"discretion" as in "discrete."
R. Gancie/C.Parcelli wrote:
>
> One of the first things every Harvard MBA hopeful learns is that in
> 1928, Edward Bernays, the father of modern marketing and public
> relations, published a book called Propaganda. Not only did it serve as
> a guide for controlling consumer habits for corporate America, but its
> tenets were also embraced by the Nazi propaganda machine, and it became
> a sort of universal bible for the manipulation of the "democratic"
> electoral process worldwide. Chapter I, Organizing Chaos, begins:
>
> "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and
> opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.
> Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an
> invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
>
> We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas
> suggested, largely by men we have never heard of [e.g. Edward
> Bernays]...
>
> Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of
> their fellow members in the inner cabinet...
>
> ...Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it
> remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in
> the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical
> thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of
> persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the
> masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind, who
> harness old social forces [and biases and prejudices I might add] and
> contrive new ways to bond and guide the world."
>
> Bernays operated in many economic and political theaters. He did
> everything from launch the ad
> campaigns to accelerate smoking among women in the 1920's to doing the
> public relations work for the U.S. State Department in preparation for
> the CIA directed coup against the democratically elected Arbenz
> government in Guatemala in 1954. The latter was performed on behalf of
> the United Fruit Co., later to be known as United Brands. The
> flexibility of his methodology is due, in part, to the then new-found
> ability to, for the first time, collect discrete and quantifiable data
> on large populations. Further, quantification was the fait accompli for
> discretion, one hardly having any utility without the other.
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