Oversimplification

Oversimplification is one of the propagandists (including advertising people and politicians) most important tools. It allows an issue and a suggested course of action to easily be compressed into a simple slogan or a 15 second sound bite. Indeed, one of the most successful propagandists of the 20th century summed up the art of propaganda as, "Simplify, simplify, repeat, repeat."

Some folks accept oversimplification. After all, most textbook examples of problems have simple textbook answers. However, the answers to real issues are almost never simple. While simple answers may well address a particular problem, they ignore many related problems and gloss over undesirable side effects.

For example, emptying the slop pot out the window is a simple solution to the problem of what to do with the slop pot. Unfortunately the sum of all slop pots emptied in a large city may add up to serious epidemics, as it did at one time in London.

When propagandists (i.e. advertising people and politicians) oversimplify an issue, they do so because either they don't believe the target audience is smart enough to comprehend the issue in all of it's real world complexity or because they wish to mislead. Glenn Thomas believes that people are smarter than that and that given all of the pertinent information, will make the best decisions for themselves without any prompting.