Cracking the Code by Thom Hartmann

I started an ongoing IPS thread on this book, summarizing and commenting on it as I read it. The opening paragraph follows. Please check back with the thread, as I'll be adding new material daily until I'm done reading it, and likely for a time thereafter.

This is a book about communication, and how through it we are manipulated to do another's bidding. It focuses on political communication, how leaders frame ideas in ways that influence us unconsciously to vote in particular ways. And even more so, shape how we view the world and everything and everyone around us. Conservatives in particular learned these lessons well from psychology, biology and advertising. They have become masters of manipulating people to act against their own best interests. Progressives can learn it too, but instead of using it to manipulate others it can be geared to helping us see through such manipulation and thereby liberate us to think for ourselves. It teaches us how to crack this code.