OptumismNancy, who comments here, pointed out to me a very interesting and well-made video about iconography in politics today. It explores powerful iconography in use in American politics today. It a great video about symbolism used in the propaganda of our time. “Iconography” in particular, is essentially the same type of symbolism I employ in the design of this blog: using pictorial symbols or icons to convey meaning.

In fact its the same kind that we use a lot in computers and the internet, but its just so common, we don’t think about it much. For example, the little orange icon under the “Sacred Symbolic” title–at the top of this blog–with the white circle and a couple curved lines that appear to radiate out from it, mean “you can click here to subscribe or follow our RSS or Atom Feed” to anyone who uses Feeds. These “Feeds” are ways that websites update other sites and anyone who wants to subscribe by feed reader such as Google Reader, of any news posts or other changes that have been made to them. If you use facebook or Twitter but are not familiar with feeds or feed readers, its kinda like following another person on those sites, but instead you’re following the blog or website through your feed reader.

The author(s) of the video seem to be a little on the extreme-conservative side. However, the points made are very valid ones. I hope you won’t reject the message based on the messenger. Though the video is punctuated by a fairly one-sided, but compelling visual statement at the end, the lessons in symbolism are for both sides. And they are very powerful lessons to be learned whether you lean left, right, or simply want to better understand how the propaganda of either party, or the media, influences your thinking through iconography.

See it on Youtube here.