Marketers have come in to fill in where our "real" religions and social institutions have let us down. If a brand cult feels better than a religious cult, there's no harm in trying it on - as long as people don't forget that it's just a brand.

SR: On a similar note, No Logo by Naomi Klein (who is interviewed in the program) is a critique of advertising and corporations, but now the ideas in it are being used to try and create more effective campaigns. I even saw a job ad on Craigslist from a small agency which required the applicant to have read No Logo and write about what they learned from it. Is there anything the persuasion industry can't assimilate?

DR: Of course not. This is what they do. That's the amazing thing about it. It's not really persuasion that's so effective at assimilating things; it's the market.

SR: Dr. Clotaire Rapaille admits, "Why do you need a Hummer to go shopping? Well, you know in case I need to go off the road. Well you live in Manhattan, you don't need to be a rocket scientist of understand this is disconnected." But he seems to avoid the real question later when you press him about whether it is good if people buy more Hummers. Or as Jon Stewart put it more bluntly when criticizing Crossfire, "You are hurting us."

DR: Right, well, the reptile brain doesn't always make the best decisions for the community or the state, eh? Where Rapaille is wrong, however, is that we do sometimes make decisions from places of higher logic or ethics than our inner reptile. How did we get marriage, or community, or government? Not with pure reptile. The problem with his techniques is that they appeal only to the reptile - to the lowest and most primitive parts of us. The reptile has no civic-mindedness.

SR: The Persuaders was finished before the election (though viewers may
not realize this). It seems very prophetic now. I wasn't aware of Rove's use of the confederate flag issue in Georgia in 2002 to bring out apathetic white men. It seems like the anti-gay marriage ballot measures played a similar role in bringing out people who normally don't vote last Tuesday.