Listening Journal 1-25-12

1. This song is about the way our American society works. He emphasizes the lack of character and intelligence of the celebrities, the lack of caring of the Academy chairs, and the pain of the military wives, and thus Showing flaws in our society which ironically "can".

2. The theme of this song is that America creates its own problems and struggles. They want us to think about the things that are wrong in our society and how those problems are self-inflicted.

Listening Journal 1-23-12

1. This song is about the price of success and victory. It states time and again that this race is dangerous. It says that it could kill them, but they're still striving. Also the song seems to draw reference to the cold war. Two human forces striving for victory and supremacy in cures, space exploration, and preparation for the future since the song mentions a cure and forging the future.

1-17-12 Fallacy

 Patrick Henry's speech to convince representatives to revolt is full of fallacy. For instance in the second paragraph when he says "For my own part I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slaver" is a fallacy. Henry excludes the middle much like he does in the famous quote at the speech's end "Give me liberty or give me death". In both cases he offers only two extremes as options, but ignores any middle ground or alternative options.

1-5-12 Propaganda

1. The overt message is to eat less bread.

2. The covert message is that patriots will eat less bread to serve their country, but those who choose not to eat less bread aren't patriotic.

3. The piece doesn't come out and say that if you don’t eat less bread you hate America, but it does allude to eating less bread being tightly linked to patriotism as a covert message.

Listening Journal 1-4-12

1. This song is about an either economically or politically oppressive society. Lyrically it alludes to Russia and Nazi Germany, Russia through the Petersburg reference and Germany via the mention of Jews and blonde hair.

2. The music was repetitive and the repetition in the words working for the clamp down established the monotony one would expect in a controlled society.

3. One line mentions cunning voices in "your" head which seems to point towards a deceptive force. The mention of twisted speech in another line seems to allude to propaganda as well.

Propaganda

1041.In the case of propaganda using purely rational material the style is factual, information or logical,

and the act of persuasion lies mainly in the selection of facts favorable to the argument and the

leaving out or discounting of those which are not. … The purely emotional [style of propaganda]

relies on the use of subjective ideas projected with a high level of emotive force accompanied

probably by an exploitation of some or all of the techniques of event management. OLIVER

THOMSON, Easily Led: A History of Propaganda, 1999

Thomson is making a statement about propaganda being a manipulation of truth. He feels that in propaganda only the convenient truths are told to persuade its audience. Showing that with persuasion such as propaganda actual fact and validity of an argument become fairly arbitrary when one can simply pick and choose from anything in a way that emboldens the argument while ignoring any flaws in it. He paints propaganda to be more a tool of deception than an actual means of education or logical reasoning.