Mind Games

Repeated sounds, jingles, and phrases can be effective, regardless of what is being sold.  Turn on the TV and endure commercial advertisements for a few days, you’ll get it.  Marketing types have known the value of the repetition technique for decades.  If you are old enough, you may not be able to count the number of times since 1948 you heard, “You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent!” and this before teeth whitening became a really big business for your dentist.  You also discovered that “Things go better with Coke” – the soft drink, not the powder (1963) and in 1969 we were all relieved to learn that Coke was “the Real Thing”.  The bottom line is that clever repetition, or repetition of any kind, can be an effective persuasive technique.  Brainwashing (not to clean out bad thoughts but to implant selective ones) is thought to have originated by the Chinese during the Korean War.  It has been used ever since by governments, religious cults, and both political and corporate entities to influence the masses.  Another example in Carefree is the Town Administrator who has been tirelessly lamenting the lack of a local Property Tax for years in the hope that residents will fall for the pickpocket move.  He says it over and over in an effort to make it psychologically palatable.  Anyone from a larger metro area knows all too well that, once implemented, property taxes never go away, they only grow as bureaucrats find more ways to waste tax dollars.

The Mayor, Vice Mayor, and several members of the Carefree Town Council are now resorting to a similar strategy to sell some fishy business.  Over the past few weeks a Guest Editorial, and letters from the Vice Mayor and several Council members have supplemented the barrage of COINS and other marketing email campaigns orchestrated from Town Hall.  What they are selling is a change to the “intrinsic” character of Carefree.  This is not just an unhappy coincidence.  Rather it is an orchestrated strategy to win over the hearts and minds (well perhaps just the minds) of Carefree residents; their hearts would never embrace the current sale.  There is much hoopla about filling the “big ugly dirt lot” in town with a rental apartment complex, a Tall one.  That lot was here long before Mr. Lewis arrived and remains 11 years after his two unsuccessful projects.  “Ugly” or not, over the years it has served a crucial role for most Carefree Events and Festivals.  There is also an aberrant and as yet unsatiated desire by some in Town Hall to approve as many high-density developments on our remaining desert land as they can get away with.  The 1980’s White House anti-drug campaign, “Stop the Madness” comes blazing back to mind.  Develop?  Yes, but do so wisely, not out of desperation or by selling your soul.

One Council member you won’t be hearing from is Jim Van Allen.  His passing silenced a voice of reason and conscience on development.  Rest assured that if he were still with us today, he would be writing letters, and those letters would be in sharp contrast to most of what you may have been reading lately from his fellow elected officials.

John Traynor

Carefree