNTDOWN TO 1984 touches fve perhaps the tme has come to treat Ludwg Wttgensten's famous aphorsm less as a phlosophcal pont for dscusson and more as a serous warnng. If, ndeed, "The lmts of my language are the lmts of my world,"(1) then we need to examne the envronment created by the symbol systems of our technologcal world. As Stanley Mlgram notes n Obe-dence to Authorty, "... the socal psychology of ths century reveals a major lesson: often, t s not so much the knd of person a man s as the knd of stuaton n whch he fnds hmself that determnes how he wll act."(2) Whatever else propaganda has been n the past, n ts current manfestaton t s clearly the chld of modern technology, the l-legtmate and unwanted offsprng of mass socety and mass meda of communcaton. The smple les and personal deceptons of the past bear as lttle relaton to modern, large-scale propaganda as the bow and arrow do to nuclear mssles. (3) As Watergate should have taught us, the determned and delberate mass deceptons that are promulgated va the mass meda by powerful poltcal fgures cannot be detected, much less combatted, easly. Only a seres of monumental, f fortutous, blunders rendered Nxon and company vulnerable to Congressonal examnaton and exorcsm. Even now, we stll have no clear understandng of the complete "scenaro " (to use one of ther favorte words), much less of the ultmate mplcatons for our country and the world of the actvtes that went on, n, around, and under the Whte House durng the Nxon Captvty. Despte the seemngly endless publcaton of books about Watergate, we stll lve n gnorance; at best, these books tell us what happened wth a few speculatons as to why, usually colored b