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Walter Lippmann would have been well positioned to come to self-serving opinions himself, having served with Edward Bernays, subsequent author of 'Propaganda', on the Creel Commission and on the Committee on Public Information during WW I. The primary problem they faced was the opposition of so many German Americans to the US entering WW I on the side of the Allies.
Bernays showed how with techniques later described in his seminal Propaganda, while Lippmann provided the justification for using said techniques in Public Opinion. They, (the government), have been doing it ever since "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
That I am on the right track with Lippmann is confirmed towards the end of chapter I when he states: "My conclusion is that public opinions must be organized for the press if they are to be sound, not by the press as it is today. This organization I conceive to be, in the first place, the task of a political science that has won its place as a formulator in advance of real decision instead of apologist, critic or reporter after the decision has been made."
Lippmann reifies the abstraction of 'Political Science' as some objective science. Political Science gives, in fact, about as successful and accurate description of the political process as US Mainstream Economics gives of the operation of the economy. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
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