If we believed everything we read, we would probably all be dead. Or worse, vaccinated.
These days, for the vaccinated, it must be like waiting to die every day.
I truly feel sorry for them because they believed in what they were told by the government and the media. But it is not a new phenomenon. It has been with us for a very long time.
The manipulation of truth has been with us since some stupid bugger came up with the idea of having a government.
And we have been fed lies ever since. All veiled and sugar coated in that thing called "Puffery."
Consider this.
This is an advertisement placed in the Age newspaper from May 1917.
I can see the lads reading this and thinking of a golden future, far from the farm and the constraints of Mum and Dad telling them what to do, where to go and who to do it with.
So often today, just like over a hundred years ago, we are sold a steak dinner and given a cricket burger. Or worse.
These poor lads signed up to be buglers and were given 303's. Or signed up for the 303 and given a grave in the mud on the western front.
It seems to me that the advertisement was probably placed by a pacifist.... the way that we today use similar tactics to get our message across.
How better to tell their story than to highlight the idiocy that is going on at the moment than with what they call " The Meme War. "
Images are used to spread messages. Good, bad, and often indifferent.
Some hit home.
Others do not.
My point is not to debate whether or not this advertisement is real or an attempt to alert people to the folly of the glorification of war. It is more to point out that advertising is powerful.
As long as we know what it is trying to do and what is trying to be achieved.
When I sold Real Estate, we could not lie in our advertising. But we were allowed to do something called " puffery. "
Puffery was when you said that if you bought a property, you could " walk through the dunes along a gentle sandy path and arrive in heaven on earth. "
However, if you said that you could " walk down your own private footpath to the dunes and the open beach... " when, in actual fact, the path was through a dune protection zone. you would be in a wealth of pain legally.because it was a lie and intended to deceive.
I have been thinking about this a great deal of late.
Our governments started off with the puffery of dancing Doctors and nice nurses all jiggling away to sell the jab.
They jived and jiggled and giggled and gaily line danced to convince people that " we were all in this together. "
It actually sickens me re watching this.
Puffery was used to the extreme in 2020 and continues to this day on so many other issues.
My problem started with the crossing of the line between puffery and deceit.
To this day, governments are still using puffery to sell the lies that vaccines are good and Ukraine is good. Russia is bad and Trump is bad but Biden is good and being normal is bad but insane is really, well, just so inclusive.
Our entire world is now being run by advertising that is puffery.
Lies, veiled in emotion.
"A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood." ~ William Shenstone
Truth is as scarce as unicorn horns or hen's teeth.
We are told that men are women if they choose to be.
Women are men if they choose to be.
Babies are only babies if they are wanted. If they are not, they are fetuses.
It reminds me of a poem written by Rudyard Kipling.
Lies and damned lies.
Flying on a private jet is fine but flying cattle class on a commercial aircraft is bad for the planet.
Gas stoves are bad. Eating meat is bad. In fact, everything is bad unless it is approved by the elite who eat meat, use gas stoves and fly private jets wherever the hell they want.
Puffery is all that our governments sell these days.
They used puffery to sell " The Voice. "
Carefully avoiding facts.
Selling illusions that make people feel good.
Hell, I could write their ads, but I would be too ashamed to do so.
You see, I have this thing called integrity.
"One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived." ~ Niccolo Machiavelli
Something that our governments lost a very long time ago when they wandered down a path to their heaven on earth and forgot that they leave tracks in the sand.
