The global media conglomerates have done nothing for their customers besides keeping them pitifully unaware of the world around them. The mockingbirds sing their tune and the great unwashed masses regurgitate their information to their family and friends who should also should be shamed publicly for being completely obtuse. In keeping with Miller’s law the media repeats certain phrases ad nauseum such as war on terror, Arab spring, kinetic military action, boots on the ground and so many more so that we remember them and add them to our vernacular. Then you will find people using these slogans in debates until it becomes a conditioned reflex. You can trot out these phrases without needing to know the any more about the subject.

“Another particularly evocative symbol is the slogan, which contains the demands, the expectations, hopes of the mass and at the same time expresses the established values of a group…That is why the slogan flourishes in times of crisis, war and revolution. It explains also the attraction the slogan has: thanks to it, the individual is not intellectually lost. He clings to it not only because the slogan is easy to understand and to retain, but also because it permits him to find himself in it.” –Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes