Written by Tom Adams   

The vast majority of people are extremely reluctant to entertain the fact that they have been manipulated. As Mark Twain said, "It Is easier to fool people than to convince people that they have been fooled." The stark reality is that American corporate media, which disproportionately represents the viewpoints and interests of the wealthy, has molded and twisted the minds of the American public to think in ways that are not only irrational, but are against their own interests.

In particular, they manipulate language to get you to think differently (i.e., in ways which benefit them) about certain concepts. A classic example is the word "welfare". If you look up the word "welfare" in the dictionary, it has overwhelmingly positive connotations:

wel·fare/ˈwelˌfe(ə)r/
Noun:

1. The health, happiness, and fortunes of a person or group.
2. Statutory procedure or social effort designed to promote the basic physical and material well-being of people in need.

What could possibly be construed as negative in the words "health", "happiness", "fortune", or "physical and material well-being of people"? But in American culture, the word "welfare" has been twisted and distorted to have primarily *negative* connotations. If you ask the average American on the street what comes to mind when they hear the world welfare, you will hear denigrating things like "lazy welfare bums", "sapping off the system", and "get a job" etc. On the other hand, if you ask the average Norwegian, I guarantee you will get different results. The phrase "welfare state" has primarily positive connotations, because of the cultural differences in a society where economic equality is valued.

This is no accident; that's what propaganda systems are designed to do: mold your minds in ways that benefit the propagandists.

Sadly, we live in a culture where the "physical and material well-being of people" has been twisted into something negative. George Orwell, are you listening?