In a ' democratic' system, they can then be permitted, even encouraged, to ratify the decisions made by their betters in periodic elections. Ideally, each person should be alone in front of the TV screen watching sports, soap operas, or comedies, deprived of organizational structures that permit individuals lacking resources to discover what they think and believe in interaction with others, to formulate their own concerns and programs, and to act to realize them.' ( Chomsky, 1991 They must be kept that way, diverted with emotionally potent oversimplifications, marginalized, and isolated. One of its targets is the stupid and ignorant masses. 'A properly functioning system of indoctrination has a variety of tasks, some rather delicate. media primarily but also media in other societies:

Specific cases are illustrated in detail, using the U.S. 'Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state' (Media Control). must be subjected to more subtle forms of ideological control: Media Control is an invaluable primer on the secret workings of disinformation in democratic societies.In the late 1980s, Noam Chomsky delved into the nature of the media in a political system where the population cannot be disciplined by force ( as in totalitarian societies ),and henceforth. Chomsky further touches on how the modern public relations industry has been influenced by Walter Lippmann’s theory of 'spectator democracy,' in which the public is seen as a 'bewildered herd' that needs to be directed, not empowered and how the public relations industry in the United States focuses on 'controlling the public mind,' and not on informing it.

From an examination of how Woodrow Wilson’s Creel Commission 'succeeded, within six months, in turning a pacifist population into a hysterical, war-mongering population,' to Bush Sr.'s war on Iraq, Chomsky examines how the mass media and public relations industries have been used as propaganda to generate public support for going to war. According to Chomsky, 'propaganda is to democracy as the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state,' and the mass media is the primary vehicle for delivering propaganda in the United States. Noam Chomsky’s backpocket classic on wartime propaganda and opinion control begins by asserting two models of democracy-one in which the public actively participates, and one in which the public is manipulated and controlled.

Media Control by Noam Chomsky