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--Shaping a favorable climate for the message is called pre-persuasion. If we establish the agenda and context then we shape the results. One technique is to use statements as axioms such as "what everyone takes for granted" and "what everyone knows." Another is to attach black-or-white labels (positive or negative) to topics which cannot be easily disputed.

--Establish a "source credibility" of "experts" and/or attractive communicators to activate the audience's own self-persuasion.

-Create a simple message that focuses the audience's attention on the specific "problem" which will define their "solution."

Mental shortcuts (heuristics) are most likely to be used when the audience is under time pressure and so overwhelmed with information that it becomes impossible to process it adequately. If the audience has little other knowledge or information, then they will base their decision on whatever heuristics come quickly to mind within the context already established in the pre-persuasion stage.

--Evoke an emotion that will effectively channel the audience toward the desired conclusion. Fear is often effective, as is guilt; feelings of obligation and indebtedness invoke reciprocity, so we acquiesce. Appeals to universal values we hold trigger the desire to agree, for we all want to be self-consistent.

--Recruit the audience to a small role in the larger "play." Individuals then feel committed to the Cause, setting the stage for their agreement to future actions.

--Define group parameters so that the audience feels "we are all on the same side." Once they feel "membership" then they will feel obliged to "follow the group."

Note how the concepts of "what's obvious" and "framing the problem defines the solution" seamlessly fit into propaganda's mechanisms.

An early pioneer of full-spectrum marketing/propaganda was Edward Bernays, who formalized his systemic approach in his book Propaganda. Bernays justified marketing as an essential element of democracy, even as he summarized his work as engineering consent: "The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest."

Given that a handful of Elite interests own the vast majority of mass media outlets, we conclude that what Bernays presented as the authentic "democratic process" was in fact merely a simulacrum, designed to lull the unwary into believing marketing is the core of a democracy shorn of participation other than as a consumer of packaged ideas. When we ask cui bono of his scheme, the answer is himself and his corporate/Elite clientele, not the citizenry.

Another essential text on the media's subjugation to marketing and Elites' interests is Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.

From Con Game to Full Spectrum Defense of the Status Quo

Let's begin by repeating this definition of simulacrum: an insubstantial form or semblance of something. The reason why someone would construct and deploy a simulacrum is (shall we risk this word?) obvious:

A simulacrum is used to mask or distort a reality that, once revealed, would cause the target audience to act in ways that would not serve the interests of those deploying the simulacrum.

The spectrum of simulacra runs from simple sidewalk confidence games to highly elaborate global propaganda campaigns.

In a simple con game, the facsimile of a "fair game of chance" (or "open market") is presented to the target audience to persuade them to put their money into what is the opposite of fair and open: a setup carefully rigged to transfer the target's wealth to the purveyor. In other words, the sham offers the illusion that the game/market might benefit the target, while the reality is the game has only one end-state: it only benefits the con-man/"house" at the expense of the targets/"marks."

A con game is a willful distortion of an authentic game of chance which masks the reality that the game serves only the interests of its owners.